I was supposed to be the guy who brought the screaming. That was my whole deal. My name is Sy, and in the lower circles, I am what you call a soul-harvester. I am not the big boss. I do not have the giant wings or the cool crown. I have a clip-on tie and a tail that gets caught in elevator doors. But I had a job to do. I had a contract for a guy named Saul.
Saul was an accountant. Not the cool kind of accountant who hides money for the mob. He was the kind of accountant who counted the number of staples in a box to make sure the box was honest. He worked in a room that smelled like old ham and printer ink.
I showed up in his office at 4:58 PM on a Tuesday. I did the whole routine. I made the lights flicker. I made the walls bleed a little bit. I even did the deep, gravelly voice that usually makes people pee their pants. I stepped out of a cloud of black smoke, ready to drag him down to the heat.
Saul did not look up. He was clicking a pen. Click. Clack. Click. Clack.
“You are late,” Saul said. He did not look scared. He looked annoyed.
“I am a demon of the eternal pit!” I yelled. I kicked a trash can. It made a weak plastic sound. “I am here for your soul, Saul! Your time is up!”
Saul finally looked at me. He had thick glasses that made his eyes look like two poached eggs. He looked at my horns. Then he looked at my contract. It was a scroll made of human skin, glowing with a faint, sickly green light. It was supposed to be the scariest thing in the room.
“Is that the original?” Saul asked.
I blinked. “What?”
“The contract,” Saul said. He pointed a skinny finger at the skin-scroll. “I see a glow, but I do not see a witness signature on the front page. Per the Revised Code of Infernal Transactions, Section four, Paragraph two: all soul-transfers must be signed in triplicate and stamped by a local notary. Do you have the notary stamp?”
I looked at the scroll. I looked at Saul. “I have fire. I have teeth. I do not need a stamp.”
Saul sighed. It was a long, wet sigh that sounded like a balloon leaking air. He pulled a heavy book out from under his desk. It was the tax code. It was thicker than a brick and twice as heavy.
“If you do not have the stamp, I cannot be damned,” Saul said. “It is a matter of procedure. Sit down, Sy. We have a lot of back-work to get through before we can even talk about the lake of fire.”
I sat. I do not know why. There was something about the way he said “procedure” that made my knees feel like jelly. It was a power I did not understand.
“First,” Saul said, opening a folder. “We need to talk about your travel expenses. You arrived via a rift in the floor. Did you pay the local zoning tax for a hole of that size? That is a trip hazard. That is a liability.”
“I am a demon!” I screamed. I tried to set his desk on fire. A small flame licked the edge of a stack of papers.
Saul did not panic. He reached into his drawer and pulled out a small, red fire extinguisher. He sprayed my face. It tasted like chemicals and salt.
“No smoking in the building,” Saul said. “That is a fifty-dollar fine. I will add it to your debt. Now, let us look at this contract. You claim I sold my soul for a ‘lifetime of success.’ We need to define ‘success.’ My car broke down in 1998. The radiator leaked. If I had success, the radiator would not have leaked. Therefore, you are in breach of contract.”
I wiped the white foam from my eyes. My head was spinning. I had been in the pit for three hundred years. I had seen kings beg for mercy. I had seen tough guys cry for their moms. But I had never seen a man look at a demon and ask for a receipt.
“It was a metaphor!” I said. “Success is a feeling!”
“Feelings are not tax-deductible,” Saul snapped.
He started pulling out more papers. He had charts. He had graphs. He had a spreadsheet that showed exactly how much sulfur I was wasting by standing there. He used a yellow highlighter. The sound of the marker on the paper was like a knife in my brain. Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.
“I have a boss,” I pleaded. “If I do not bring you back, he will turn my skin into a pair of boots.”
“Then your boss should have invested in a better filing system,” Saul said. “Now, look at this. You have me listed as ‘Saul the Greedy.’ My middle name is Bernard. This document says ‘Saul B. Greedy.’ That is a clerical error. This contract is for a different Saul. You want the guy in 4B. He is a lawyer. He has a lot of money and a very bad heart. I am just an accountant. I have nothing but this stapler and a very organized collection of paper clips.”
I looked at the name on the scroll. It did say Saul B. Greedy.
“Is your name not Saul?” I asked.
“It is Saul Bernard Miller,” he said. He looked at me with those egg-eyes. I felt a weird sense of wonder. This man was not a hero. He was not a saint. But he had built a wall of paper so high that even the Devil could not climb over it. He was a master of the dull. He was the king of the mundane.
“I can’t go back empty-handed,” I whispered. I felt small. I felt like a kid who forgot his homework.
Saul looked at me. For a second, I thought I saw a tiny bit of pity in his eyes. He reached into his desk and pulled out a form. It was Form 88-G: Notice of Incorrect Damnation.
“Fill this out,” Saul said. “Use a blue pen. Not black. Blue. Sign here, here, and here. I will notarize it for you. Then you can go back to your boss and tell him the paperwork was bounced. He cannot blame you for a filing error. It is the law.”
I took the pen. My hand was shaking. I filled out the form. I didn’t even know I could write in blue ink.
When I was done, Saul pulled out a heavy metal stamp. He slammed it down on the paper. *Thump.*
“There,” Saul said. “You are free to go. And Sy?”
“Yes?” I asked.
“Next time, bring a folder,” Saul said. “Presentation is everything.”
I backed away. I didn’t use the smoke this time. I just walked out the door and down the hall. I passed the breakroom. I saw a guy in a suit eating a lukewarm burrito. He looked miserable. He looked like he was in a cage made of fluorescent lights and bad coffee.
I realized then that Saul wasn’t afraid of Hell. Why would he be? He had already mastered it. He had taken the chaos of the universe and put it into a three-ring binder.
I got back to the pit and handed my boss the form. He looked at the blue ink. He looked at the notary stamp. He looked at me.
“What is this?” he roared.
“It is a Form 88-G, sir,” I said. I stood up straight. I adjusted my clip-on tie. “Per the Revised Code, the soul-transfer is void due to a clerical error. We need to open a file on the Saul in 4B, but first, we need to discuss our zoning taxes for the floor-rifts. It is a major liability.”
My boss stared at me. His mouth hung open. A bit of fire dripped out, but he didn’t even notice.
“You want to talk about… taxes?” he asked.
“And staplers,” I said. “We really need more staplers down here.”
I wasn’t a failure anymore. I was an administrator. And as I looked around at the screaming souls and the rivers of blood, I didn’t feel scary. I felt organized. I felt powerful. Because I knew something the other demons didn’t.
Fire hurts for a minute. But a meeting about a meeting? That lasts forever. And that is the most beautiful, terrible thing I have ever seen.