Soul Trade

It happens more than you’d think, especially in a shitty economy. 

One day you’re standing on a dingy street corner watching the gray snow melt and smoking a butt and dreaming of a hot meal or maybe a small bag of weed to get you through the day. But in reality, that vision is fractured by the 38 cents in your pocket and the realization that your last girlfriend kicked your sorry ass out a week ago and your best bud has cooled to the idea of crashing on the sticky hide-a-bed in his living room. 

Since you’ve burned two holes in the ratty thing.

All of a sudden there’s a tall guy standing next to you, smoking a cigar and cloaked in this massive black duster, its sheen mute, like it’s been soaked in oil, and he’s stomping these bulky black combat coots like he’s cold. 

He’s not cold. He’s looking for attention. And he wants it from you.

He speaks and it makes your skin crawl just a bit, since it sounds like background noise from a beat-up speaker, or an echo, but gravelly and off-putting. 

“Hard times, friend?” he asks.

“It’s tough all over, man.”

“Perhaps I may be of some small assistance,” he says, drawing heavy on the cigar. “Have I got a deal for you.”

And on the spot, down on your luck, you sell your soul.

Not for a price that’ll really get you anywhere, anyhow.

Dude moves off you – how the hell did we get this deep in the alley? – and it’s gone. Poof, vanished, like a fart in the wind. You’ve got a few bucks in your pocket, a crumpled receipt jammed in your fist, plus a copy of the contract, with its tiny print – and your signature. In blood, for chrissakes.

There’s an immediate emptiness, a feeling you can’t shake. Like tonguing that open spot where your molar used to be, but isn’t.

Just then you realize you’ve made one of those life-altering mistakes. Like maybe you’re going to need that soul to get to heaven, if that’s your goal. 

So crazy with sweat, you read the contract and find that there is a 24-hour cool-off period. But to get the thing back, there’s this weird scavenger hunt that’s going to be tough to complete in the time allotted. 

And stay out of lockup at county. ‘Cause there’s things on that list to accomplish that if you had a soul, well let’s just say there would be some searching. 

But the money helps and you’re coming to the end of the deadline walking down a wide boulevard with a backpack full of shit and you see it. Your soul. It’s in an old peanut butter jar, looking all flaccid and fatty. A veiny, slightly yellowed lump that’s flecked with blood. It looks as forlorn as you feel. 

It sits amid a bunch of stuff for sale on a stained quilt spread out on the street, near a bunch of broken clocks and mounds of junk. Just like the shit you’ve got stuffed in your backpack. Really.

And there’s the dude, leaning on a wrought iron fence, blowing smoke rings. 

“Problem, friend?”

“Big fucking problem, man,” you say with all the bravado you can muster. “Gonna need my soul back.”

“Get everything on the list?” he asks, picking shreds of tobacco off his lips.  “Exactly in the order they were presented?”

“All here, asshole.”

He plugs his mouth with the cigar and nods and hums as he goes through the pack. 

“Contract?”

He pulls the contract from the duster and smoothes it out on his thigh. He grips it tight on both ends and  in his scarred hands, the dried-blood signature turns all oozy and drips from the parchment. He picks up the jar, gives your soul a giggle and hands it to you. 

“Going to take a priest or a shaman to get that back in,” he says and whips a business card at my chest. “This guy’s good. But it’s going to cost you. And I know a guy who does loans of this nature, in exchange for some part-time employment.”

And that’s how you find yourself on some shitty street corner, stomping your feet in these ridiculous combat boots, trying to get the attention of the skinny chick with the drug itch and the far-off gaze.

You’re dressed in a dark black duster, it’s sheen mute like its been soaked in oil, a pad of contracts in the pocket.