Soul Sale
by William Doreski
When I ask Satan to sell me back my soul he laughs. “What can I give you that you don’t already have?” I ask. He replies, “Nothing. You can have your soul back. What do I want with that filthy rag?” We’re sitting in a coffee shop in Midtown. Buses hustle past, snoring and shaking the plate glass windows. “You have to accept payment,” I say. “Contract law requires both parties to benefit from a transaction.” The waitress refills our cups. She thinks Satan is cute, with his pert little mustache and his crimson cassock. She glares at me, a grumpy wrinkled old man, and sneers. She’d spill coffee into my lap if she weren’t afraid of losing her job. “No benefit involved. You have to realize that your soul is worthless,” Satan explains. “If I accepted payment for returning it, I’d be adding to my burden of sin.” “But if my soul is worthless, what does that say about me?” “You sold your soul. You sold it so long ago that it became obsolete. I made a poor investment, but that often happens. Just pocket your soul and drink your coffee while it’s hot.” He hands me a slip of folded spiritual matter. I tuck it into my shirt pocket. It’s so tiny I’m afraid of losing it. “You might as well face it. Hell isn’t for you. You wouldn’t last five minutes before vaporizing.” “What about Heaven?” I ask. “Oh yeah,” Satan says, “I guess some people still believe in that pie-in-the sky stuff. Don’t think about it. Just take your soul home and stash it somewhere out of sight.”
William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. His most recent book of poetry is Mist in Their Eyes (2021). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in many journals.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Soul Sale”? “Soul Sale” grew out of the question I had to ask myself: would Satan be interested in the soul of a nonbeliever? Then it struck me that nonbelievers don’t believe in the soul, so their souls would thin out and become ragged and shabby. Satan is usually depicted as a witty sort of fellow, and in speech and mannerisms (as well as ethics) like some of our local Republican realtors—people I meet every day at the local café. The idea of a soul worth so little that Satan just hands it back without expecting anything in return fueled the poem. The it was just a matter of putting one word after another.
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