Deal with the Devil – A Halloween Story by The_Technician..,

The payment for life is life, but will Estevan give his beloved as payment for his continued existence?

WARNING! All of my writing is intended for adults over the age of 18 ONLY. Stories may contain strong or even extreme sexual content. All people and events depicted are fictional and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Actions, situations, and responses are fictional ONLY and should not be attempted in real life.

If you are under the age or 18 or do not understand the difference between fantasy and reality or if you reside in any state, province, nation, or tribal territory that prohibits the reading of acts depicted in these stories, please stop reading immediately and move to somewhere that exists in the twenty-first century.

Individual readers may archive and/or print single copies of this story for personal, non-commercial use. Production of multiple copies of this story on paper, disk, or other fixed format is expressly forbidden.

Normally Estevan loved Halloween. It was his favorite holiday. He had watched it change through the centuries from a yearly cultic purification of hearth and fire as practiced by the Celts; to a harvest festival as practiced by the Romans when they took the festival back to the Mediterranean area; to a children’s night of play intended to dispel our basic fear of evil magical creatures; to its current, modern-day excuse for raunchy costumes and alcohol-fueled parties.

As he thought about it, he could not help but compare the modern debauchery with the Roman fertility celebrations. The Romans combined the Celtic “dark night” rituals with their own “Feralia” practices, both of whom involved the spirits of the dead. By putting it on November first, however, the Romans removed the”public fasting” required by Feralia. The new date replaced the public fasting of those final, gray days of February with the “public celebration” of harvest time at the end of October. The result was basically a drunken orgy, and the Romans really knew how to throw an orgy – especially if you mixed in religious overtones that made alcohol and sex an acceptable part of the cultic fertility ritual.

“Just like old times,” he said aloud as he remembered the wild parties he had attended last Halloween with Alicia. But then he glanced down at her picture in his hands and said softly and sadly, “Just like old times.”

This year was to be a “Kalend of Kalends.” Literally that meant a month of months, but it was used by the Romans to refer to a decade. Somewhere in the ancient past it may have originally meant thirty months or perhaps thirty years, but that was before Estevan’s time.

Not a whole lot was before Estevan’s time. Once at a dinner party, when someone had asked him how old he really was, he replied, “I wasn’t around to sell the stones to Cheops for his pyramid, but my company poured the concrete for Flavius when he built the Coliseum.” Everyone laughed – those who heard it because of how his outlandish answer avoided giving his true age, Estevan, because he was telling the absolute truth.

No, Estevan was not immortal. He was an ordinary, mortal man, who one Feralia – before they even called it that – just happened to have struck a deal with the keeper of the dead. Today most people call him The Devil, or Satan, but he truly has no name, just as he has no face, or for that matter just as he has no body. He can assume various forms, from bull to goat to human to god or goddess or strange combinations in between, but all such forms are just illusions.

“His promises are also illusions,” thought Estevan. “Eternal life…. but at what cost?”

Then he spoke aloud to himself “Is it truly living when you know that once every ten years you must betray someone who loves you dearly to buy another ten years of life?”

How many had he betrayed over the centuries? How many had gone down into the realm of the keeper of the dead so that he could continue to walk the earth? Would this be the year that, on the festival of the dead, he would refuse, and would himself be embraced by the formless arms of the keeper of the dead?

Alicia was different. With his youthful charm and physically pleasing body, it had always been easy to get women to fall in love with him. He enjoyed their charms while it lasted, and they benefitted greatly from his extreme wealth and power. He had always justified things to himself by saying that if they had known what they were doing they would have gladly traded their lives for the ten years of absolute bliss which he bestowed upon them. Women – and men – gave up their lives for much less.

“What was it that made Alicia different?” He thought to himself. It wasn’t just that she was rich – nowhere near as rich as Estevan, but wealthy enough to be rich even among the rich. And it wasn’t just that she was beautiful. He remembered how her naked body had shone in the moonlight on the beach. And, when she paused and looked at Estevan, it was as if a statue from the Temple of Aphrodite had come to life.

It was not just her physical appearance that made her special. Her voice was almost musical; she knew her history and the intricacies of the arts and sciences; and she was fluent in as many languages as he was. At least, she could speak and understand all those languages which he currently used. He had never tried to speak with her in ancient Phoenician.

There had been others as beautiful. Carla had breasts that were the perfect size and shape, and her sex was perfectly formed, both for beauty and to caress and grip his cock as they thrust together. She had the perfect natural mixture of grip and lubrication so that it was like sliding through honey into that tight shaft.

There had been others as rich. Suzanne had been almost richer than he, coming as she did from royal blood in a time when royalty reigned supreme in Europe. She was born to extreme wealth, and had taught him subtleties of using your wealth to exert power over others that he would never have dreamed of on his own.

There had been others as intelligent. Veronica was the most intelligent of them all. She actually had surmised his secret, but her love for him kept her from fleeing. When her Kalendra came, she peacefully looked him in the eyes – without fear – and said “I wondered when this day would come. I knew it would. The payment for life is always life. Despite what you must do, I thank you for the nine years of your love that you have given me.”

Estevan grimaced remembering those words. He had not loved her. She only thought he loved her because he had acted like he loved her. But it was, after all, an act. Love requires that you truly, faithfully and sincerely put the one you love above everything else in your life. As the old joke goes, “Once you can fake that, you have it made.” Estevan could fake love very, very well.

That is why Alicia was different. This time it wasn’t fake. After centuries upon the earth and after countless women chosen, used, and discarded, Estevan had finally, truly and completely fallen in love.