I am Mephistopheles, the buyer of human souls. If you’d hoped for a gripping first line then sorry to disappoint you, mate, this is the best you can get from me. I hunt people’s souls, not readers’ imaginations, for heaven’s sake. But I’ll cut the crap. This is the story of a girl who sold her soul to me. I tell this story, not because I love her or some similar nonsense, but because she had an interesting name. You always remember people with interesting names.

When I arrived at the Indian Kitchen on Main Street, Miss Akikksi Hardy had been sitting at the front table for half an hour. She ordered a lamb dish. After taking a bite, I found the food was as unspellable as it was uneatable. Unspellable, because I am not the kind of chap who can spell anything that’s longer than a syllable, let alone a bloody Indian dish; uneatable because of the drops of sweat pouring from her forehead left the dish brackish. I’m not exaggerating. Clenching her fists, chewing her lips and sweating like a fountain, she was not ill, nor possessed by the devil. But Miss Hardy was about to meet one. Quietly helping myself to her food, her stomach must have churned with enough force to run a turbine.  

“A bit salty, this one,” I said, breaking the silence.

Staring down her feet, Miss Hardy abruptly raised her head. Ready to scream at the monster she expected to see, her mouth gaped at what she saw: a gentle-faced, middle-aged man with an agreeable moustache. People tell me I look like a non-paedophilic child-loving man.

“What? Were you expecting a horned red beast with a spiky tail?”

She nodded.

“I am made to look devilish because I give people what they want. I help people, and people hate being helped. They are the devilish ones,” I grinned.

“Let’s get to business. Why do you want to sell your soul?”

“I want beauty,” she told me.

“I want incorruptible beauty. I want men to love me, women to envy me and the world to notice me.”

I give all my clients a gaze that compels even the most reserved to pore over their lives. I can read a person’s life from the moment I look into their eyes.

Miss Hardy wept. Even at 19, in her prime, she was not beautiful. Hers was an ugly life. It’s not that she had to struggle for life’s basics, or had been a victim of some horrid atrocities, it’s the kind of frustration and despair only an ugly duckling understands. She told herself that her fat nose was nothing compared to others’ struggles; but that did not explain why her friends had boyfriends and why she only mustered a five minute conversation with her crush. She came to tell herself she was uniquely beautiful. But, by now, she had come to realise a girl who says ‘I am beautiful’ is not really beautiful. She sought refuge in books and films, but they too celebrated beauty. For those like her, wishful thinking was all they could offer. Finally, she came to knock on the devil’s door.

I looked at her in a way no man had done before. She must have felt the love, delicacy and passion in my gaze. Running her hands all over her now high breasts, heart shaped face, and divine body, she moaned. ‘I can’t thank you enough, my saviour. I am so happy,” she stammered.

Everyone who sells their soul to me says something similar, but fails to understand how everything has a price. How can anyone be happy when they have sold their soul? How can anyone be anything when they have sold their soul? Happiness, sadness, anger, fear; the soul is the key to feeling. Like my clients, I am emotionless, soulless.

Tu fui ego eris: they become me, I become them.

“There’s a catch. You can never be happy, truly happy. A small price to pay.”

You could never imagine Miss Hardy’s face at the moment. It is the countenance one makes when the soul is squeezed and crushed.

“Don’t worry, Akikksi. There’s a world of difference between being ugly and unhappy, and being beautiful and unhappy.”

.....

I later checked on Miss Hardy to see how she was doing. Beautiful or ugly, she always woke up at 7am.  She had 17 unread messages: seven ‘good morning’ messages, 10 asking if she was free.

Eight came from men whose existence she’d quickly forgotten, four from the usual college blokes, four from the womanisers, and one from a chap who genuinely loved her. She knew her replies made the days of many, her words meant the world to some, but every guy was the same. Like her ugly self, any semblance of urgency was dead. Unlike before, people valued her words now. She replied whenever she pleased to whomever she pleased.

No longer frequenting libraries to hide her face behind books, her beauty deserved to be seen. She instead became a party princess, and why wouldn’t she? In every gathering men competed for her attention, cracked jokes for her amusement, asked her to dance, and wagered their masculinity with offers of ‘rides home’. Girls would even flock to her, just to give men the impression that they belonged in the so-called ‘A league’.

“I always hated how beautiful people exclusively rubbed shoulders with beautiful people. And yet, here I am dating the most bold, athletic and attractive young men,” Miss Hardy found herself thinking, among a gaggle of suitors. She never felt guilty though—she saw no point in lamenting her beauty and the repercussions of a flawless body. For, beauté oblige, beautiful things demand beautiful things: beautiful people, beautiful ambience and a beautiful life. Besides, her beauty was not hers. She was merely a custodian. The great overarching purpose in life, as she saw it, was to take the best care of her beauty. She could not act generous with the ugly ones: a diamond is forever a diamond, but a diamond in the rough is a disgrace. Few things, however, are as graceful as a diamond atop a crown.