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Meeting the Devil
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Meeting the Devil |
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eternally_singing Member
since 2007-12-18
Posts 123PA, United States |
This story is a take off of Washington Irving's THe Devil and TOm Walker. I read it and wondered what would it be liked if this story took place in current day? Well this is what I came up with. --------- In the city of New York, there lived a man named Tom Walker. At first look, he did not appear out of the ordinary; in fact he looked completely nondescript. He was neither tall nor short, fat nor skinny, and his age seemed to be about 30. But on closer examination, his face held lines of suspicion and even of hatred, hinting of his hunger for wealth and power and of his blame of everyone else when he failed to obtain it. One day, Tom Walker decided to walk home from work instead of taking the subway. His walk home took him on a detour through ground zero. By the time he got there, it was completely deserted. Tired of the traffic and deeply annoyed with the people in the city, he stopped to rest at the site where the Twin Towers once stood. It did not touch him in the slightest that he was resting where thousands of people had died as the result of the malice and hatred of others. While he was resting, a glint of streetlight on metal caught the corner of his eye. He turned to see a mangled piece of metal, and bent to pick it up. “Stop, leave it alone!” grated a gravely voice from behind him. Quickly, Tom spun around to confront a ghastly image of a man. The dreadfulness of the man’s appearance was not his stature for he was tall and well proportioned. What was so horrible was that he was begrimed with dust and stained with smoke. His clothes were shredded in the places that were not singed. Black, sooty hair partly covered dark, narrow eyes which were red rimmed as if irritated from smoke or dust. To all appearances, it looked like he just escaped a falling building. “What are you doing here?” the voice demanded. “This land is mine and all that occurred here.” “Your land?, ha, this land belongs to the city of New York,” Tom Walker retorted. “New York be d----d. As I fancy a number of the inhabitants will be”. With this last amazing remark, the stranger gestured to the buildings surrounding them. The buildings, at first glance, appeared to be beautiful and whole but on closer examination they were crumbling with flaking paint. Tom’s vision seemed to have gone strange for he fancied he could see that some of the buildings were filled with asbestos, and even stranger was that the graffiti on the buildings seem to move and twine until they became distinct names. “Who are you?” exclaimed Tom Walker, slightly unnerved. “Well I have had many names over the years. Some call me Old Nick, others call me Beelzebub. Though the people of this city call me the Father of Lies or more commonly the Destroyer. “Are you also known by the names of Satan and Lucifer?” inquired Tom. “Ah, I see you are familiar with my name but are you familiar with my works? You should be, because you are standing on the site of one of them. For I was behind the terrorist attacks. I am also behind every murder, abuse, prostitution, and discrimination in this world. I am at the source of every war because I am the one who stirs up hatred, causing it to boil into a full scale war, full of atrocities. Never doubt that I am behind every horrible act in this world.” “Hmm” was the only response forthcoming from Walker, but he seemed neither horrified nor disgusted, only interested. Seeing his response, the Devil conversed with Tom Walker for many minutes, interlacing the conversation with hints of money and power within Tom’s grasp. Finally Satan tells Walker how he can obtain the wealth and influence he craved. “All you need to do is to sign your soul over to me, and to do my work.” “What kind of work?” Tom asked suspiciously. “Well, you could become an arms dealer and sell weapons to terrorist groups.”, but Tom flatly refused this with the reason that it was potentially dangerous to him. After some time arguing, Lucifer came up with an alternative. He suggested the possibility of becoming a tobacco manufacturer to Tom. After he got no negative reaction from Tom, the devil started enumerating the benefits of becoming a tobacco manufacturer and working for him. By the end of the devil’s persuasion, Tom was thoroughly caught and struck a bargain then and there. Upon arriving home after bargaining with the devil, Tom noticed a strange mark on the wrist of the hand he shook with the devil. The mark had the appearance of a tattoo and it had the letters SMS in what looked like a cloud of smoke. Though Tom did not know it, these letters stood for “sold my soul”. A relatively short time after Tom sold his soul, he became a top manufacturer of cigarettes and cigars. His position provided him with immense wealth and influence and it gave him a prime chance to do the devil’s work. Tom was the best in the business of convincing people that tobacco was not dangerous but instead made you look cool and beautiful. He sold millions of cigarettes to people who would die painfully from cancer. He was also very good at winning in court. Thanks to Tom, warnings on cigarette packs became smaller and people were prevented from warning others of the dangers of smoking. A couple years later, Tom started to become worried about what was going to happen to him if he was to die. The problem was he did not want to give up all he got from the devil, so Tom became a violent church goer. He appeared to be extremely pious and generous for he donated to many charities and he was always attending Mass. However, Tom Walker only went to church and donated for show, and to hope it would be enough to fend off Satan. Tom never believed anything he was listening to in church and he never practiced what the Bible taught. His whole life was focused on more power, more wealth, and how to cheat Lucifer out of his soul. One day, after Tom had found a new way to promote the sale of tobacco to those underage, a tunnel collapsed on him on his way back from work. According to observers, they thought they heard an eerie, gravelly laugh after the tunnel had collapsed. Apparently the devil had come to collect Tom’s soul. It just goes to prove that for all of Tom’s posturing it did nothing to save him. Appearances count for nothing when it comes to faith. |
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