The passage into the world consisted of a long, dark tunnel that stretched endlessly up into seemingly nothingness. People generally fell down the tunnel. It was an extremely rare occasion that anyone went back up it. However, the Devil had done this before; he knew the drill.
He unfurled his dark wings and prepared for the flight up. Oh, he couldn’t wait to see the body he would possess. He’d had a nice one picked out for quite a while now, a reclusive millionaire, young and healthy. The contract stated that he would have to inhabit a body the moment he reached the Earth, and the Devil knew it was just a matter of throwing himself into the right person. He flapped his wings, kicking up dust and debris, focused, then prepared for takeoff. He was pumped. He was ready. And so it came as a complete surprise at that point when a three-hundred-pound man in a white vest and boxer shorts with little hearts on them fell from the tunnel above and landed on the Devil’s face.
The fat gentleman got to his feet. "Bloody hell! Where am I?"
The Devil arose from the ground and folded his arms.
"Well, you’re dead, aren’t you? And I’m assuming that in life you were somewhat of an asshole and consequently, here you are. Torture for eternity," the Devil pointed a long, bony finger toward the end of the line, "that way!"
The fat man, somewhat confused, replied, "Uhh, yeah, thanks," and waddled off toward the line.
The Devil shook his head, unfurled his wings once again, and with a great big flap worthy of an American Bald Eagle, flew up the portal. Everything always went a bit blurry around this part; going from one reality to the next was never easy. It always gave him the kind of feeling that his insides were turning outside. The Devil loved the feeling. And as he rose higher and higher, going faster and faster, heading for the end of the tunnel, he smiled at how easy he’d found it to strike such a simple deal that would allow him to take human form and destroy lives.
The end of the tunnel was nigh as he rushed toward a bright blue light. Then, nothing but frantic oblivion. All was dark.
The Devil opened his eyes and took a deep breath. Ahh, fresh air. It would appear he was on the floor. He tried to stand up but, as he did so, he didn’t really move all that much higher. What was the problem here? His surroundings were simple: a couch, a TV, a lovely coffee table with some fine bone china.
The Devil stretched as his senses came into play.
A door opened off to his side and a pair of legs in badly wrinkled stockings appeared and dropped a plate of food in front of him.
The Devil looked down at the plate of brown mush and then up to see a little old lady grinning down at him.
She opened her mouth and cooed.
"Aww, who’s a cute puddycat, Fuzzbucket?"
The Devil mustered all his strength and cried, "What?"
What actually came out was meow.
I don’t believe it. I’m in a cat! How the hell did I end up in a cat?
The Devil didn’t know what to do. The Devil, the Prince of Darkness, Beelzebub, the Deceiver himself, trapped in a cat for an entire week. And not just any cat: a cat called Fuzzbucket. He suddenly had a strong urge to systematically clean himself, and being in complete shock and not knowing what else to do, went ahead and did so.
Down in the depths of Hell’s Administration office, a lowly demon examined the contract she’d just received to file. She made a tsk tsk sort of noise and shook her head as she read the fine print through a magnifying glass.
Please Note: If by any chance the above noted chosen body is unavailable due to death, dismemberment, or divine intervention, the party of the second part (being Lucifer, the Prince of Darkness) will waive all possession rights and will be deposited into a body of the party of the first part’s (being God) choosing.
The demon lifted a large metal stamp and branded the word received into the contract with a satisfying hissssss.
The evening air was close and the heat, relentless. It beat at every passerby in the small town of Obidos, located somewhere in the west of Portugal.
Sweat escaped from every available pore on the body of Raymond Miller as he wandered down tight, quaint streets.
He loved Obidos at this time of year. Not so much for the heat, as no one really loved the town for its heat. But because Obidos was so quiet, hardly anyone around, no tourists, just the locals. The locals left him alone; they didn’t like the strange visitor who appeared out of nowhere for a few weeks every year and then vanished without a trace. It became a favorite pastime of the locals to stand completely still with a fixed frown whenever Raymond would appear on the street. They would watch him walk down the street, moving only their heads until he disappeared into a shop or around a corner. Shopkeepers wouldn’t talk to him except to tell him how much he owed them. They would answer any pleasantries or questions with a severe umph, all the time frowning like their lives depended on it.
They didn’t like Raymond because he didn’t follow the tourist trend. He always turned up out of season, and he kept himself to himself, not to mention he’d built a ghastly, great big mansion on the outskirts of town.
Raymond was in fact a billionaire who had quite methodically worked out when the off-season occurred for every beautiful place on Earth. He would travel round all year to these places, then build a house where he could stay for a couple of weeks, and that was his life, day in and day out. All he ever wanted was a quiet life, and when his one-hundred-fourteen-year-old grandmother died, she left Raymond, her only living relative, all her money. Although on the surface a quiet and very innocent-looking lady, she had made her money by running drugs from the United States to Japan. She was a little old lady with too much time on her hands, and she liked traveling to the Orient. Or that’s what all the security people at the airports thought as they helped her off the plane and even carried her drug-filled luggage for her. Her drug-running name was Silent Grasshopper. Raymond had no knowledge of this, as she told him that she won all her money on the lottery, and so he remained blissfully unaware.
Raymond had been an Olympic swimmer before the inheritance, and although he remained in good physical condition, he no longer swam. When he got the money from his grandmother, he decided to follow up on his high school dream to do absolutely nothing. He traveled around the world, spending the vast amount of money he’d acquired. He partied occasionally, hired women to satisfy his carnal pleasures, hired people to cook for him, but really did nothing of any importance. If he vanished off the face of the Earth, the only person who would miss him would be his bank manager, who talked to him every few days and who could have been considered to be Raymond’s only friend.
As Raymond walked out onto the bridge that crossed the local river, he stopped and admired the sunset. He could see a couple of children playing soccer at the other end of the bridge, a little too close to the road, he thought. There really wasn’t that much traffic in the town, so there was probably nothing to worry about. At least, that’s what Raymond thought right up until he saw the bus.