Priceless
It was cold on the grounds outside the house, but warm inside the car that pulled up to the gate. It was an old 1969 Dodge Charger, painted black with the white name in beautiful calligraphy on the side of it. “Giaour,” it read. It rolled up to the gate to the grounds of the wealthy estate and slowed to a stop in front of a security checkpoint. The ugly white of the fluorescent lights in and around the structure illuminated the man inside the car as he rolled down the window. The tired security man asked a question: “On the list?”
“Damien Sammael,” answered the man. He wore a black suit except for a red shirt underneath the jacket. He looked uncomfortable in the car, fidgeting in the seat and tapping two fingers on the dashboard. His face was a picture of calm.
“I already crossed all the names off,” said the security man in a Boston accent, “so I know you’re lying to me.”
“Look again,” said Damien.
The man took out a clipboard, with all the names crossed out on it, and flipped through the three pages. He moved to put it down. “Everyone’s here, man. You some kind of reporter or somethin-” He took a double take. There on the third page, was the man’s name, Damien Sammael. That was weird. The page was in alphabetical order and three people above Damien had names that start with the letter z.
“Sorry,” said the security man, lying to cover his mistake, “You’re just late and I get a lot of people trying to sneak into these parties.”
“No you don’t,” said Damien, “You’re lying to me now. Nobody ever comes around here.”
The security man was flustered. Was the guy some kind of psychic? “Go on in,” he said. The window rolled up slowly and dramatically and the guy drove inside.
Damien hated the car he was sitting in. The things were slower than he could go, and this one was loud and obnoxious. He would have preferred to simply walk around a corner and appear in the lavish rooms of the mansion, as he was used to doing.
The black car was invisible as it drove down the winding path to the mansion at the center of the property. Damien was here for one reason. He wanted to bargain for someone who was worth something. He had so far only had luck with the disenfranchised, the homeless, poor and addicted. The ones that he had tempted into trading their souls for things like a home to live in or chemicals to ingest had been worthless.
Damien, had spent a long time trying to figure out why people liked expensive things. He wasn’t sure why. To one such as him, money meant nothing. The only thing he appreciated the value of were people. One dollar, one thousand dollars. Addict, priest. He hadn’t yet tempted a priest. He would have to try that later.
The one he wanted was a billionaire. John Flanigan had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but unlike most children of rich couples, he had not squandered his wealth. He had retained it and made it grow, like a gardener with a prize tomato. He was a smart man, but he was also sentimental. He was a man who cared about a lot of things. The one thing that he didn’t put much stock into was gambling. John was notorious for only doing something that he was positive would benefit him. He would be benefited by whatever Damien gave him, but he would he would regret it later, when he was burning forever. They all regretted taking what Damien offered.
Damien visited the people who he had deceived after they had been consigned to hell. All of them had the same facial expression to attest to their pain and the same tears to attest to their remorse. As Damien thought about the people he had deceived, he felt something that he had never felt before. He felt a feeling in the pit of his stomach. It was like an emptiness. He clutched at his midriff. He figured that it wasn’t any physical affliction that had caused the feeling. Physical things like bullets or knives or even diseases had no effect on one such as him. That meant that an emotion had caused the feeling. Damien wondered what the emotion might be. Whatever it was, it didn’t feel good. Damien drove faster.
He left his charger in the field where every other one of the wealthy party goers had parked their vehicles. He walked down into the house, and knocked on the door. A butler in a white tuxedo opened the door. Everyone was wearing white and black. Damien felt out of place in his red shirt that was under his jacket. If they didn’t like the way he dressed, they could go to hell. He took a drink off of a rambling server and scanned the room for his target.
Damien found the object of his attention talking to a circle of pretty girls. He was young, and full of life. He was laughing at something. “You’re John Flanigan aren’t you?” he said without a preliminary hello, pushing past the others clamoring for John’s attention.
“Yep,” answered John, “Who are you? I don’t recognize you.”
“I’m a friend of a friend,” said Damien. One thing about the ones like Damien, was that they had certain thoughts when talking to someone that weren't their own. Looking into John’s eyes, Damien could get a sense of what he was thinking. The average nerd would call the ability mind reading, but it was something different. It was something
Right now, Damien could tell that John was wondering which of his friends had brought him here. Damien decided to clear up the matter with a lie. John was thinking of a man named George Harrison, a childhood friend. He would do. “George,” said Damien, “I came here with George Harrison.”
John immediately started thinking of his friend. Damien got myriad snippets of conversations, “You shouldn't mix business and pleasure John,” he had said when John had come back from a business trip Costa Rica with a new girlfriend.
“He told me you liked mixing business and pleasure, so I decided to talk to you here. I’ve got a proposition for you.”
Before John’s mouth opened to say something, Damien already knew what would come out. “Alright. Let’s talk in the study. They weaved their way through the crowds. making their way through the living room to the staircase and then to the study. Damien looked at the lavish home. It was reminiscent of the Palace of Versailles, when Louis XVI had still lived there. Damien had been to the place, and met the King of France, and had thought him laughable. He had been a boy in a man’s body. He had enjoyed the same kind of lifestyle that John was living.
The study was straight out of The Godfather, a contrast to the rest of the house. “Sorry if it’s depressing in here,” said John, “I get migraines, and I like it dark.
“What If I told you that I could make your migraines go away?”
“What?”
“I can make sure you never feel any pain for as long as you live.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m the man who can give you anything that you want if you do a little something for me.” Damien had lost count of the amount of times that he had said that phrase. It had always swayed the one he was talking to in the direction Damien wanted them to take. He got the bad feeling in his stomach. Damien found that feeling amusing. For all the hours he had spent talking to the most intelligent of the damned, he had no word for the feeling other than “bad.”
“I’m Damien,” he said, “Just Damien. I didn’t come here with your friend, I came here on my own, and I’m going to make your life great if you would only do one thing for me.”
Damien looked into John’s eyes, and saw what he was thinking. He was thinking about an old musical called The Damnation of Faust. Damien already knew that his sales pitch was going to fail when John asked, “And what do I have to do?”
Damien looked into the corner of the room and saw a fireplace with two logs inside. He reached into his suit Jacket and pulled out a matchbook. The brand read, Sheol. He struggled to light the match as he explained what he required. “You’re going to take those Rosary beads out from that desk you’re sitting behind and you’re going to throw them into the fire.”
“The hell I will,” said John, his face getting twisted into a mask of , “What are you? You some kind of devil?”
The match was lit, and the logs were set aflame, bathing the room in dim light and a pleasant warmth. “I’m one of two hundred. I’ve been roaming this place since right after Noah got off his ark.” Damien was puzzled. The man was a human who had just found out that he was a few feet away from unholiness. He was not trying to hurt Damien or run away from him. He was still talking.
“So what do you do?” asked John, “You go around with a pen and paper asking people to sign their souls to you?”
“No. Some of the two hundred do that, but I do it symbolically.”
“Not to me.”
“Not to you. That’s clear to me now.” Damien turned to leave. “I’ll be going now.”
“Hang on,” commanded John, “You gave up awfully quick.”
Damien realized that he did. He decided to keep on being straight with the man. “I’m not feeling good.”
“What doesn't make you feel good?”
“I don’t know,” answered Damien, “I’ve just got to stop talking to you. Something about how you make me feel. That’s making me feel empty.”
“You feel empty,” stated John, “That feeling you got, is it in your stomach?”
“Yes,” said Damien, “How did you know?” Damien took a seat in front of John’s desk.
“Well isn’t that just precious. You’re feeling guilt.”
“Well isn’t that just precious. You’re feeling guilt.”
Guilt. The word seemed to fit the feeling. Damien had never felt guilt before. “I’ve never had this feeling,” he said, “Can you make it go away?”
“Look at the fire.”
Damien obeyed. He stared at the roiling flames, looking deeply into them, as if to find some pattern in their paths. “That’s where you send people,” said John, “Forever.”
The feeling intensified. “This isn’t making it go away. It’s making it worse.”
“That confirms it’s guilt. Do you know what the only thing that can make guilt go away is?”
“What?”
“Forgiveness.”
That was a word that wasn’t in Damien’s vocabulary. The people he had bargained with cursed him as they burned. He had seen them, seen the pain that they had felt, and now, in the dim light of the study, he realized that he didn’t want to see them again.
“They won’t forgive me,” said Damien, “They’ll never forgive me.”
“Do you know who will?”
“Who?” asked Damien, leaning forward.
“Will the sight of a bible hurt you?”
“No. That’s movie stuff.”
John got up, removed a bible, the only one in the house, off of the shelf opened it up to a page from memory, and read, “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” He closed the book and gave it to Damien. “Say these words,” said John, “‘Forgive me God,’ and mean them.”
Damien did, and suddenly, he wasn’t in the room anymore. He was in a bigger room, that was all white and gold. There was a light on one end of it. He asked the light. “Do you forgive me?”
Everything around Damien seemed to say, “Yes.”
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