The Devil's Accountant

Terms and Agreements

Lucifer was a very handsome man.

He wasn't particularly swayed by this fact, seeing it as sometimes more of a nuisance than an advantage - especially in the 21st century. He was a very busy man who handled very delicate work, and with the alarmingly rapid introduction and development of recording software and - gah, pictures, he was being constantly inconvenienced by mortals who quickly found themselves obsessed with him. Back before the [unfortunate] population boom of the 19th and 20th centuries, his good looks may have been his main tool when it came to persuading souls to work for him. Now, they were nothing more than an inconvenience to his everyday life.

He was at his wits' end when she met him. Or, that's what she figured.

"...et haec verba, consurgetis." The candles on the ground flickered out and a long, drawn out silence fell over the room. The curtains swayed gently as a breeze came through, and the moonlight outside seemed to shine a little brighter, lighting up her shoddy studio. Jacqueline maintained her position on the hardwood for another moment, even as a splinter dug into her ass.

Finally, when she realized that nothing more was going to happen, she heaved a sigh and buried her face in her hands. She made a long, low noise of annoyance before struggling off of the ground, rubbing the dust off of her person. She began to pick up the candles off of the ground one by one, breaking the salt pentagram with her socked foot. She couldn't help but think it was a waste of perfectly good salt.

She skipped grabbing a broom and decided to try the vacuum - maybe it worked now? - plugging it into the cracked outlet by the fridge. When it turned on, she thanked whomever for at least one small miracle. She decided to dump the vacuumed salt into the bathroom's trash can, because she didn't want to have to take out the garbage right then. When she was done cleaning up her mess, she stuck her head in the freezer for a minute to cool down. Even cleaning was something she considered rigorous now.

Her stomach growled, and so she reached into the cabinet for a pack of instant ramen. Once it was made, she ate it quickly and downed a cup of tap water, making a mental note to stop by the corner store tomorrow for something sweet.

She flopped onto her futon and scrolled through Twitter until she managed to fall asleep. When she awoke with the help of her alarm, she showered and otherwise got ready for work. Again.

As she loaded herself onto the bus, irritation built in her chest more quickly than usual. She was tired of struggling. She had done everything right in life - maintained her grades in highschool, got into a nice college, graduated with not too much student debt, got a marketable degree - why is it that, four years out of school, she was still so damn poor?

Not even just monetarily. She had one friend, a 'best friend', that she was positive didn't consider her as such. She had no boyfriends or girlfriends to speak of, and her adoptive parents were halfway across the world, 'rescuing' children in some third world country, since the ones in America weren't giving them the social superiority they thrived off of anymore. She was alone.

As she arrived at her stop and began the six-block trek to her dead-end job in the sweltering heat, Jacqueline pondered her loneliness on Tinder. After she swiped right on twenty people and got not a single instant match she closed the app. She wasn't ugly to boot, right? Right?

Once she reached the building, she resumed her work modifying the company's current system. It was tedious, mindless work, but at least it made time go by quickly. Gradually, her coworkers began to come into the office as well. Some of them greeted her, and she greeted them back.

When lunch rolled around, she grabbed her purse and headed downstairs to the cafeteria, purchasing the cheapest thing they had on the menu: an empanada, so greasy that if one were to attempt to remove the grease from it, they would no longer have something considered a meal. She got a side salad and a fountain water with it.