[ WP ] The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people the devil honored contracts .

I lived in a two bedroom apartment in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with my roommate, Lucifer, Son of the Morning. The rent was eight hundred and fifty dollars a month, which included electricity and water, but not cable television or internet access. We had an in-suite dishwasher. Four washing machines and four clothes dryers were located in a room down the hall for communal use by all the tenants on our floor. 
 
 I did not know Lucifer before he moved in. We met due to an advertisement I placed on Craigslist. My former roommate, Brian Petersen, had been offered a promotion, which required him to relocate to Dallas, Texas. Brian had been a good roommate. He was tidy and rarely noisy. Sometimes we would play PS4 together in the living room. A couple times a week, we would order a pizza or Chinese food and split the cost right down the middle. His rent check was always on time and his girlfriend Roberta once introduced me to her friend Sandra, who was kind and beautiful, even though we did not have a natural connection to each other. 
 
 When Brian moved to Dallas, I placed an ad on Craigslist for a new roommate. Lucifer, Son of the Morning, was the only person to respond. When he came for the interview, I was surprised to find out that he was Middle Eastern and also an older gentleman. There are not many Middle Easterners who immigrate to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and certainly not in their sunset years. However, I needed someone to assume Brian's share of the rent and, other than his age and heritage, Lucifer seemed to be a quiet and dependable person. After a brief tour, I explained the apartment complex by-laws, including the regulations concerning pets, noise after ten at night, and reservation of the courtyard gazebo and barbecue. Lucifer smiled and signed on the spot a sublease I had prepared in advance. 
 
 On the day he moved in, Lucifer immediately began to seek concessions to suit his comfort. He demanded that we replace the blinds with thick, red, velvet curtains, even though the blinds were fixtures belonging to the apartment complex itself. He asked that I move my fifty inch LED TV into my bedroom, even though the bedroom was not a large enough space for a screen of that dimension. I objected to his requests, saying they were unreasonable, and I got heated when Lucifer ignored me and began unplugging the cables behind my TV without my permission. 
 
 `` You like the way it feels to get angry at someone, don ’ t you?'' Lucifer said, `` You wish you could talk to your father or your boss or a woman that way. They all treat you like shit and you use video games on that giant television to take out your anger. Why don ’ t you just take out your anger for real?'' 
 
 When Lucifer said that, I wanted to smack him in the jaw. But I kept my cool since he was older than I was and this was our first day together and battery is illegal. We agreed on a compromise where he could replace the blinds with red velvet drapes, but he would forget about moving the TV. 
 
 Soon, Lucifer began inviting guests over at all hours. Most of them had multiple tattoos and unconventional body piercings and hairstyles. They would sit in the living room, sometimes smoking illegal drugs out of a bong with extremely old water. Due to the velvet curtains, the smell of ash lingered especially long in the living room. The guests, who began staying in the living room even when Lucifer was not home, would shoot me condescending smiles when I'd arrive back from work and quickly duck into my room. Sometimes, I would hear them having group sex with Lucifer; when I would go to the kitchen, Lucifer would notice, and invite me to join in the orgy, but I would never respond. 
 
 I needed Lucifer ’ s share of the rent money, so I let this go on for some time, spending most of my time in my bedroom with the door shut, regretting my previous stand regarding the placement of my TV. But one morning the superintendent stopped me in the hall and told me that the odor and noise coming from our apartment was unacceptable and possibly a violation of the fire code. I told him that he needed to take up the matter with Lucifer, but he said that the official lease was in my name alone and so this was my problem. 
 
 I confronted Lucifer about the superintendent ’ s issues. At the time, he was sitting on the living room sofa, huffing gasoline. and rubbing the exposed genitalia of an overweight woman with a green Mohawk whom I had never seen before. I told him that he had to begin to abide in good faith by the apartment complex by-laws or that we would both be evicted. I also told him he had too many guests over for too long. 
 
 `` Your problem isn ’ t with my good time,'' he said, `` Your problem is you don ’ t know if you ’ ll ever have a good time of your own. That ’ s because you ’ re so fucking worried about always being good. Nobody ever had a good time by being good, you know.'' 
 
 I objected that my problem was most certainly with not having privacy in my own apartment and with getting in trouble with the superintendent. ” 
 
 “ I want you to start trying new shit, ” Lucifer replied, “ Every morning, promise yourself to try three new things and break three new rules that day. ” 
 
 Then Lucifer snapped his fingers and the woman with the green mohawk offered me a hit of the gasoline. When I brushed her off, Lucifer snapped his fingers again and the woman kneeled down in front of me and began unzipping my pants fly. I jumped, and possibly yelped in a high pitched tone, then ran into my bedroom and shut the door. 
 
 Lucifer started getting large UPS packages delivered to him, the contents of which he kept in a floor safe in his bedroom. One day, I went into his bedroom to look for the vacuum, which was not in the hall closet where it was supposed to be, and I caught him loading up the safe with what appeared to be cocaine and tormented human souls. When he realized I had seen him loading up his safe with narcotics and souls, he immediately reached inside it and grabbed a forty five caliber silver pistol. He ran up to me and stuck the gun in my mouth. 
 
 “ You must have a real death wish to come in my room without knocking, ” he said. 
 
 I threw up my hands and I told him I was sorry I had barged in. I promised I had not seen the contents of his safe. I said we could act like this never happened. He started to laugh and lowered the gun. 
 
 “ Fuck you, I ’ m just fucking with you, ” he said, “ C ’ mere, let me show you something cool. ” 
 
 Lucifer pulled a tormented soul out of the safe and dangled it in front of my face. 
 
 “ Eat it, ” he instructed. I protested. “ Fuck you, eat the fucking tormented soul! ” he demanded, brandishing the gun again. I pinched the glowing, wriggling soul. I dropped it in my mouth and chewed. 
 
 It was the most incredible thing I had ever experienced. It felt like having fifty orgasms topped with Nutella while driving a Maserati. 
 
 “ How do you feel? ” Lucifer asked. I told him I felt fucking alive. He turned on his playlist of thrash metal and Justin Bieber mashups. A Somalian man with only gold teeth came from the living room to join us. We made eye contact. He ripped open my dress shirt and I let him and we started to passionately French kiss and slapp each other in the face. Lucifer joined us until I pulled away. 
 
 “ Shoot me in the leg, ” I told him, “ I need to know what it feels like to get shot. ” 
 
 Lucifer smiled, grabbed the gun off the bed, and fired a round into my right thigh, and then another one into the Somalian man ’ s shoulder. We all went back to kissing, until the police arrived, having been called by our neighbors who had been alarmed by the gunshots. When he heard the officers kick in the door, Lucifer picked up his safe and tossed it through the window glass. He and the Somalian jumped out after it. I was then quickly thrown to the ground and handcuffed in a pool of bloody clothes and sheets. 
 
 The police found felony quantities of cocaine and various opiates in Lucifer ’ s room. I explained they were not my drugs but my roommate's, but the police did not believe me. When I showed them the sublease, signed by Lucifer, they claimed subleases without the express consent of the landlord are not legal in the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and so the document was inadmissible in court. When I told my lawyer everything about Lucifer and the safe full of tormented human souls, he advised me not to repeat this to a judge or prosecutor, or else I could be sent indefinitely to a long term facility for the criminally insane, which would be worse than prison. I now live in an eight by six square foot cell, and not a two bedroom apartment. There is a bunk bed, a combination toilet-sink, and a small writing desk and bench. 
 
 On the one hand, I deeply regret ever meeting Lucifer, and not better understanding the nuances of Oklahoma landlord tenant law. On the other hand, I am glad that, for one brief moment, I knew how it felt to allow one ’ s self to simply consume and enjoy and take.
