Part 1.

Most people think selling your soul is ceremonious. That it requires a bowl of virgin's blood as payment, the freshly decapitated head of a mountain goat, and a ring of fire to serve as a gateway to hell. But really it's a lot easier than that. Very practical, mundane.

For years in the shower I would write prayers on the misted glass:

Help us god I don't want mommy to cry anymore

Make it stop we deserve to be happy I think

God please let us be happy

Finally.

please

Nothing happened, nothing changed. God was silent. So I stopped. At church the priest would say that god doesn't give to us anything we can't handle. My mom clutched my hand and wiped her nose, my father sat straight and stoic. I thought to myself that because nothing changed, maybe we deserved to be unhappy.

I was a child then.

Truthfully, I don't remember saying anything out loud or writing anything down. I knew exactly what I wanted and I knew who I wanted it from and I knew that was enough.

One day, there was a knock on the door and a police car sitting in our driveway.

I'm sorry ma'am. I heard the sorrowful voice tell my mother from behind the kitchen door. Your husband was in an accident.

There were whispers that he had been drinking. That there was enough alcohol in his system to cleanse all the wounds he had given my mom and me throughout the years.

Drunk off his own pride, he ran a red light and hit another car. They had not been injured but he had. Half of his body had been ejected from the vehicle. The glass bottle he was holding had shattered, severing his penis and balls. They were found under the seat purpled, and shrivled, and small. His face hit the pavement and his torso rolled along the road. His intestines coiled on the black ground and their black contents were smeared on his arms and face and in his open mouth. He was found moving his arms, attempting to speak beneath the streetlight. His liver was later found half eaten in a nearby field.

Will you and your daughter be alright?

"Oh, yes." My mother said. "We will be just fine."

His health insurance policy payout allowed us to relocate to the west coast and rent a beautiful loft apartment in a beach city. My mother was able to remarry. The ceremony was oversees funded with my father's insurance policy. My new father is a handsome, kind, loving, and compassionate man. He supports my mother's ambitions from her small desire for a plentiful garden to her life-long dream of visiting the Grecian isles of Ithaca. We have pictures as a family, me as a teenager, on Greece's beautiful white sands with true and cheerful smiles. He taught me through actions and words what it looks like and how it feels to be loved. Truly loved. A selfless love that, he assures me daily, I deserve and will find. And today I'm pursuing my own dreams studying music at the University of Southern California on a full scholarship. I have a wonderful studio apartment downtown overlooking the whole of the city and a fantastic car to drive. All paid for by my biological father's timely death.

I met her for the first time in a cafe. I was late to class and shouldn't have been getting coffee.

"Brett, is that you?" The most beautiful woman I had ever seen called to me from beneath a beam of light staged through the large street facing window. Her perfect face perfectly framed as if subject to Caravaggio. "Brett, darling, it's been ages! Years! Centuries, even!" Her voice was sonorous. A harpist must have been sitting nearby and with each word they plucked lightly against strings made of an angel's Achilles tendon. Perfectly harmonizing with her perfect voice.

A cold latte in my hand, I approached her. She kissed my cheeks and made room for me at her small table.

Her hair was dyed blonde, incredibly bright and from the looks of it, despite the bleaching, soft and healthy. Her eyes were so deep, so green. She had so many eyelashes it looked as if she was wearing eye-liner but she wore no make up. She blushed naturally, her high cheekbones carving the path of sunlight contouring perfectly her perfect face. Long wisps of hair fell beside her lips and the nonchalance with which she weaponized her beauty made her all the more beautiful.

She was wearing a faded black t-shirt with the Purple Rain album cover on it, faded black denim jeans, and faded black high top trainers. She crossed her long legs and her perfectly pale skin seemed to glow as she scanned me.

"Adelaide-Nyx Park Jisoo." I said. She raised an eyebrow. It made no wrinkles on her forehead. She smiled. It made no creases on her cheek or in the crooks of her eyes. The sun burned hotter and brighter.

"You remember me. I'm so glad."

"No. I've seen you though. On billboards, in magazines, on the television. Everyone has." She nodded.

"Well, I remember you. 1983, you were so small when you asked of me that tiny favor. And wow." She stared at me. "You really became such a beautiful woman. You didn't ask for that but it was inevitable. The cute barista that made your latte wants to ask you on a date, you know." She nodded again, sipping from her cup with closed eyes. "But no. You should say no when he does. He begins to bald in the time of a year. The beginning to a lifetime of sadness and misery he would take out on you through a slew of unfulfilled promises and terrible drinking and dietary habits and none of your dreams come true. Unfortunate, truly. I am right here, after all. A little humility goes a long way with me, you know. You know.

I resisted the urge to look back. I played with the plastic cup between my pale fingers.

"Well. I did hunt you for a reason. I'm sure you're dying to know why." I took a sip of my latte between dry lips. "As you know, I own your soul." She reached into her black Hermes Birkin bag and pulled out a small mason jar. In it was the glowing orange fetus of a kangaroo. "Oh no, wrong one. Brad Pitt's, actually. Funny story that. His spirit cried to me, nearly screaming after sacrificing his twin's soul in the womb, to be the most handsome man alive. But he was already destined to be, so, free soul for me!" She clapped her hands excitedly. She searched again, pulling out several containers with several different half-live creatures but she finally gave up with a sigh. "The point being, I have your soul. Somewhere in here. And I'm calling in my favor."

"Favor?"

"Oh, don't sound like that, dear. It's just me. The Devil. That's how this whole thing works: you ask for something and offer your soul and whether or not you agree to the terms and conditions become mine." She sounded so happy. "And believe me. I've been waiting for this day a long, long time."

Our conversation was interrupted by a fan asking Adelaide, the Devil, for her autograph. A jar appeared on the table containing a confined glowing and floating jellyfish. It bathed its small jail in a blue and purple phosphorescence. The small amorphous body collided with the glass, squished softly, and floated again. The long threads of tentacles interweaved with another, crossing and ebbing with the invisible tide of the aquarium that contained it. She held the soul to her face, her eyes crossed watching the gelatin. The lights of the world seemed to dim as the blue and purple and indigo hues ignited something wonderful about her face.

"Garbage. Yours though is just delicious, darling. Don't you worry. Stop with that wory, darling. Once you do this teeny tiny, so atomically small, favor for me your soul will be yours again. And you can have your..." She scoffed. "Your free will back. Or whatever."

The Devil tucked the fan's soul into her bag. Through the window I watched as he happily walked away. I felt very bad for him.

"Well say something. Anything, darling. How's your coffee?"

"Will my mom and dad be safe?"

"Their fate is beyond my jurisdiction."

"What if I don't want to help you? What if I don't want to do whatever it is you're asking?"

She pouted. Reaching into her bag she pulled out a small manila envelope and handed it to me. My heart was beating quickly as I removed two small strips of thick paper. She watched my face.

"Concert tickets. VIP. Backstage pass, concert tickets?"

"My favorite artist is performing tomorrow night. Brand new material. And I need something beautiful on my arm." I read the ticket.

"You want me to go with you to a-"

"Be my date to a Prince concert! Yes!" She grabbed my hands and I could see tears of excitement welling in her beautiful eyes.

"I love Prince."

"I know. Me too!"

Part 2.

She told me to go to all of my classes, do what homework needed doing, to get enough rest, and meet her at the Los Angeles International Airport in the morning.

Wear something beautiful and chic and sexy, darling.

She didn't want any worries to slow us or any distractions that might to tempt our attentions. Before I left the cafe she assured me everything would be fine with a smile. In the morning, devoid of any sleep, I arrived at the terminal in a taxi and a handsome man in a black suit was waiting for me, holding a sign with my name. He greeted me with a hot latte, took my bag, and instructed me to follow him. Nearby, he opened the door to an older german estate car, informed me of the brown sugar in the cup holder, and told me a seatbelt wasn't necessary. We approached a private entrance to the runway in silence and the security upon seeing the car, opened the metal gate. It was very smooth. No words or gestures were used in transaction. It was as if this morning had been choreographed and practiced time immemorial. At the large hanger there was a small jet sitting with a set of stairs uncoiled from its open side.

She was sipping champagne when I lowered my head through the doorway and into the cabin. Adelaide was wearing a neck pillow and the largest sunglasses. She screamed, ran to me, hugged me tight, and handed me a glass. It was very vintage, from the 1800s she said. It was sweet and optimistic. The seats were heavily bolstered and could recline to a lying position, the stewardesses attentive and gorgeous, the captain alert and polite and movie-star handsome. It was a cocoon of leather and luxury and excessive beauty. Through the flight we talked about things girls our age would: school, love, men, sex, music, the indentured servitude of souls. I could make you famous, you know. You deserve it - all you've been through. We'll see, I replied easily. We laughed often and had much to drink and eat. In the noon sun they brought us perfectly cooked steaks and truffle fries. As I ate she asked me how I was feeling. I told her I was excited and it wasn't a lie.

"You should be." She smiled. "Tonight will be impossible to forget."

She bit into the steak. Red myoglobin dripped from her mouth, down her flushed lips, onto her perfect chin. Her pink tongue licked clean her porcelain skin.

The sun had begun to set during our flight. It was beautiful to watch the world transform from the jet. There was plenty to eat and I felt fine. Adelaide found the peace to fall deeply asleep. She didn't snore, make a sound, move an inch. I wasn't sure she even breathed. I should have taken a picture. Soon, too, wrapped in the beauty and the zest of zen, I fell asleep.

We arrived at the Minneapolis, St. Paul airport an hour from the start of the concert. Paisley Park wasn't far I was told. The home of Prince.

"Weren't you born in this city, darling."

The driver brought our bags from the fuselage and put them into the trunk of a car similar to the one at Los Angeles. He closed the door for us as we got in.

"I didn't ever imagine I'd come back."

"Not even to see Prince?"

"I didn't ever imagine I'd get to see Prince."

Behind those large sunglasses she laughed and laid her head back and said.

"You're welcome."

Everything was as I'd remembered. The yellowed lights, the streets I used to walk around with my mom, even the smell was the same. More fresh than LA but worse in a way. The only real differences were the view and the noise; there wasn't any. Adelaide would say something that made me laugh, the driver didn't often speak but when he did his voice was deep and hypnotizing. There was no arguing in the car, no thrown punches from the driver's seat into the passenger, no smell of alcohol, and no yelling or threats veiled or obvious that I could tell. The city, through the lightly tinted windows and large leg room of the luxury vehicle, was almost beautiful. It was easier to see anything when you weren't afraid of anything.

We were sitting at a red light on a street near my old house, just a few minutes away from where I lived as a child.

Adelaide held my hand as if to comfort me. Her eyes were closed, resting behind her large sunglasses.

The light turned green. The slow diesel car moved forward. And I don't remember much except for the blinding lights and sound of screeching tires prior to the moment of impact. There was a loud roar of colliding metal and then nothing save for the ringing in my ears. Through an unconscious body I felt the spinning of the car. The world was violently tumbling until it wasn't.

I awoke when the blood from my nose passed into my lips. I breathed deeply surprised that I could breathe at all. My limbs seemed to be intact and I pulled a few shards of glass from my forehead. Everything hurt but I moved with ease. Next to me, Adelaide wasn't moving at all. Not a breath. I caressed her face, spoke her name, felt for a pulse. There wasn't one, but her pale skin was warm and smooth and she was still beautiful. Our driver too was unresponsive. I reached for the handle to my door, it broke and a shard of metal stabbed into and cut my palm deeply. I kicked at the bent panel until it opened with the groan of wounded metal. There was smoke in the air, dozens of headlights staring at me from all directions. I stepped into what I thought was oil. Pressed into our car was a red coupe. The entirety of its front end had collapsed against the steel frame of the german saloon. There was no driver that I could see. Leaning my hand against the car I peered inside. Everything was red. Blood glazed the steering wheel, front seat, headliner, dashboard, and everything else. I could smell gas, and iron in the air, and oil, and alcohol.

The ringing in my ears quelled and I could hear a cry of anguish.

I stumbled around the two cars and followed a trail of black blood towards the center of the intersection. What appeared to be large worms unentangled themselves from a black mass writhing in the middle of the road. From the mouth of the worms was an emitus. I followed their writhing bodies and the smell of puke and shit and desperation towards the mass they emerged from. It moved its arms, and its mouth, and its crying red eye found me. He was covered in his own filth and the lower half of his body was missing. Vomit and blood and what he had recently ate covered all that was left of him. Half of his face was missing. Beneath tattered skin the muscles of his cheeks and jaw struggled to move. One of his eyes was dangling from the socket and moved freely searching for nothing, wanting of everything. The pale yellow nerves twitched. His hands reached for my ankles but I wouldn't let him touch me. Not ever again. He mumbled something. He was begging for help through shit covered teeth. He was saying my name, my mother's name, and crying for help. I felt a small hand on my waist and looked to find Adelaide next to me. She emerged silently from a shadow. He began to scream at us, or at least tried to, while we passively watched and silently rooted for the pain as it swelled through him. He groaned, something unintelligible, an angry coaxing that had no power or value. Adelaide rested her head onto my shoulder and together we watched as the man died.

It took longer than I expected.

The life had long passed from his eyes when I heard the sirens. They interviewed our driver, Adelaide, then me. The paramedic said he was likely drunk, that we were lucky as the Devil himself to be alive and unharmed. We rode in the back of the ambulance, with a police escort, to Paisley Park. Prince performed and debuted Purple Rain that night. The concert was beautiful.

And so is she.