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"There was once a time that I thought I'd always be on top of the world. I had everything I had always wanted. I was swimming money. I had more friends than I could ever spend time with. I had the cars, the houses, the job. I was dating a new, sexy person every week. I was the media's darling. Nothing ever went wrong in my life. No bad publicity. No unsound financial decisions. No jilted ex-lovers wanting revenge for some slight, real or imagined. It was the best time of my life, and honestly, I thought it would never end for me.

"I paid a lot to be where I was. I had to give up two of the most precious commodities I had at the time to secure such a future for myself. And, I was dumb enough, greedy enough, to jump at the chance. What did I need a soul for? What good would it do me if my life was an unhappy one? If I was always yearning for more, always unsatisfied, eventually I would have taken my own life, and that soul of mine that was supposed to be so precious would have served no purpose. I would have landed in Hell anyways. It was an easy choice to make, then. But, that other price I had to pay... I didn't even take the time to really think about what that would mean to me, to lose something to precious and irreplaceable.

"'Two things must you give up in order to have your perfect future,' I was told. 'One to prove you really want what you are asking for, and one that ensures you never try to go back on our deal.' At the time, I really thought that I'd never want to go back on such a sweet deal. So, yeah, take my soul. No problem. But, when he asked for the person I loved most, there was only a glimmer of unease. I was young enough that I didn't have very many people I cared for that deeply. My parents were surely an option, I thought. I relied on them for so much, surely their loss would hit me the hardest. But when I suggested one of them, that tempter only laughed and told me to dig deeper. So, I thought harder. Who else did I even care about. I didn't really have any friends at school. I wasn't dating anyone. I had siblings, but I don't think I'd care that much if I never saw them again. We weren't close. Who, then, would this evil being think mattered to me more than my_parents_?

"Like a strike of lightening, the name came to me. Isaac. Him? Why would I have thought of Isaac at a time like this? He had been my childhood friend, but had moved away a couple of years before. We had been very close in the time we had spent together, but aside from the occasional phone call or email, we didn't communicate much. Surely this otherworldly being knew that? He seemed to know so much else about my life. 'Why Isaac?' I asked him. 'Look inside yourself,' was the answer I was given. Sheesh, the other fur was incredibly cryptic. 'Look inside yourself' I mocked inside my own head. But I did.

"I didn't take too long, but I did stop for a moment to look deep inside myself to think about how I really felt about Isaac. He was a great friend. He was funny, always making me laugh. He always asked how things were going for me, and he always seemed to actually care about the answer. He had a great smile, one that always lit up for me. He was always a shoulder to cry on. He had the most comforting hugs. His fur was soft. I missed sinking my fingers into it when I squeezed him back as he hugged me so tight I thought I might break upon seeing me again. Damn it, I thought, but I miss him. But even though I missed him, and I clearly cared about him more than I really wanted to think about, I was willing to give him up to cement this deal. I'm sure he would have understood and just wanted me to be happy.

"God, was I fooling myself. I intentionally didn't bother to think about what life would really have been like without my best friend in it. We never got a call that something had happened to him, so I assumed, naively, that meant that he was still alive, still going on with his life. He never called, never emailed, never visited. I told myself over and over that he was fine, just busy. He was fine, he just couldn't talk to me anymore because of the deal. He was fine and I needed to move on. The deal was struck and my new life was beginning. I had more friends now than I had ever had before combined. I had girls and boys both throwing themselves at me. It was the greatest high school experience. No one was flying as high as I was. My classes were a breeze. No matter what I did, I never got called out or punished for it. I could steal the rival school's mascot, vandalize their school, or even blackmail the captain of their football team, and nothing at all happened to me.

"I took this mindset with me to college. I did whatever I wanted, whomever I wanted, and thought nothing of the consequences. I easily got my degree. I easily found a job straight out of school. I easily made a name for myself in my industry. And, slowly, everything began to ring hollow. I never actually had to work for anything. So what was the point? I could fuck off all day and still get a promotion. I could fuck a dozen women and none of them fell pregnant, or fell in love with me. I could fuck two dozen guys and never get an STD or a jealous ex. I had 'everything I ever wanted' but it meant nothing to me.

"I found my mind straying more and more often to what my life had been like before, trying to think if this was really all worth it. I struggled in school before I made the deal. I wasn't very athletic or smart or witty, so I didn't do well in extracurriculars. I didn't make friends easily because I wasn't outgoing and was sometimes an ass. These people who now called themselves my friends didn't care about me, just what they could get from me. And, really, I didn't care about them either. The entered and left my life like ghosts, always to be replaced with someone new. I realized, for the first time, that one good friend was worth a dozen shallow users.

"Isaac filled my mind more and more often. I was forgetting things about him, little by little. What he smelled like. What his paw in mine felt like. What his favorite game was, his favorite show, his favorite food. What his parents' names were. What he normally wore. When we met. When we had last spoken. What his voice sounded like. Eventually, all I had left of him was his name and his sparkling blue eyes. I missed him furiously, but there was nothing I could do about it. The deal was unbreakable. That was the point of giving up Isaac in the first place. If I ever tried to go back on this deal, not only would my soul be destroyed, but so would Isaac's.

"I knew now that I loved Isaac more than I had ever loved anyone. I couldn't doom him to Hell. I couldn't let that sweet wolf meet me in the afterlife. He deserved so much better than me. I had to try and turn off this dissatisfaction and resign myself to my fate. I knew that I'd eventually die and this farce would be over. I could rest and regret then, rewatching my mistakes for eternity. But Isaac would not be right alongside me. He would be in Heaven, laughing and playing with his friends and family and his love. I had to hold that in my mind. He would be okay. And I could get through this.

"Again, I was wrong. Looking him up in a moment of weakness, I found out that he had died the night I signed the contract. His whole family had died. That's why no one ever told us he was gone. A house fire took them all in their sleep. He never got the chance to make new friends, have a new love, grow up. He might still be in Heaven, but he wasn't going to be surrounded as I thought. Would he blame me for my choices? Would he hold things against me? Would I?

"I don't know what he would have done because I never got the chance to see him again. But I did know that, yes, I would blame myself for the rest of my life. And as I lay dying, I would regret my choices. I would damn myself for being so selfish. I would flay myself for everything I did and everything I never got to do. And when I landed in Hell, I gladly gave myself over to Satan to be flayed over and over again, forced to watch myself making the deal over and over. I was so glib. I gave up my world so easily. I had eternity to regret, and I did."

_ End _