The last pact

He appeared in his classic form, with his trident, his pair of horns, his goat's legs, the furious red of his bare torso... Tight under one of his long and thin arms was the fat folio in which, since man is man, he filed with dedicated prolixity the written letter of all the pacts that until then he had celebrated with great contentment.

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He stood on his goat legs in a dark corner of the room. Still drowsy, Gabriel sat up a little on the bed until he was able to hold his weight with his elbows. Then he could give the devil a direct look. He responded with a sign of understanding.

—To what do I owe the honor? —Gabriel asked.
—To your miserable life —the devil said, smiling, and with one bound he reached the foot of the bed—. People like you capture my attention.
-I do not think I'm more miserable than the others.
-It does not matter what you believe, but what it is. And by virtue of what it is, today I am here to make a pact. I know you already know all this about making pacts with me. It's unfortunate, but I no longer surprise anyone, I've become popular. I miss those times when my apparitions were amazing. But at some point my appearances became naturalized. God knows I made remarkable efforts to continue to amaze, I dressed for these occasions with the skins of different animals, in addition to sheep was snake, dog, cat, owl, I even appeared with novel combinations, was ever commented on the bat, horse and reptile, on another occasion I was bull, chicken and mole... But my efforts did not help much, sometimes my appearance moved to laughter and for my part I reached the fatigue with so much disguise. So now I do not spend time on my appearance and I focus on what matters, on contracts. Look at the luxury of formatting —he showed him written sheets that he took out of his folio—: Justified text, separation of paragraphs, titles in bold, highlighted in colors, footnotes, beautiful illustrations that accompany the text...
—What a rant! —said Gabriel, yawning—. It is true that you can not surprise, but you do get bored. I wonder who will be the greatest miserable here... —and added after another yawning— But that you know how to fuck people's lives is not discussed. Couldn't you appear at another time? Was there a need to wake me up for this?
—Well, it's the habit... It used to make a better impression in these hours... Anyway, you know: ask what you want and in return I'll have your eternal soul.

What Gabriel wanted was to continue sleeping, but he did not hurry. "My life is miserable —he said to himself—. Yes, that's true, but no more than many others, I think, and my soul... will it be miserable too?
He looked at the devil and said in a resolute tone:

—I want the bad guys in this world to stop winning; that here, among men, good always triumphs.

Fortunately, with the devil there are no dilemmas in relation to the concepts of ethics, we must not be philosophizing about what is evil and what is good. So after hearing that condition, he grabbed his bulging sheet and vanished. And Gabriel was able to return to his dream.