How to Collect Souls and Influence People

POV: Thorne

The Pit, Processing Department — Collection Week, Day 1

Collection Week is bollocks.

Hell has many seasons. Torture audits. Pestilence drills. The annual re-alphabetizing of the sins archives. But none of them compare to Collection Week, when everyone who thought they were clever back during Deal Week has to crawl back to Earthside and clean up their own infernal mess.

And yes, before you ask, I made this mess.

“You overextended,” Gary says, sliding a red folder across his slime-warped desk. “Twelve souls. 1975. All yours.”

“I was on a roll,” I say. “It was Deal Week. I had a clipboard and a polyester suit. The people trusted me.”

“You signed off on a hairdresser, a vacuum salesman, and a man who wanted eternal jazz proficiency.”

“He plays trumpet very well, Gary.”

Gary just shrugs, which causes a small avalanche of molted skin to slough off his shoulders. “You collect, or you get reassigned.”

Now, Gary may look like something scraped off a cathedral wall during a haunting, but he files the assignments. Which makes him dangerous. Not because he can kill you (technically, I already am dead), but because he can reassign you as ‘dung scrubber for Cerberus’s kennel’.

I flip open the Host Folder. It’s slimy. They’re always slimy. Two candidates’ files stare back at me:

Bernard Wexley, 41, 6’5”, terminal cancer, ex-rugby player, two ex-wives, arms like tree trunks.

Maud Gable, 82, 5’4”, widow, bad hip, known to speak to pigeons, once stabbed a man with a knitting needle in 1994 (case dismissed).

The smart money would say Bernard. Still got a few weeks left, mobile enough to get the job done. But no.

I tap the widow’s photo. “Maud’ll do.”

Gary raises a brow. “Did you read her file?”

“I skimmed it.”

“You always skim it.”

“She’s 82. How complicated can she be?”

Also, and I don’t say this out loud, but the last time I had to select a host, I let a demon named Kozgor talk me into a wager.

We played three rounds of infernal poker, and I lost. Badly. So Kozgor chose the host. I ended up inside a 6’7” bodybuilder from Liverpool with an unfortunate permanent snarl. It’s surprisingly difficult to extract a contract when your vessel makes people piss themselves on sight.

So yes. Maud.

People trust old women. They open their doors. They offer tea. They never suspect a pensioner in a shawl is there to rip out their soul while reminiscing about the golden years.

“Thorne,” Gary mutters, “you’re going to regret this.”

I sign the papers anyway. Gary stamps. Something hisses. The floor drops.

Fuck.

Why do I feel like I’m made of overcooked pasta?

I try to stand and yet, everything spins. My legs wobble like drunk stilts. One of my knees makes a “crrrrk” noise I’m fairly sure means “why in the blazes would you do that?”

Then it comes back to me. Mild vertigo. Possible osteoporosis. May respond aggressively to coconut biscuits.

Right. It was in the file I barely read.

There’s a horrible taste in my mouth, akin to a mouldy Werther’s Original and shame.

I groan and look down at my new hands. Wrinkled. Veiny. Smelling faintly of lavender and deep-seated bitterness.

Twelve souls. Seven days. And no cartilage. How hard could this be?

My first instinct is to summon the files directly. Doesn’t work, of course. Hell’s upgraded security since the last time I did a Collection Week.

Now they require localised anchoring, for “plausible physical continuity.” Which means: there’s a folder. In this house. Somewhere.

It’ll look like pension forms or council tax. But it’ll contain the names, terms, and collection clauses of twelve very stupid mortals who thought eternal happiness could be bought with a soul that has an expiration date.

I scan the room. Floral wallpaper. A mobility scooter that smells like sour milk. And there — a tin. On a doily. “Assorted Biscuits,” the label says.

I lift the lid. The tin hisses, releasing the faint odour of sulfur. Bingo.

You’d think a demon like me would recall the names, locations, and exact terms of every bargain I’ve ever struck, and yet you’d be wrong. When you’ve been doing this as long as I have, the details blend together.

In most cases, the why behind making a deal with a demon is simple — desperation. That desperation usually slots into one of two major categories: Success or Love, with a variety of tragic little subcategories.

Fortunately, the first soul on my list lives just seven blocks away. Unfortunately, Maud Gable’s driver’s license has expired, and all I’ve got is her mobility scooter and an Older Person’s Freedom Pass for public transit.

The bus it is. Nothing says “apex predator of the damned” like tapping a pink card on the number 213 to Croydon.

But first — and this is the part of inhabiting a body that no demon really warns you about — bits of Maud bleed into me. Like the fact that she desperately wants a handful of green grapes because her new set of dentures give a satisfying crunch compared to her old set.

Remind me to never get old.

I take a moment to peep out the window as I eat — one of Maud’s favourite pastimes, apparently. There’s Timothy, the neighbour she despises, all because she lent him a cup of sugar six months ago and he never returned the cup.

Claudia, the schoolgirl with the dog, is smiling as usual. She always accepts a Werther’s from us. Well done, Claudia.

And then there’s Romy Welland, unlocking the door to her gardener’s shop across the street.

Maud’s brain twitches at her name — a flood of warm memories about cups of tea, lifts to hospital appointments, check-ins.

Not my memories. Not my problem.

Still… why is she so lonely? Maud’s thought again, not mine. At least, I think it is.

I clutch Maud’s handbag like it’s the sceptre of the damned and limp to the bus stop. A pigeon flaps too close to my head, and before I know it, I’m hissing, “Try me, feathered bastard. I’ve eaten bigger birds than you.”

At the stop there are three other pensioners, one pram, and a man in a hoodie blasting music so loud I can feel the bass thrumming in Maud’s false teeth. I already hate them all.

The bus groans to a halt. I tap the Freedom Pass. The driver gives me a look like I’ve taken too long. I consider removing his soul pre-emptively.

I shuffle to a seat. A man eating crisps is to my left, a lady complaining on the phone about her bunions is to my right. Perfect.

The case file said my first soul was Dorothy Crowther, hairdresser. She signed a deal with me for “greater success than her sister, Ruth, and a clientele that would never leave.”

And it worked. By ’77, Ruth’s shop had folded, and Dorothy’s was the only salon in Sutton that could manage a beehive without structural collapse.

The bus wheezes and coughs me toward the high street. I clutch the tin of files on my lap like contraband and peep out at the shops — a funeral parlour, a chemist, and there it is: CROWTHER & CO., the gold letters still proudly gleaming like vanity never ages.

I push through the glass door and am immediately swallowed by the smell of hairspray and bleach. Mirrors line every wall, reflecting a thousand unflattering Mauds back at me in cruel succession.

Dorothy Crowther stands in the corner like a monarch still holding her court — hair an impossible shade of red, a hairdryer in one hand.

I shuffle closer, Maud’s cardigan crackling faintly with static. “Morning,” I rasp.

Dorothy squints. “Maud Gable? I haven’t seen you leave your house in weeks! You here for a trim or just gossip?”

I give her the thin smile of someone wondering how long it’ll take the brunette in the chair to leave so we can get down to the real business.

Then Maud’s hip betrays me — pops like a gunshot. I lurch forward, graceless, straight into the brunette’s lap.

“Oh, bless her!” the woman gasps. “She needs to sit down!”

Dorothy sighs, all brisk compassion. “Still clumsy, aren’t you, love? Bridget, we’re finished here anyway. Give us a hand with Maud, yeah?”

Between them, they haul me upright and steer me toward the back room. Bridget slips a fifty into Dorothy’s hand on her way out; Dorothy pockets it without ceremony and flicks the kettle on.

The back room smells of hair dye and receipt paper. She sets a chipped mug in front of me. “Here, love. Take a seat. You look worn out.”

I do. “Much obliged.”

She eyes me over her glasses, head tilted. “You’re acting funny today, Maud.”

I let the handbag slide to the floor. “This salon’s done well for itself, hasn’t it, Dorothy? How did your sister end up? Ruth, wasn’t it?”

Her face tightens — the kettle’s click sounds like a gavel. “Ruth?” she repeats. “Oh, she did all right. Moved away. Married a dentist.”

I tilt my head. “Do you remember how you managed all this? The clients, the success, the reputation?”

Her eyes narrow. “Why are you asking?”

I lean forward, voice softening into something colder. “Because you made a deal, Dorothy. A very long time ago. And I’m here to collect.”

She stares at me for a long beat, then laughs — not mockingly, just the small, astonished sound of someone who’s known this hour for years. “With a handsome man,” she says, and there’s a tremor in it. “Not a—” She stops, and the colour drains from her face as if a curtain’s been pulled.

They always remember me as handsome. They never remember the fact that I work for Hell. I wonder, in a way that makes the inside of my chest itch, if that’s why I had such a high success rate. Not my pitch, not my power, just the curse Lucifer laid on me: irresistible, even to the desperate.

“Dorothy Crowther,” I say, letting the formal tone cut through the room like a comb through hair. I bring the contract up from the tin; it unfurls in my hand, alive and impatient. “Your contract with the Infernal Administration, dated the third of March 1975, is now expired. The agreed services have been rendered. Your soul is forfeit.”

Her mouth softens. “Then do it,” she whispers.

I take her hand. The parchment hums. When contact meets clause, the world tilts: Dorothy’s chest shivers as though some invisible hairdryer has been switched off. From her throat a ribbon of scented light peels free — hair-shaped, smelling of perm solution and barbicide. It threads itself across my palm and into the paper.

She exhales, a clean, surprised sound. And then — because soul extraction is not tidy — Dorothy’s body goes still. Her eyelids flutter once, twice, and then slacken. The chair creaks.

I clear my throat as I’m awarded a glimpse of how she will be found: Dorothy’s daughter will be in in an hour; the staff will fuss; someone will call the surgery; someone else will say it was “her time.” They will say she looked peaceful.

Dorothy’s hand slips from mine, cool and absurdly ordinary in death. Her face looks younger somehow, unlined as if the grind of ambition has finally smoothed away.

My reflection stares at me from the small mirror. Maud’s petite stature and sagging skin. But the eyes — my eyes — flare molten gold for a moment, bright enough to scorch the glass.

I blink, and it’s gone.

I fold the contract shut. It flares along the crease — a clean, deliberate flame — and eats the paper in two neat breaths. A tiny pop, a faint heat, and then nothing: the parchment is gone.

It’s done. The contract’s been consumed. Somewhere a register in Hell will mark it as closed; somewhere Lucifer will give a small, private nod that has nothing to do with kindness. A faint heat, an almost inaudible click like a bank’s ledger updating, hums through me — absurdly bureaucratic, terribly final.

As I close the tin and prepare to shuffle out, there’s a tickle at the back of my mind. Not remorse — I don’t do remorse — but something warmer, older.

She didn’t deserve that, says a voice in the back of my mind.

I straighten my cardigan, the way Maud always does before speaking her mind. “Not your problem,” I mutter aloud.

But the silence that follows is not mine.