10 Minute Tales, Part 2

Aug 23 - Cheating

He sat up, panting quietly as he relaxed again. If he had properly seen what the microscope showed, he had finally cracked it. He removed the slide from the microscope, walking over to the pill fabricator.

"It acts as an antidote to poisoning..." he muttered to himself, smiling in triumph. "It's a cure for all known diseases, it prevents the body from bleeding out, it reduces the body's nutritional requirement to practically nothing, it even reinforces the skeleton to stop crushing from being fatal... there's no method of death this cannot prevent. All I need now..." the machine pinged and a small drawer slid out of the bottom. There was a simple white pill, no larger than a cat's claw, but he knew the power it contained. Nothing less than immortality. He snatched it from the drawer and raised it to the sky, triumphant. "All I need is this pill."

"Indeed." a voice echoed from behind him. He turned, shocked. The lab was supposed to be secure! Who had... oh. It was her. "You never told me this was your research direction." She crossed her arms, clearly less than impressed. Her form-fitting dress complimented her body wonderfully, hugging her impressive curves. It stopped just below her shoulders and above her knees, revealing her red leggings and shapely limbs. He would have been enamoured all over again, were it not for the fiery scowl she wore. He could literally see the fire flickering in the back of her eyes.

"If I had, you would have never agreed to it." he replied. "We both know how expensive the ingredients were. Humans likely won't be able to reproduce one for a long time."

"We both know that's not why I'm here." she replied curtly, brushing a stray lock of blonde hair away from her red eyes. "You've cheated."

"How have I cheated? I promised you my soul upon my death and that is what I intend to do." it was his turn to fold his arms. He had cheated the devil.

"But you can no longer die, can you? Using my own money like that." she grinned slightly, licking her lip briefly. "If I wasn't so impressed, I'd probably take your soul now. After all, where's your evidence that the pill worked on humans? You only had one blood sample." His pride died down a little as she pointed this out... but his pride came back quickly enough.

"You wouldn't have come here if it wasn't the right ingredient. You would have just let me die."

"Well, I can see now there's a reason you took this job." she grinned a little more. "Very well, since you cannot die I cannot claim your soul." she turned around to face a blank wall. The paint started to bubble and peel as a large oval started to heat up, forming a damned portal. "There's one thing I want to ask you, though. You may have cheated death..." she turned to face him. He recoiled; her eyes were truly those of the devil's, amber and slitted like a cat's. "But can you cheat time?"