[ WP ] You made a deal with the Devil , and now he 's come to collect .

Susan said, `` Someone get the door,'' while sucking on her sweet potatoes. Gram looked at me with her soft face. `` Harriet?'' I pushed away the fine dinner plate in front of me. The door chimed again just as I got my fingers hooked around the lock. 
 
 Al White's bony face cut straight through the looking glass. I had a very heavy heart as I swung the door aside. Although his eyebrows twitched, he seemed pleasant. 
 
 `` Oh, something does smell delicious,'' he said through his sharp teeth. At times they looked human and at other times they seemed far too strange for something as common as that. 
 
 I stepped out onto the stoop, pulling the door shut behind myself. `` It's a roast. My family's in.'' 
 
 `` To celebrate the good news no doubt,'' he said. 
 
 I caught myself frowning at him before settling myself into a look of pleasant interest. `` Had I known you were coming, I would have certainly made you a seat.'' 
 
 He smiled, and here his teeth became white and then black. `` That's very kind. Tell me, is your sister well?'' 
 
 `` Oh, very. She recovered quite well. And she's married now, to boot!'' 
 
 `` And you?'' said Al White, straightening the lapel of his custard colored work suit. 
 
 `` I have been waiting for my turn.'' He watched the hand over my breast as if it were a fantastical creature. It was falsely alive, driven up and down by the real creature beneath it. 
 
 `` Then I suppose you are not all that surprised I am here after all.'' 
 
 `` I suppose not.'' 
 
 We stared at one another until the blacks of his eyes became oil spills running down his cheeks. I blinked and he extended a piece of paper. My thumbprint that had once been crimson had now dried to the color of bark. I captured the sheet between stumbling fingers. 
 
 `` I'll need a final signature. So it's, as I like to say, copacetic.'' He pointed to a newly drawn blank beneath my original print. At once, my finger burned, and dark iron filed from the gaps in my skin. 
 
 My heart was a greyhound. Surely, it would tear from my chest - after all, is n't that what a man like this is after anyhow - and I would collapse and go to heaven because Henry never touched me. Unlike before, I left my mark quickly, just in time to see Al White weasel it up his sleeve. 
 
 My breaths were so conscious, come what may I thought, yet my feet stayed beneath me. He laughed, `` You're as pale as a pearl!'' 
 
 I studied my healed finger. `` I do n't understand. You - `` 
 
 `` Have collected the innocent. As promised.'' 
 
 Inside the house, a shrill scream echoed. I could see the scene from the window. Gram and Ma helped Susan through the foyer. A red tail extended from her swollen belly. 
 
 `` He's gone,'' sobbed Susan. `` He's gone.'' 
 
 `` There, there,'' said Gram, pressing a hand over her breast. `` There, there.''
