Unsoul'd (30 page)

"See, first we had to attune people to what it is you do. Your work resists sympathy. And empathy. It's self-absorbed and it screams 'Don't read me!' to people."

"Wow. Thanks."

"Shut up. I'm talking. Your books are technically proficient, but they have a black heart, Randall. They're cynical and depressing. So people resisted them. But then, with poor innocent Lacey in your corner, it's like people were willing to crack through that veneer of self-important shit you lard onto everything you write."

"Hey!"

"So," he went on, ignoring me, "we got them their first taste. And even though it wasn't exactly to their liking, they had social pressures telling them -- they had
Lacey
telling them -- that they were supposed to like it." He showed me impossibly clean and white and large teeth with a too-delighted smile. "It's like when a friend tells you a restaurant is great. You go there and you don't actually like it, but you think you're supposed to, so you end up going back."

"You're saying you fooled people into liking my book?"

He threw back his head and roared. There was something...extra in that laugh. Something I couldn't identify. Something...leonine.

"I'm saying the
world
fooled people into liking it. No one wants to be left out. Everyone wants some connection to the girl on TV, the poor raped and kidnapped cutie-pie. So they read your book and they convince themselves it
must
be good because everyone else is reading it and convincing themselves of the same thing."

"But
Down/Town
..."

"That's the beauty of it. We did what normally takes decades, Randall. We shifted cultural tastes with a single book. Right now, in publishing houses around the world, you know what people are saying?"

I shook my head.

"They're saying, 'Get me more books like Randall Banner's.'"

"Really?" That certainly got my attention.

He laughed again, and this time I definitely heard the lion in there. "Damn right they are! They're looking for more books that enforce a selfish, self-absorbed, nihilistic outlook on life."

"I'm not--"

"You are! You're so..." He threw his hands up in the air. "I have no words for it, man. I mean, look at your father. Your poor, lonely father. He's seen three women love and leave him. He's alone. Totally alone. And he reaches out to you, tries to connect with you any way he can."

"I don't give a shit about hockey and I don't--"

"That's
exactly
what I'm talking about! Would it kill you to pretend to like hockey for the length of a phone call? Or even to talk about jerking off? He's an old man. He'll be dead soon. He's begging for some attention from his son and you just spit in his face. Each. And every. Time. And that's why I love you, Randall."

And he touched me for the first time. Touched my actual skin, I mean, stroking my cheek with a hand dry and hot, his eyes alight with malicious glee.

When I say "alight," I mean it. There was a murky light dancing in his eyes, something hypnotic and unavoidable.

The only thing that could distract me from those eyes was his touch. It burned. It froze. It made me erect and nauseated at the same time. My eyes blurred with tears.

"Don't go away yet, Randall," he chortled. "You still have work to do! Like I said, the world is going to read this next book. It's going to be the biggest thing since that asshole Gutenberg kicked this shit off. And your influence is going to make the world a collection of self-important, self-absorbed, depressed and depressing fucking assholes who don't give a shit about anyone else." He leered at me. "Just. Like. You."

I realized something. I ran through everything he had just told me.

And I laughed.

The devil smirked. "Yeah, Randall. It's funny. I fucked you. Right in the ol' shit-pit. And you're fucking over the world. Not bad, huh?"

"That's not what I'm laughing about."

"What, then?"

I wiped tears from my eyes. I typed the last sentence of the book.
 

I like to think I felt the last of my soul leave me, but the truth is, I didn't.

"You're not gonna believe this."

"I believe an awful lot, Randall. Some of it's even true."

"You fucked me over, sure. But I'm fucking you right back, you dumb piece of shit."

Wherein I Explain

The devil chortled with glee. "No, no, my friend. Those cool, fun new drugs Kiki's got you taking must be messing with you. In this relationship, I am the fucker and you are the fuckee. I wield the cock and you bend over and spread 'em. It has ever been thus, asshole."

"You gave me a lot of power."

"Exactly. I gave the power to change the world to someone solipsistic and narcissistic and just plain bad. And now soulless in the bargain. Score for me."

"Here's the thing," I told the devil. "That's all very well and good. But you made one mistake."

"Oh, really?" He leaned back, arms crossed over his chest, and regarded me with a wickedly indulgent smirk. "I somehow doubt that."

"Yeah. You never bothered to ask me what my book was
about
."

The devil opened his mouth to speak, then closed it.

Then opened it again.

He lunged for the computer, but I closed the lid. "Ah, ah!"

"Let me see that!" he wailed. "I'll rip your heart out and shit in your chest, Randall!"

I believed him. I opened the laptop and turned its screen towards him.

As he scrolled to the beginning and skimmed through the book at the speed of thought, I realized something else. Something fundamental and important.

He had taken my soul but he hadn't really changed me. I had never been a good person. Never. He was right: I had always been self-absorbed and impatient and self-centered. He had done nothing to me, taking my soul, leaving me unchanged. My soul had been weak, papier-mâché fetters on my worst impulses. Removing them made it easier to indulge in my worst, most contemptible instincts, but only by the degree it takes to break paper.

Actually, though... I
had
changed. Changed in one way, one important way: I could now be honest with myself. I could admit I wasn't a good person and I just didn't care one way or the other.

"Oh, fucking mother of all that is fucked up the ass!" the devil cried. "What have you done, Randall? What
is
this shit?"

"I'm titling it
Love/Life
," I told him. "And you were right about me, but you forgot one important detail: I'm a
writer
, asshole. I may be a dickhead, but I'm really good at putting myself in other people's shoes. And I get bored writing the same thing over and over, so I decided to try something different."

"I feel like it's too...big for me,"
I had told Gym Girl, all those months ago.
"I feel like I'm attempting something beyond the reaches of my talent, you know?"

"
Love/Life,
" he moaned, as though in pain. Maybe he
was
in pain. Had I hurt the devil?

"I may be a soulless asshole, a cheat, a guy who fucks over his colleagues, a guy who uses women, but I'm really, really good at pretending not to be."

Hence:
Love/Life
. A little something different for the Randall Banner fans of the world. A novel about self-sacrifice. About nobility. Altruism.

"You fucker!" he screamed. "You wrote a fucking book about
Tayvon!
"

A book about the best human being I know.

"What's
that
gonna do to the world once it gets out there?" I asked, trying (but not too hard) to keep a note of glee out of my voice.

Tayvon hated the book. Hated the idea of it. Of course he did. In that sacrificing way of his -- that
military
way of his -- he didn't see his service as anything exceptional. He didn't want himself held up as an ideal. Not even fictionally.

But that didn't stop me. Not me. Not the guy who only cares about himself and his own dreams and his own success.

The devil reared up, his chest enormous and powerful. A single curl of black smoke escaped a nostril.

"I am going to crush your skull to bits," he said, "and then delete that fucking--"

"Crush away, dillweed. Doesn't matter. I've been working on a cloud server." I looked at my watch. "Still business hours back East. Fatima's downloading it for Sam right now. That book
will
be published, whether I'm alive to see it or not." A new thought occurred to me. "Imagine how much
more
popular it will be if it's published posthumously!"

He gave me the courtesy of not accusing me of bluffing. We both knew I wasn't.

A deep breath. For both of us.

"Look," he said, relaxing into the easy, chill hipster once more, "you're already more popular than you were before. You've got a good life. You're rich. You've got Kiki. Tell you what -- I'll tear up the contract and give back your soul. Done deal. No questions asked. In return, you don't turn that book in to your publisher."

"No dice."

"Are you shitting me?" His eyes bugged out. "I'm am offering you quite literally, no shit, the deal of the fucking
millennium
. And you're saying no?"

"I'm saying no."

Pacing back and forth, he muttered to himself, then froze in an excited pose. "Kiki! I'll give
Kiki
's soul back!"

"No."

"Fine, fine -- you
both
get your souls back. Two for one. You can't turn that down."

"No sale."

The devil stroked his chin. "You really think you can out-bargain me? I invented bargaining."

"Actually, no -- I don't think I can out-bargain you. I'm positive I can't. But you're assuming we're bargaining. We're not. I don't want my soul back."

"You don't--"

Smiling, I said, "Funny thing about losing your soul: Once it's all gone, you just don't care about it any more. It's the one thing you have of mine and it's the only thing I don't want back." I stroked the edge of the laptop. "But I
do
care about this book being published. Mostly because I'm 'solipsistic and narcissistic and just plain bad.'"

I'm a good writer. Maybe better than good. The world -- rightly or wrongly -- thinks I'm a genius.

But I lack sufficient literary talent to describe the expression on the face of Satan when he realizes he's been beaten.

"Remember," I said quietly, "back at the beginning of all this? When you said this wasn't one of those stories where someone outsmarts the devil?"

"I remember." Through clenched teeth.

"I guess maybe you were reading the wrong story."

"Fuck you, Randall!" he screamed. "Fuck you! You've heard the phrase 'living hell,' right? Well, fucktard, that's what your life is from now on! I'm going to destroy you! I'm going to set the world against you!"

"Well, the world loves me, so good luck with that. And like you said -- the world's going to be a very different place once this book comes out."

"I'll find a way!" he bellowed. "I will spend the rest of fucking eternity finding ways to ream your asshole with a fucking burning cactus!"

"I worry about your creativity," I said. "You really need to move on from the sodomy stuff. Or are you hiding something?"

The devil screamed. Not with his human voice, but with the other one. It was the first time I heard it, and I do not believe it was a coincidence that soon after, I began losing my hair and developed a stoop to my walk.

I saw things, in that moment, in that moment of the scream. I saw my father at his wife's grave, stoop-shouldered and mournful. And alone.

I saw Lacey's tormentor on his knees, weeping, begging for forgiveness, a smear of blood along one cheek, like rouge.

I saw Kiki -- a younger Kiki -- on a film set, dropping a towel from her body as a cameraman checked light levels.

I believe I saw the moment of Tayvon's death, though it spun by so fast that I could not be sure.

A column of flame burst forth where the devil stood. I stepped back and held up my arms in defense; heat blew at me, singeing my flesh into a fast-flash sunburn no California sun could ever deliver. From that column, a howl exploded, and ash rose to the sky. With a sound like an engine oversaturated with gas, the column folded in on itself.

Where the devil had stood, there was a black scorchmark on Kiki's perfect marble balcony.

I dropped to my knees, trembling. My body no longer worked. I knelt there I know not how long, until Kiki found me there, staring at the scorchmark.

She knelt and took me in her arms. She did not love me. And I did not love her.

It didn't matter.

Wherein I Make the Call

Later, I called Lacey. She was back East by then, having sold her life, but not her soul.

"There's something I need to know," I told her. "I'm sorry if it bothers you, but I have to ask."

"Go ahead."

"Why did you have my book with you that day? Why did you have a copy of
Flash/Back
?"