Faust

Short Story

On that black day of Mankind’s history when the gates of Paradise were barred and the lone couple stood on that desolate plain, Eve turned to her beloved husband. A faint cloud of dust kicked up in the wind, and then all fell to the silence. 

“Just what exactly did you think was going to happen?” she asked. 

Some time later, when Judas stumbled out into the desert with nothing but his clothes and a coil of rope, a demon sent by Satan appeared beside him. It was an impish, shriveled thing that spoke in a raspy whine. 

“Really, what did you think was going to happen?” The demon laughed as Judas tied the noose. 

It was the year of our Lord two thousand and nineteen. My computer stains my skin white in the otherwise dark room. I haven’t slept well in days—haven’t shaved either. My disheveled hair falls by my side. I stare at the lone message that has popped up in the chat. I can’t help but think it’s from my Father. 

“Just what on earth did you think was going to happen?”

I can’t speak for the others, but at that moment, I wondered why I was stuck with all the blame. 

Just like a dream, you only realize the hours you’ve lost until you wake up. Even then, I catch myself tumbling through life barely aware. Any moment now, I feel as I might slip back into a sea of half-thought thoughts and distant memory. I suppose I’m luckier than most. I only lost twenty years.

Maybe there’s not much difference between me-now and me-then, but at least I kicked the screen since. I could no longer count the time wasted on a little pop-up whenever I started up a video game. No more scrolling through the so-often horrible news, though it was almost always just horrible for someone else. Best—or perhaps worst—of all, I no longer felt the guilt of that most dreaded lingering addiction. 

But then comes the moment the grifters won’t tell you about, that singular moment when it all comes crashing down upon you. You’ve wasted your youth. You’re burdened with debt that you cannot pay and a job that you hate. And finally, you have nothing left but to stare down the next sixty years with a profound sense of loss and absolute boredom. 

Many drown themselves in childhood to try to make it go away, but you can’t claw innocence back. The realization will always remain with you, if only as an itch, a perpetual sense that something is wrong. Maybe you can forget for a moment, but as you look around at that plastic room—that plastic house—you just know that you made things even worse. 

I never walked down that path. Too much effort, I suppose. I didn’t have a past worth all that much to me, anyway. I, instead, chose to resign myself quietly to the funeral pyre of history, to be just another body offered up as penance for a once great civilization. But as the years passed, I only discovered that equally repulsive. Apparently, men were not made to sit still. 

But even so, with nowhere to go and nowhere to go back to, I remained stuck. I was a fly caught in an amber, watching the misshapen and eerie world pass me by. It drives you mad after a little while. 

It was the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty-four. I was sitting in a bar when I spotted the demon. They aren’t hard to find. Just look for anyone who has their head bowed and shoulders hunched, like some great chain is locked around them. The demon will be right beside, twirling the key tauntingly in front of them. 

In this instance, that head was bent over a phone, looking at pictures he honestly shouldn’t. A smarmy mouth was whispering such sweet thoughts in that poor man’s ears. I almost pitied him, but then I saw him quietly drag himself to the restroom and that pity quickly turned to disgust. I only mention this because everyone else was also on their phone, and I was the only one to notice. Its work done, the demon then turned its attention to me. That curling mouth smirked at me when it made its way over. 

It was there I should’ve got up and left, but my day had been particularly miserable. I had been humiliated at my job, forced to bow to my cretin of a manager who berated me for showing up late. I could barely drag myself out of bed, let alone go to work. 

“You look like you’ve had a bad day,” the demon slid beside me. 

“That’s far enough,” I curtly responded. 

I should let you know I am not altogether stupid. I knew exactly what I was dealing with, but you can only chase God for so long before you get tired. I don’t know if I am a better person now as was then, but I can tell you it certainly hurts more. And after going to church for so many years and still not finding what I wanted, the question whispered in the back of my head. 

Why not?

Of course, such talk can only lead to a damnation. But in every man’s heart there is a part of him that rages and screams to be damned. It was only God’s intervention that we didn’t kill him earlier. Had we got our hands on him, we would’ve crucified him right out of the womb. 

“What’s your offer?” I asked. 

The demon’s crimson lips curved so malevolently. It nodded towards an attractive woman, rare though they are to find these days. 

Of course, the temptation wasn’t even to go out and seduce her. That would be too much to ask for the modern man. It was instead of the thought. I might’ve even considered it, except a peculiar change that had happened inexplicably. 

It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to do it so much as couldn’t. There was now a barrier between me and that. No matter how much I raged and howled and strained against it, an invisible hand held me back. 

An intervention from God? Perhaps. Why do some criminals repent at the hour of their death and others do not? Why do some sin and sin again until they reach the brink, and then finally step back? And why do some continue right off the edge? You could say they finally realized the consequences of their actions, but I doubt that. We do everything we can to forget consequences. It is only that mysterious hand that catches you, or perhaps you catch it. I don’t know. 

In any case, I spat on the demon and went for the door. 

“Wait!”

And this was my second chance to leave. I had no reason to stay, and I was nearly out of the booth. If I had continued on my way, I could’ve left this temptation far behind me. But I did not. I turned back to my tempter.

“You’re a painter, aren’t you?”

No, I wasn’t. I was a man who fed a prompt into an AI that churned out images, but I could’ve been a painter. Had I the time to learn the craft, I might’ve been a good one. Every man dreams of being the best in his field, even if he knows he could never be such a genius. I wanted to have my art displayed in a gallery. I wanted to walk into a room and have people know who I am. Instead, I worked at a Waffle House. 

“What’s that got to do with anything?” I asked. 

“Swear your soul and your work to Satan, and He will make your art world-renowned.”

I knew it was a lie. Only a fool makes a pact with a demon thinking he’s getting a good deal. But the type of people who make pacts with demons usually don’t want good deals. I wanted my life to burn down, and I wanted to drag down as many people as I could with me, especially those who had made me so miserable. 

I opened my mouth to respond, but my breath caught in my throat. Whenever one sins, grievously anyway, there is the crossing of the threshold. The conscience—or God—reaches out and asks, “Do you really want to do this?”

Here was my third—and final—chance to walk away. Looking back, I don’t know what finally tipped me over the edge. Everyone rationalizes when they sin. They make excuses, blaming the circumstances or the people or their own weakness. But they’re all liars at heart, deceiving themselves of the severity of their choices. I can’t recall my rationalizations that day, but I can tell you this: I had the decency to look Christ in the eye and laugh when I drove the nail into his palm. 

And what happened next? The demon smiled its malevolent grin and departed. Its work was done, and it was off to tempt yet another mortal. I was left with the passion in my chest slowly cooling down, though I did not regret my action for a second. The funny thing about hatred is that it does not burn for long, but the ashes always settle in your heart. 

Of course, I immediately tested the contract. I grabbed a pen and scribbled on a nearby napkin. To my disappointment, I had not gained any new skill. If anything, the portrait of the woman looked somehow more hideous than it usually did. The head was misshapen to look like a lump. The eyes were blackened orbs, and for some reason, the mouth reminded me of the lips of the demon, curving longer than they should to a wicked grin. It looked as though something was pretending to be a woman, everything just slightly off. 

I was not altogether perturbed by this. Ugliness is an old friend, and if I was cursed by God to make the world hideous, then I would do so to my utmost. Still, I had to make sure that the demon had not swindled me of what was rightfully mine. I thrust the picture in front of the nearest drunk and asked for his opinion. 

He was a greasy, short man, balding too. His white collared shirt looked like it hadn’t been ironed in weeks. He was the type of man who had spent every night of his life drinking because he didn’t have a care in the world—and that was what was killing him. 

His sleepy eyes opened up, and his disheveled face scrunched back in revulsion, but he could not take his gaze off the picture. When you know something is wrong but you cannot understand what it is, there is a temptation to investigate. To do otherwise would be leaving an itch unscratched. Seeing this, I immediately pocketed the napkin and the man quickly asked for me to show him it again. 

 I said only on the condition that he would give me ten dollars. Every artist knows that the only good audience in the world is a paying one. Not because it keeps the lights on, but because a paying audience is an honest one. A stranger might look at a painting and flatter you with words, but he will never actually purchase it unless there is real interest. That particular drunk in that particular bar paid me ten dollars—the first money I had ever earned off a drawing. I walked out through those doors with pride in my chest, and for the first time in a long time, with my head held high. 

…

It would be pointless for me to recall all the meaningless minutia that followed afterwards. I was ecstatic, obviously, but my fame wasn’t to be built in a day. Life unfortunately does not fit into a story. It needs to be sanded down to become intelligible, and so I will be brief with only the relevant details. 

My newfound success started with a YouTube channel of all things. I expected world-renowned to mean that I would be spit upon. After all, I am very familiar with word games of demons. But no, I attracted a peculiar audience who seemed enchanted by my shapes. It was not that they were merely ugly, anyone could do that, it was that they were wrong. 

Just like that portrait of a woman, my pictures were always slightly off. I could never capture anything, just make a poor copy that was twisted and malformed. A dog became a ragged wretch, a house became a hollowed-out hovel, and a city became a metal maze inhabited by demons. And no matter how hard I tried to correct those tiny errors, they just accumulated more and more. But to be honest, I didn’t try that hard. 

What puzzled me more was my audience. To say that they were obsessive would be an understatement. I remember hearing that they frequently just stared at my pictures for hours at a time. When asked why, they could often only barely mumble a response. It wasn’t that they enjoyed my work—far from it. They often said they hated it, but they still could not look away. I heard a few stories from people that they had spent days in a semi-trance, unable to attend even the most basic of tasks until they snapped awake again. 

There would be tense—even violent—discussion over my work. However, the arguments were never coherent. People switched their positions frequently and made pointless claims to just one-up each other. All of it was babbling gibberish to me. 

And yet, they often spent enormous sums of money on commissions, often to the point that I became concerned for their finances. Well, concerned might be too strong a word. I honestly didn’t care, because after three months, I was able to quit my job and do my art full time. Not that I had any passion to do it. My art wasn’t exactly worth admiring, but a few hours of drawing beat working fast food any day. 

You might think I would’ve regretted my decision with time. However, I was feeling quite myself—relieved even. I still went to church. I still prayed from time to time. I still did all the things I normally did. Obviously, there was a wedge now, so I can’t say everything was normal. But this is coming from a man who expected everything to crash and burn. To see that my life was somehow better was the last thing I ever thought possible. 

Several of my fans wanted to meet with me in real life. I declined all of their offers and kept my identity mostly a secret. As much as an artist wants to hear others talk about their work, I had no connection to them. And the discussions online strangely repelled me away from them. For myself, my audience was a source of money and talk. I had nothing else to gain from them. 

It was the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty-nine. In that time, I had swiftly grown from a successful internet artist to having my work shown in actual galleries. Had you been in New York City during that period, my name was impossible to escape from. My work was plastered on billboards and advertisements. I received commissions almost daily for sums of money that would’ve boggled my mind just a few short years ago. I went from living in a one-room apartment to the top of a skyscraper. 

I spent most of my days drinking, as all celebrities do. Drugs didn’t do it for me as much. I liked delirium. I didn’t like having my mind pulped into fits of insanity. When I wasn’t drinking, I was milling about. And when I wasn’t milling about, I was drinking. And I don’t think I was terribly unhappy about it. There is a certain haze that sets about you where you are neither unhappy nor happy. The only annoyances are when you are interrupted, but for me, those became few and far between. 

You might think I would’ve dedicated more of my time to improving my craft, but there comes a boring realization. Some artists spend their lifetimes creating their magnum opus only to die shortly after. In my opinion, they are the lucky ones. Some accidentally stumble upon their great work mid-career, and then spend the rest of their lives in their own shadow. For myself, I found myself in the peculiar position where I had no magnum opus. I had reached the giddy heights of fame quite lazily. 

The recent beer commercial? That was sketched in a little under five minutes while I was stepping out of the bathtub. I made twenty-five thousand dollars off that deal. You have no idea how dull it gets when you don’t even need to try anymore. Not even the controversies that erupted over my art could get me thrilled anymore. My eyes glazed over the endless sea of social media posts. 

Just a year ago I could remember real passion when I had the opportunity modern reimagining of the Mona Lisa. Back then, I hated my critics, and they hated me. Now, they just go about like zombies, making the same boring old accusations over and over. Postmodern! Deconstructionist! Woke! It was all the same. I stopped paying attention to them a while ago. 

However, it was the equally endless stream of sycophants that were somehow worse. Unique! Stunning! Daring! All for a canvas that I splashed with a paint can. I couldn’t stand to be in a room with them for more than five seconds. I took my money and stayed in my apartment. Unfortunately, my reputation as a recluse only added to my mystique. Meanwhile, I was wandering my empty rooms in my underwear. 

Of course, you might think I might have come to regret my decision. Not in the slightest! I had gotten everything I wanted, the consequences especially. I wanted them to look up at me in my top floor penthouse from the street and be envious. That was all that mattered. 

Then one day, I received an invitation from one Wanjiru Tapiwa, a curator working for a rather prestigious gallery. The name wasn’t exactly what caught me off guard, though that made me open my eyes a little, but rather it was the showing itself. I double and triple checked the email just to make sure. My widened eyes could not believe what I was seeing. I knew I had to make an attendance to see if it was real. I long since stopped caring where my art was going, but this was just impossible.  

I accepted the invitation, and just a few weeks later, I was walking up the steps of an art gallery whose name I couldn’t be bothered to remember. It was a poor building that had suffered much in the past few years. The once regal greco-roman columns were splashed with bright yellow paint in part of an effort to be striking. Jutted spikes of glass and steel erupted from every which side, giving the appearance of almost a cancerous tumor exploding out from the structure. The worst part was the obviously miserable roof, whose once illustrious carvings were now covered with banners depicting all sorts of “cultural” art. 

The venue was complete with all the celebrities, politicians, and buzzing journalists you would expect. The latter I particularly had to swat away. They took my choice of clothes, a T-shirt and shorts, as some commentary on the racism of fine dress. Truthfully, I didn’t own anything nicer than slacks. I didn’t care to update my wardrobe for this event. 

I was swept away by someone in a lime green jacket. It took me several minutes to realize it was the gallery director. I was rather buzzed from the drinks I had earlier, but I humored him as he lavished praise on my work, which had a place of honor for tonight’s event. We entered into the building, and I was quickly assaulted with what passes for art. 

There was a woman who was entirely covered with duct tape. It was probably some sort of fetish except she was extremely fat. Although, I hear there are plenty of people into that as well. I saw the usual splotches of color on blank canvases, but that was not enough for the next generation to make a political statement. These artists were in the middle of defacing their own defacement, throwing more paint on their art to destroy its non-existent value forever. I saw other things, but the only one I remember now was a proud toilet in the center of the room someone was making apt use of. 

Then we got to my piece. I painted it in a drunken haze, not really caring about it. The whole thing was a stupid joke. I put a stick figure up on a cross. Its face was a banal shrug, clumsily ill proportioned. The limbs were too long, and the hands were just garbled scribbles. Below, a teasing roman pierced the man’s side with a dildo. 

This one had drawn the attention of the masses. From the edge of the room, I heard exclamations of laughter. I knew they were genuinely enjoying the piece. Here, there was no audience for pretense or outrage. There were no exclamations of “Abstract! Nuanced! Thought Provoking!”. Those words weren’t needed for this crowd. Here, there was only a sweetly delight, a malicious and playful masturbation. Someone said a joke, and there was an uproar of gut-belching laughter.

All at once, the mask slid off these people, and I recoiled as I saw their true faces. It was neither the smugness nor the narcissism nor the cruelty that horrified me so. In that room, I saw a gleeful appreciation for hell and all its sickening pleasures. These people wanted nothing more than to burn and to take everyone they could with them. Upon their faces, I saw every malformed picture I had ever drawn. They were no longer people. They were things pretending to be people. 

And worse than that, I knew I was no different. 

I was filled with such revulsion I had to run from it all. I ran from that room, that gallery. Stopping only to vomit out my insides at that toilet, I ran from it all. 

…

It is the year of our Lord two thousand and thirty. I am sitting in the same bar in the same booth as when I first made that deal. I took a swig from my beer and sat silently. I notice the demon taunting some other poor sod when he catches my eye. Those lips smirked so triumphantly as it slid itself over. 

“Well, what did you think was going to happen?”

I silently stood up from the booth and walked away.

It wasn’t a long walk to the nearest church, though I was surprised the confessional was open at such a late hour. To my great annoyance, there wasn’t a long line, and so I shuffled myself into the stall. 

As I said, I’m not an ignorant man. To leave such a sin and such an oath on my soul would certainly damn me. I wasn’t sure I was sorry for it, but all I needed was a meek fear of eternal torment. You might think me heartless for saying that, but I have found many people cannot muster even that. 

I sat down and said so and so about how long it had been and so and so about some sins. All the while, I delayed about the sin. My hands were clenched, nails digging into palms as I braced myself for that grating question everyone always asks. Finally, I gathered my courage and revealed my sin. Sweat beaded my brow as I forced those words out. It was never enough to just admit your mistakes. Someone always had to be there to rub your face in it. 

The priest listened silently, nodded, and remained still for a moment as he considered his response. I pretended it was Christ on the other side of the wooden lattice. I saw him, thorns driven into his skull, blood dripping from his bruised and battered face. From his cross, he looked down at me and I up at him, that malicious smile on my face replaced with a tired frown. I didn’t look at the nail I drove through his palm. 

He opened his mouth, and I glared at him, ready for him to gloat. The blood soaked crimson over his swollen eye. 

“Pray one rosary as your penance. That is all.”

I blinked, took a deep breath, and shakily said my act of contrition. I quietly walked out of the confessional and into that dark night.