Some short stories

You sold your soul to the devil

Ten years ago, I sold my soul to the devil and today he has come for me. I will not beg. I will be strong and dignified. Hah, who am I kidding? I don't want to die and I will do anything to avoid it. Even if I have to make another deal with the devil.

"I need a favour."

What? The devil, literally Satan, is giving me my soul back? What on earth could make him desperate enough to come for me? And why me? What do I have that would allow me to be of any assistance at all?

"Why do you need me to help you? What could be so important that you are reduced to asking me for help?"

I probably shouldn't have said that. The devil is looking a bit annoyed.

"Listen human, I wouldn't have come but I'm not allowed to directly meddle in human affairs like this so I'm reduced to using humans to do my work."

So apparently, the devil needs me to change a word in the US constitution and it is vitally important that I do so. He is going to give me help but I have to do it on my own. I somehow have to break into the National Archives in DC and change a single word on the constitution.

Luckily, I already live in Washington so I can easily travel to the National Archives to complete my mission. I go at night. It is easy for me to break in, as the devil had promised. I go to where the Constitution is stored and bring it out. It is fairly faded but not so much that it is impossible to read.

My forging skills are almost impeccable and I have been practising writing in Thomas Jefferson's (eugh) script in preparation. I suppose I should explain. I have always been a lover of art and I decided to forge my own paintings and sell them so I could afford to buy the originals. The issue with this was that, while I could recreate the paintings almost perfectly, I couldn't forge the artists' signatures at all. Without the signatures looking correct, no one would buy my forgeries. Eventually I got desperate enough so I decided to make a deal with the devil to change this. He gave me the ability to forge anyone's handwriting perfectly.

Back to what I was doing, I remove the word which I have to change add put in the word that the Devil told me to. Afterwards, I put it back exactly as it was and leave. I go home and go to sleep.

I wake up in the morning and immediately turn on the news. Every channel is full of the same thing. Everybody has been interpreting the constitution wrong! It turns out that instead of it saying 'the right to bear arms', as everybody had thought, it actually said 'the right to bare arms'. There is national outcry as everyone scrambles to correct everything in relation to their incorrect assumption of what the constitution said. I simply sit there and smile.