My entire life has been defined by a lack of luck. I know that sounds like a pathetic man blaming the world for his failures, but it’s really not. In fact, I was even once appreciative of my lot in life. I had a loving family firmly placed in the middle class, above average intelligence, fairly good looks, and was even quite talented at sports.

It was just my lack of luck that grinded me down until I had nothing left in this life.

I was always a planner and as a result had a life plan since I was five years old. My family’s financial situation required me to get a scholarship to attend college. Which I believed to be very achievable.

My first life path was sports. It seemed the easiest of my possible paths as I had more talent than smarts. I practiced baseball until my hands bled. I breathed baseball. Ate baseball. Dreamed baseball. It was all I thought of.

That was until a bad pitch hit my knee and ended my baseball career in high school. I did not blame the pitcher though; he was a friend of mine, and it was an honest mistake.

I still did not hate life as I had a future.

So, I moved on to academics as my path forward. I threw my entire being into studying to be a doctor. I was behind the 8-ball due to dedicating my past life to baseball. I was an average student and that was being kind. However, I was not ready to give up and I had friends there to help me along my new path.

When I was a senior in high school, I had the next fifteen years of my life planned out and a scholarship that was going to make it happen.

That was when it happened. It was my parents’ date night. It was the night my plans were thrown out the window. It was the night I became an orphan. It was the night I became the parent to two small children. It was the night that the car accident happened.

That meant making sacrifices. That meant giving up college. That meant giving up being a doctor. That meant getting a minimum wage job.

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I still did not hate life as I needed to take care of my family and accidents happen, even car accidents.

So, I threw myself into being a line cook and father. Always working was hard, oh so hard at times. When I wasn’t sweating over a deep fryer, I was wrangling two kids. My siblings were too young to truly understand what happened or the sacrifices I made for them, all they understood was that their parents were not there. Things were difficult with them, and I had to not let some of the things they said get to me.

As the years went by, I moved up in my career until I became the head chef of a very nice restaurant. The situation with my siblings improved until we became a new family. They were even fulfilling the life plans that I never could. My younger brother was on the way to a college basketball career and hopefully a professional one as well. My younger sister was on the path to being a valedictorian and then lawyer. I was happy with my unplanned life.

Then my brother was killed in a drive-by.

I still did not hate life as I still had my sister that had become like a daughter to me. She was my last connection to life. My last hope of making something of this life. Then she had a stroke and died. That. That was when I started hating life.

***

I had always hated the story of Job as the concept that God inflicted tragedies upon someone just to test their faith made them seem like a god no one should follow. If God would not help me, then maybe someone else would.

That idea was what led me to creating a pentagram of pig’s blood with black candles at the points in my sister’s former room.

At the witching hour, aka 3am to 4am, I said the incantation I found online.

While this may seem pointless. Or stupid. Or strange. Or a tragedy waiting to happen, but I needed something. Anything to hold on to as I was at the end of my rope. If this did not work at 3:00am, I would be dead at 3:05am.

When my incantation ended, the candles blew out and the shadows in the room deepened.

Out of the shadows stepped a very stereotypical devil, “What do you desire?”

“Luck. All I want is a chance at life.” I gasped out, finally releasing all that I had kept inside for so long.

The creature outstretched his hand and unfurled it, “What do you give?”

“What do you want? My first-born child?”

With a distorted chuckle, “What would I want with a baby?”

With a confused face, “That’s what demons usually want in cases like these.”

Waving a skeletal clawed hand down his demonic visage and body, “What about me makes it look like I’m running an orphanage?”

“Well, what do you want?”

“I’ll get your soul when you die. How’s that sound?” the demon offered with an outstretched hand.

While shaking the hand, “Sounds like we have an accord.”