Payment

A Story by Catherine

Creative writing assignment for school

Jack carefully pushes the cream-covered blanket off of his cold body. He slides his right

leg over the side of the mattress, checks to see if his wife was still asleep, then follows it with the left. The little black clock flashes little blue numbers menacingly: 10:33-10:33-10:33-10:34. Jack tries to locate his shoes with his socked feet, too afraid that turning on the light would wake up Mary.
He stands, shoes on, and watches as Mary’s naked back moves with each breath. He tries not to cry, tries not to think about Mary asking him if they could name the baby Elizabeth, after his grandmother. Jake slips on the leather jacket she gave him last year on his birthday and hates the cold touch of the doorknob.
“I love you,” he whispers into the blackness of the bedroom, illuminated only by the weak blue glow of the clock.

The night had been just as cold three years ago. Then, Jack had pulled his torn jacket
tight around himself, the wind still managing to chill him. He’d gripped the pink hair clip tight in his fist, as if it were his only tether.
“Hey! I’ve come to the crossroads every night for a week! I’ve prayed, I’ve sacrificed! What else?” Jack yelled. He was ready to go home, to forget he ever tried this. “Just,” he sighed, “please.”
Jack groaned at the silence, kicking his boot into the old, graying asphalt. A creaking laugh sounded, seeming to come from every directing. He whipped around, trying to locate the source.
“Have I teased you for too long, boy?” A man emerged from the shadow of an oak tree. His hair was long, dreadlocked and his skin seemed to absorb any light that might've made him less threatening. His voice was deep and heavily accented.

Jack took a step back. The man was leaning on an ivory cane. He wore a pinstripe suit, a fedora with a purple feather, and shiny black dress shoes. Jack thought he looked like some sort of retired pimp.
“Don’t run now, boy. You called me.”
Jack held out his hand, the pink hair clip lying in his palm. “I came to ask you for Mary. She’s this woman

and"”
“You want her?”
Jack nodded quickly. The man took the clip very gingerly from Jack’s palm.
“You realize the payment right?”
“Eternal damnation?”
“Better. Eternity in my service.”
“What's my sentence?”
“Three years.”
Jack nodded quickly.
“Three years from today you come back here. If you don’t, I send the hellhounds.”

Now, Jack waits, twisting the shiny gold wedding band on his finger. His watch says 11:56"four minutes until his sentence was up. He has four minutes left on this earth until Papa Legba comes to collect him. He wonders if Mary will continue loving him once the deal was over, or if she’d wake up tomorrow morning and wonder what she had been doing for three years and why she was having his baby. The baby is the one thing Jack doesn't want to think about. He hadn't planned on children the night he made the deal, just Mary.
“Papa Legba missed you, Jack”
He looks up at the shadow of the oak tree. A figure begins to form"hazy, then the cane and the fedora come into view. “Hate to say it, but the feeling isn't mutual.”
The creature laughs, throaty and warm. “How've the last three years been?”
“Heaven.”