“Do you know why you lost?” Aleister asked.
I woke up smelling smoke, sulfur, and the coppery ozone scent of a magical creature. I was having trouble focusing on the lumpy black thing in my eyeline, until I realized I was looking at a demon’s butt.
My soul was naked, in Hell, being carried over an Enforcer’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Wherever we were headed, we seemed to be taking the long way, as Aleister had time to give me a whole speech before we got there.
“You lost because you keep trying to be a good man, and there is nothing more boring, more predictable, or more contemptible than a good man. Good men lose because good men don’t know how to handle power.
“The moment a good man gets power, he gives it away or wastes it on some hopeless cause. Smart men get power and immediately use it to get more power, but you would call that evil, because you still think you’re in a fairy tale.
“My project is to show you a new way of thinking, a simple change in your thought process that will turn your whole world around.
“A good man is a coward who is trying to win the game of life with a weak hand, a mewling child crawling around on all fours begging to be loved. Everyone loves to kick them, and women are repulsed by them as if they give off a smell.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“Employers use up good men and throw them away the way you might discard a horse with a broken leg. They find a good man with a work ethic, and they work him fourteen hours a day until he has a nervous breakdown and has to be pried out of his desk.
“Women enslave them and carefully extract all their money before they move to the next one, dreading the annual birthdays when they’re forced to touch them.
“It is particularly grotesque to watch you try and be a good man, when you have inherited a soul that was crafted to be a perfect instrument for evil. Trying to use that soul for good is like trying to run a car on the wrong fuel.
“You might putter along for a while in the slow lane, trying to live like that, but eventually you’ll end up stranded on the side of the road, waiting for someone to come along and save you with a dose of what you really need.”
Aleister smiled. “That’s you and me right now. Your little experiment in heroism has left you stranded on the side of the road, and I’m here to give you a little push.
“It’s going to be a painful adjustment for you, but I’m going to spend the next few days cutting away this ridiculous hero costume you’ve made for yourself and show you who you really are. You hate me right now, but eventually you’ll understand, I’m here to put you in touch with your power, and once you find it, you’ll start winning - quickly, easily, effortlessly, and everything that seems unreachable now will just fall into place.
“I’m not just hurting you because it’s fun for me. I’m hurting you because when a man is as deluded as you are, pain is the only teacher he can hear.”
Aleister paused to open an ancient pair of wooden doors set into some kind of hidden cave entrance to his lair, before he went on.
“I’m here to make you a winner. I’m going to teach you to run on the fuel your soul was made for, and show you how easy this whole game is, once you stop giving and start taking, in a world that despises those who give.”