Everything in Creation is governed and bound by Laws;

Heaven and Hell are no exception.

In times when Demons refuse to comply,

When the actions of the rogues jeopardise the balance,

Hell sends their ancient and most dangerous spawn;

The Contractor…

Act X – The Groom

Mr. MA Kai Keung

Flat 18, 13A, Holland Building

220 Tai Ho Road North

Tsuen Wan

Hong Kong

People’s Republic of China

☒           I will not be attending

☐           I will be attending

Keung-Gor-Go,

Please forgive my absence from your wedding next month. Ah-Gong and Ah-Por have taken ill and I will need to travel to Lantau Island to care for them.

I understand that being friends for so long, this news is most inconvenient and how disappointed and disrespected you must feel having your best man unavailable for your auspicious day but I am sure that Chou-Sai-Lo will be better fitted. I have already spoken to him and he now understands my position.

Gung hei nei git fun, Keung-Gor, gung hei to you and to Christa. Bak nien hou hap…

Sincerely,

TSANG Hong Shen.

A young, thin Cantonese man walked along the darkened Hoi Pa St, flanked by a peculiar tall man whom donned a long, crimson trench coat that swayed beneath his knees.

‘That is where we first met, Faust-Zhong,’ said the Hong Kong man, pointing his finger at large sign above a thick, concrete fence, ‘Tsuen Wan Government; she used to teach Form 5 English.’

The crimson man, Faust, shot a quick glance at the old secondary school. ‘That’s nice, Ma,’ he said offhandedly.

‘I do not understand how I will be feeling after our agreement, Contractor, but can I trust that you are a man of your word?’ the Chinese man, Ma, asked.

‘Isn’t it a bit late for you to be getting cold feet? It’s almost the seventh day.’ He reached into his long trench coat and produced a small, antique, jet-black pocket watch and clicked it open. Upon its face, the red hand was pointing steadfast at 12 o’clock and, ticking madly backwards from 5 o’clock, a blackened hand.

‘Do you believe me to be foolish, Mr Faust?’

Faust snapped the pocket watch shut. He drew from his pocket a cigarette and, with a single unamused glance at Ma, held it in between his lips. ‘It doesn’t matter to me, Keung, in a few seconds you’re not going to care what I think.’

‘I love Christa, I truly do, but I know inside that she will not be as happy with me as she could be. I do this, because I love her.’

‘Keep telling yourself that, chuckles,’ he shrugged, ‘but we both know you’re full of shit.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What I mean is you’re just fucking lazy. If you loved her, truly loved her, you’d stick around and try to make every day of marriage worth something. You don’t even think it’s worthwhile to try, so you’re palming her off to someone else.’

‘That is not -’

‘Ah,’ Faust raised a finger to silence him, ‘your time’s up.’

Ma opened his mouth to speak but instead fell to his knees and clutched his chest, breathing heavily. ‘What is -’

Faust watched with the unlit cigarette still pressed between his lips as Ma’s chest started heaving violently before the young Chinese man tore apart his shirt, showing a glowing, bright red sigil painted upon his torso. Within seconds, a rotting, fetid ashen-red head of a fire demon poked through the pentagram carrying a glowing, golden orb within its rotting maw.

The creature, upon surveying the area, let out a mischievous chuckle before it hastily leapt through Ma’s chest and crashed onto the concrete pavement.

As though it was like nothing he had not seen before, Faust ignored the slobbering demon and stared at Ma’s unconscious body. He shook his head in disgust at the stupidity of mortals before he approached the fire demon as it hungrily protected the human’s soul in its mouth.

‘Give it to me, beast.’

The demon stared at Faust with its blackened-red and lifeless eyes. ‘Quid mihi vicissim?’

‘You get to go back to the Nine Circles with your head still attached to your body, that’s what,’ he narrowed his eyes at the unruly Hellion, ‘I don’t have time for your bullshit, demon, give me the human’s soul.’

The demon yawned obnoxiously at the Contractor and caught the human soul gracefully in its talons. ‘Hoc ludibrium est mihi.’ It winked at Faust and the once-unlit cigarette erupted into flames and burned to the filter, leaving behind it a trail of grey ash blowing into the night wind.

‘Fine, have it your way.’ Faust spat the cigarette but onto the ground and lunged forward, his outstretched hands ready to grip the demon’s neck but before his fingers could reach its mouldy flesh, the demon had already disappeared in a puff of acrid black smoke.

The Contractor, seething with anger, reared his head towards a nearby streetlamp upon which the filthy fire demon hung upside-down, suspended from its red tail.

‘I’m giving you one last warning, asshole; give me back that soul and I’ll rip your arms from your chest.’

‘Videlicet vel?’

‘Fine,’ he growled, ‘give me back that soul or I’ll rip your arms from your chest.’

The demon cackled madly, swinging back and forth pendulously as it held the soul mockingly and waved it in front of the Contractor’s face.

Faust reached into his jacket and pulled out a worn, silver bible and began flicking through the pages until his finger sat upon the page for which he was searching. ‘Esse adhuc in q -’

He felt a burning pain upon his hand before he could complete his rites and dropped the bible as he leapt to the side, narrowly avoiding a salvo of fireballs. The streets were ablaze with small explosions as the fire demon recklessly threw fireball after fireball at the Contractor.

Faust found cover behind a large minivan parked on the side of the road and stared back at the bible he dropped. He needed those rites; he needed to banish the demon before it decided to consume the soul. As he scanned the road for his next move his eyes fell upon something that alarmed him; the ancient photograph of his supposed wedding day. He could not understand the feeling, but his body, against the will of his logical mind, urged he secure it.

Hastily, Faust leapt from behind his cover and vaulted over the minivan as he made a beeline for his bible and the precious memento.

The swinging demon immediately noticed Faust’s movements and sent a shower of flames towards the bible and laughed giddily as the ground lit up in a large plume of fire. Its laughter, however, was short-lived as it felt a cold sensation around its throat. The demon stared down towards its chest to see the handle of a small, weathered, silver sickle protruding from its neck and with one last howl, fell towards the ground, collecting into a pile of ash on the concrete below.

From within the large pillar of fire, a figure emerged and although his clothes be slightly singed, the Contractor was unhurt. He marched towards the pile of dust and kicked the pile before he stooped down to collect his sickle and the golden orb.

He inspected the soul meticulously before pocketing the orb as he made his way down the road.

The Gospel of Grace Church sat not far away from Tsuen Wan Government Secondary School. Although it was far too coincidental that Faust answered the Call of the Contractor within the same district, he was never one to neglect his duties.

He slowly walked up the steps of the church; his stomach churned, he felt uneasy about the situation.

‘Faust,’ said a voice behind him.

The Contractor’s trench coat whipped around to see a tall, thin handsome man wearing an impossibly-black suit and tie. The stranger flicked his hair and winked at Faust as he swaggered towards the Devil’s Contractor.

‘What do you want, Asmodeus?’ said Faust.

‘I am here to answer your call,’ Asmodeus, Lustful Prince, replied, ‘after all, the nature of the request is of my dominion.’

Faust’s blood-red eyes narrowed at the Black Prince. ‘What is the nature of the call?’

‘A-Asmodeus?’

Faust turned around to see a young, bespectacled Chinese man emerge from the church, holding the tiny cross that hanged around his neck towards them.

‘I assure you, my dear Mr Tsang, you will not need that,’ Asmodeus said to the frightened human, ‘there is no deception at play here. Only business.’

Tsang lowered his necklace and eyed the strange crimson man before him suspiciously. ‘Who is he?’

Faust opened his mouth to answer but was cut off by Asmodeus’ smooth and patronising voice. ‘He is the Contractor, Shen; should you call upon the services of the Nine Circles of Hell, either myself, my brothers and or the Contractor answers.’ Asmodeus smirked at the still-trembling human. ‘Does his presence offend you?’

Shen took one last glance at Faust before shaking his head. He quickly stared over his shoulder to make sure he was within running distance of the church before he spoke to the Throne of Lust. ‘You… you said you could help me?’

Asmodeus raised his hands welcomingly. ‘But of course, you wish for eternal youth; to stop the ravages of time upon a human’s complexion. That is but a trifling ask to me.’

Faust sneered at the selfishness of the human standing before him; of all the wishes humans ask of the Nine Circles, the ancient and wise Contractor had yet to see a human who had truly benevolent intentions. It disgusted him and filled him with a sense of resentment towards the mortals of the Third Kingdom.

‘If that’s what you’re wishing,’ he said, shaking his head at Asmodeus and Tsang, ‘then I’ll leave you to it. You can handle this yourself, Asmodeus.’

Asmodeus took little offense to Faust’s remark and waved his hand dismissively. ‘Fine, back to Hell you go, dog.’

Without a word, the Contractor stepped off the steps and made his way down the road towards the Sha Tsui Road Playground across the road from the church.

He was baffled by the foolishness of humans. ‘After all these God damn years, humans still haven’t learned to stay the fuck away from Hell,’ he thought, ‘do they even care about the afterlife?’

He straightened his disposition as a mortal pedestrian approached. Faust brushed past the young lady as she quickly walked by and he immediately stopped in his tracks.

‘STOP!’ He shouted loudly into the night. The Contractor wheeled around and quickly leapt at the human, grabbing her by the arm and forcing her to face him. ‘I should have fucking known!’

Clutched in the Contractor’s powerful and angry grip was a young lady, smirking proudly back at him. ‘Good evening, Faust,’ she said, brushing her long dark brown hair out of her face, ‘you’re looking well.’

Faust, briefly remembering the Laws of Creation, released the young lady from his grip. ‘Cleo,’ he hissed, ‘this entire fucking deal just reeked of whore.’

Cleopatra Philopator giggled girlishly. ‘Not my fault these men fawn over me, Nyxanoth, you yourself have seen men foolishly throw away a lot more for a lot less.’

‘Those men weren’t being manipulated by a thousand-year-old slut!’

‘Other mortals are born with talent; intelligence, musical, artistic, my talent is my beauty,’ she said heartlessly, ‘I should not be made to feel shame for a gift that Creation had given me.’

Faust growled angrily. ‘So what was wrong with the first guy? Why didn’t you marry him and get him to make the deal instead?’

‘Oh, Keung?’ she reached into her gaudy ‘Louis Vuitton’ handbag and extracted her pocket mirror, clicking it open and applying a fresh coat of blush onto her young, beautiful face, ‘no matter how much I pushed, he wasn’t willing to call you.’ Her eyes remained fixated on her reflection as she searched her face for any imperfections. ‘Ai ya, the amount of times I made him “prove” his love to me and in the end he said it wasn’t right to gamble with our love. Ma fan ah!’

‘So what, you guilt-tripped him?’

‘It was easy really; all I did was put on the waterworks and convince him that he didn’t love me and that I’ll never find anyone who could love me unconditionally and fully. He felt really bad, Faust, but not bad enough to give up his soul. I was so close to giving up on him and moving on but that’s when I met Shen; such a sweet boy,’ her eyes travelled from her pocket mirror to Faust, ‘he’s the best man of our wedding, Faust.’

‘You played him too?’ Faust clenched his jaw angrily, grinding his teeth as Cleopatra continued her story.

‘It wasn’t very hard, I found out he had feelings for me when he declined our wedding invitation; something about going to Lantau to visit his sick grandparents. Silly thing, though, his grandparents had already RSVP’d to our invite as attending.’ she reached into her handbag and started to apply lip liner onto her lush, red lips, ‘he isn’t the brightest so it wasn’t that hard really; all I had to do was go to him every week or so and make up some sob story about how Keung never loved me and how I wish I could find men who care for me as Shen did.’ She paused her application to laugh mockingly. ‘The poor fool even said that the moment Keung stopped loving me, he would give everything to marry me. Zhun hai chun, I knew I was in.’

‘So you pitted one friend against the other until Ma felt guilty enough for you?’

She nodded her head slowly, capping her lip liner and placing it back into her handbag. ‘Uh huh; can you believe the nerve of that guy? He wouldn’t give up his soul to give his fiancée youth, but he’d give it up to not love me anymore,’ she pouted vainly at the mirror, ‘I don’t know whether to be offended or thankful.’

The pocket mirror closed with a loud snap and placed it back into her bag. ‘Well, darling,’ she said mockingly, ‘it’s been fun, but a poor sap is about to propose to me and I’m about to be flawless for another 50 or so years and do you know what’s absolutely hilarious?’ She swiped her finger against the ridge of Faust’s nose patronisingly, ‘no matter how much you hate me, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, sweetie.’ She giggled again.

Faust shook madly with rage before he took a deep breath and returned her saccharine smile. ‘You know what, Cleo,’ he said, ‘you’re absolutely right. By the Laws of Creation, there’s nothing I can do to stop you.’

‘Now you’re getting it,’ she said, winking slyly at him.

‘Well, before you start picking out your wedding DJ, may I remind you that I can also officiate the signing of an agreement,’ he pointed his long finger across the road towards the church, ‘I wonder how eager he’d be in signing over his soul to a whore if he learns that you’ve played both him and his childhood buddy.’

‘Hah! He’d never believe you in a million years,’ she flicked her hair over her shoulder, ‘who do you think he’ll choose? Someone who he thinks loves him and is completely devoted to him or some demonic lawyer from the depths of Hell?’

Faust chuckled softly. ‘He will once I show him this,’ he produced a bright, glowing orb from his jacket pocket and waved the soul in front of Cleopatra’s face demonstrably, ‘guess this lawyer’s case is far stronger than yours.’ He pocketed the soul once again and straightened his trench coat as he walked back towards the church, taking the time to stare at her out of his periphery; taking the time to embed the memory of her stunned face forever into his mind.

‘Okay, Faust,’ he heard her call from behind him, ‘you’ve won. I guess I’ll see you next week then.’

The Contractor stopped mid-stride and, against his better judgement, wheeled around to face her. ‘Next week?’

 ‘What, you believe you’ve stopped me for good? Saving this one fool’s soul?’ She walked up to him until she was eye level with his snarling face. ‘Think about it, Faust; Mark Antony, Paris of Troy, Louis Sixteenth of France. You have chased me throughout all of history seeing men after idiotic men fall to my charms. I will be back, Contractor, and all you can do is stand back and watch it happen.’

Faust clenched his fists angrily. Cleopatra was right; throughout all of time, Faust bore witness to the fall of many great mortals, all brought down by the whims of a charlatan and all he could do was stand in the shadows and facilitate their destruction. The weight of all his failures sudden pressed upon his chest, fuelling the fire that was his eternal and ancient rage.

‘Now I know you have a soft spot for us mortals, Faust, how does it feel being an agent of doom for so many humans? For all your powers, all your strength, you can do nothing but flaccidly watch from the sidelines.’ Her jaw flew open and the shrill sound of mocking laughter echoed through the night, soon to be replaced by a low, loud growl as Cleopatra Philopator fell to the ground, clutching her face.

Faust stood over her and raised his arm once again, bring it down to her face and slapping her hard with the palm of his hand, feeling the satisfaction of his rage manifesting. He raised his hand yet another time, ready to strike before he heard the loud grumble of thunder above him. He stared up at the sky in horror as he saw storm clouds rolling quickly towards him, blasting angry jolts of lightning.

He quickly stared down at Cleopatra and, to his surprise, she was still laughing as tears of pain streamed down her cheeks, running red with blush. ‘Ta-ta, Faust,’ she said, smiling triumphantly and wiggling her fingers at him, ‘joy gin lah!’

Faust’s temper exploded. ‘YOU BITCH!’ He brought his hand down towards her but felt an opposing force holding back his arm.

‘That is quite enough, Contractor,’ said a calm voice behind him.

Faust’s head turned over his shoulder to see a young, blonde man dressed in a pearly white suit holding his hand powerfully.

‘Let me go, Samael,’ he growled at the Angelic Ward of Temperance, ‘this… this… WHORE deserves more than what I’m dishing!’

‘That may be true,’ Samael replied calmly, ‘but her fate is not for you to decide.’

Faust fought against Samael’s hold like a ravenous dog.

‘I see my words do little to calm you,’ said the Ward, ‘mayhaps you find inner peace as you contemplate your fate, bound within the Nine Circles for a time.’

The Contractor’s blood-red eyes opened in shock. ‘No… Don’t!’

Samael placed his finger upon Faust’s forehead as he muttered an Angelic incantation before the Contractor felt something drag his body away like a limp ragdoll. ‘Inner peace, Nyxanoth, do well to find it.’ Samael’s words echoed as Faust’s body was dragged through the Third Kingdom and thrust violently into the Fiery Gates of Hell.

Faust sat up from the brimstone path as Samael’s words still echoed through his mind. He reached into his coat pocket and produced a photograph; the same picture he had tried vehemently to rescue during his struggle with the rogue fire demon. ‘Inner peace huh?’ he said, staring at the burned portion of the photo, ‘not so long as this war continues.’

He ran his finger along the charred edge of his picture; the demon had seared off the bottom corner of the bride’s body. He stared at her greyed face wistfully with his blood-red eyes; she radiated with ethereal beauty and her haunting smile filled him with a feeling to which he was very unfamiliar; sorrow. ‘Am I… missing… you?’

And so ends the tale of the Groom… and the Contractor.