[ wp ] Years ago , you made a deal with the Devil to be granted a single wish . All your memories of the deal were then wiped . Years later , your wish is fulfilled and you are about to find out what price your younger self was willing to pay to make it come true .

I was lucky, or so they told me. To still have intelligent conversations with either of my parents, when they were both over ninety years old, it was almost unheard of. Neither of them had gone through so much as a small skip in their heart beats or an irregular shadow on a PET scan, or at least they had n't since my dad was fifty-six. 
 Thirty seven years ago today, my father was lying on his death bed. I ’ ll never forget that room. White drapes everywhere, tubes running in and out of his arms and face. I couldn ’ t stand there and just watch him die. So I left, I needed to do something, even though the doctors assured me there was nothing to be done. I refused to believe it, fifty-six and he was going to die? Not today, I wouldn ’ t let it happen. I cried out to heaven and hell, HE answered first. So I struck a deal. I thought I covered everything; both my parents were in the deal. I wouldn ’ t let my mother die as soon as I saved my father. My parents would never get sick, not even a cold, but someone had to get sick in their place. Someone else ’ s parents. I would only remember the deal on this day. Once a year the memories would rush back and I would have to live with their blood on my hands, then I could return to ignorance. 
 
 So HE came, once a year, and I would remember. HE would ask if I would continue the deal, someone else ’ s parents get sick for another year of health for my parents. In the beginning I figured I would never know the people whose parents had died. HE never let a year pass where I didn ’ t. The sick bastard had started out with people I knew distantly, my boss ’ s parents, a neighbour ’ s parents. Then, last year, it was my son ’ s best friend. He had just had a child when terminal cancer struck. He was twenty-six. Twenty-six. Who the hell dies at twenty-six. 
 When HE confronted me this year and I remembered every time he had come for the past thirty-seven years, I couldn ’ t handle it. HE came with a look of glee on his sick, rotten face, and I knew. I knew that today, it would be my son. He had a daughter, she was only a couple months old, and HE wanted to take away her father. I cried and I pleaded but HE said my son had already been chosen. I told him I wanted the deal to be over; HE told me early cancellation had its price. “ What is the price? ” I asked. “ I saved your father thirty seven years ago today. He would have died the very next day had it not been for me ” HE said. HE still had that tortured look of glee on his face. It made me sick. “ Your father will die tomorrow, but even in death he will not have escaped. The pain that he has avoided for the past thirty-seven years will come to him every day for the next thirty-seven years. ” I cried, but I had to accept I had no other choice, I couldn ’ t let my son die. I agreed, and right before HE left HE turned to me and said “ and you will remember. ” 

