“We’ve got nothing left to hold each other accountable for,” he says with a warped grin, staring into the mirror. “We both know I’m better at being you than you ever could be. Your family’s grown closer. Your mother said she could see the little boy in your eyes again, the one who used to care, not the thing you were turning into. We all cried, even you, back there in my skull, just out of reach. And you’ve achieved things in your work life you never even dared to dream. So why care? Why break the rhythm? Let it play out. Let me grow bored. Then you can have it all back, wealth, love, respect, everything I’ll earn for you. Just like we agreed,” he says with a wide smile.

“You never said it would be like this! You never said you’d possess my flesh!” he spits, lurking behind him, visible only at the edges of his vision, never in the reflection.

“You didn’t care then, but you care now… why? Because your family loves me more than they ever loved you?” he purrs.

“You tricked me, you lied!”

He laughs, his smile stretching wide enough for his decaying flesh to show beneath the skin suit that used to be Conner. “I never lied. I never do. I promised riches. I vowed to deliver dreams never dreamt and make your family whole. I can’t just snap my fingers and make them so. That’s not how this works. He, up there,” he says, nodding upward, “he’s got rules we can’t break, rules governing plans far greater than yours and mine. So we manipulate the lines, we play inside the square we’re given. Sometimes we get his goat, so he changes the rules, tightens the trap and kills a few thousand of us. Some are reborn as slugs, worms, or whatever other low-bearing fruit he sees fit, while the rest are repurposed for his celestial orgies. But whatever the case may be, we’re bound. You took the deal, I do the work, and like I said, it’s all right here,” he says, rolling out a copy of the contract signed by them both. “I leave the ride once the agreement has been honoured and every term has remained in place for two or three years. Just to make sure it sticks.”

“T-Two or three years?” he cries, clawing at himself. “You can’t be serious! I-I-I can’t let you do that to my family. I won’t! They’ll work it out! They’ll see you for what you are, and then-”

“And then what, Conner? What will you do?” his wife asks, standing in the doorway behind them, her arms folded across the old rugby shirt that hangs to her knees, her hair messy, more grey than black.

“S-S-Samantha? Y-You… you can hear me?”

“Have you forgotten who brought in the mail that morning, when his offer arrived?” she asks as the memory plays before him, her placing the three envelopes on his desk. His lip trembles, and he takes a stuttered breath.

“Y-You did this? You tricked me?”

She laughs. “I didn’t trick you. I just gave you an opportunity. One you dove at like a fat kid at an all-you-can-eat buffet!”

He laughs. “Like a fat kid,” he says, turning to her with a palm raised.

She looks at him with a curious expression.

He holds his palm higher and winks. “Give me some skin. Let me pay you for the burn!” he scoffs.

“S-S-Stop it! Stop it!” Conner screams from somewhere inside as Samantha slaps his hand.

“S-S-Stop it,” she mocks, right before he pulls her close.

“You first,” he growls, and when he kisses her, it’s angry and clumsy, desperate, their mouths crashing together like an argument neither intends to lose, while Conner’s screams spill through the cracks as he drops to what his tortured mind believes are his knees.

“I hope you’ve got your eyes closed for this one, Conner,” Samantha says playfully, just as Conner suddenly finds himself strapped to a cross, his eyes pinned open and his mouth wired shut.

Nails tear through his flesh. Barbed wire coils around his limbs. Tears flood his face. He can only cry as a familiar look fills his wife’s eyes, one he’d only ever seen in a photograph taken before they met.