deal with the devil (but the devil is pazu) [SHORT STORY]

pazu gives theo a gift to make his work day more exciting. theo doesn’t like it. (this was supposed to be shorter but i got carried away. it’s a reference to the doodle where pazu tells theo he’d look cute in a collar)

Word Count: 2,263

Rating: SFW, with dark & suggestive themes

Content Warnings: asphyxiation, fearplay, mouthplay, general ghosty tormenting

———

Theo looked like shit. He tended to these days, as most of his coworkers had noted, but on this particular weekday, he appeared worse than usual. His complexion was ghastly, his skin clammy, and his gaze kept flicking in every direction, as if surveying the office for some unseen threat. The coworker that currently accompanied him on a trip to the marketing department — a callow, earnest woman with kind eyes — chalked it up to insomnia. Night terrors, maybe. She wasn’t too far off. Though she decided not to verbally impose with such a personal speculation.

“The data’s as organized as it can be, given the limited information we were given,” Theo mentioned. His voice was somewhat hoarse, but despite his paranoid demeanor, he at least managed to hold a normal conversation. He shifted his gaze to his companion, and while he didn’t quite smile (she wasn’t sure that he could smile, honesty), his expression noticeably softened. “Though I suppose that’s thanks to your dependability. Despite being a rookie, I’m pleasantly surprised by your competence. So thank you.”

The woman hooked her thumbs together as a warmth developed beneath her skin. He was blunt, but unexpectedly a very genuine and affable man. Even with his unapproachable aura, off-putting looks, and…general oddness, she supposed there was a cute side to him, too.

“Th-thank you,” she hiccuped, brushing a coiled strand behind her ear, “It helps to have such hard-working teammates, y’know?” The woman chuckled, taking the following moment of silence to gather her resolve. They were closing in on their destination. No better time than the present, right? If not now, when? He was a nice guy. Yeah, she could do this.

“And…! Um, that is, only if you’d like to— maybe we could meet for coffee outside of work one day? I think it’d be nice to learn more about you, and—“

“Gh—!”

The woman whirled around as she realized Theo had suddenly halted in his tracks, stumbling backwards several uneven steps. It was the strangest thing; his eyes had flown open to a surprised, distraught expression, and he seemed winded, as if he’d run into some invisible wall. His fingertips scraped at his neck, but it seemed that as soon as Theo realized his coworker was staring at him, he forced his hands quickly back to his sides.

“What—?”

“Oh! Sorry, I, erm, just decided— no, rather I remembered, uh…” The man swallowed back a yelp as his body wobbled backwards, his feet just barely scrambling in place to catch himself, “I— I have business in this direction! I apologize, it’s terribly urgent, so—“ He tripped again, a strained wheeze interrupting his frantic rambling, “Please give the marketing department my best regards! And, ah, I’ll get back with you on…!”

And just like that, he disappeared behind the nearest corner. His erratic shuffling and labored breathing echoed down the otherwise empty hallway as he fled, until it was out of earshot. The woman stayed in place for a prolonged moment, staring into nothing with her mouth agape in distressed horror. After her body seemed to realize she hadn’t taken a breath in nearly a full minute, she inhaled deeply, raking a hand through her hair as she processed that she had just been rejected.

“…He had the files for marketing.”

——

“Could you— ugh, please just—!” Theo slammed his body against the door to an empty conference room, forcing it open and then immediately kicking it shut behind himself. He counted himself lucky that it was unlocked, seeing as he was being dragged towards it regardless. “Just fucking stop?!” he shouted now, chest heaving as he fought to catch his breath.

An enormous face lowered to inspect him, its entire figure translucent and glowing a chilling shade of blue. “Ah?” the ghost chirped, an unperturbed grin ever-present on his features, “But Teddy said so himself: it’s urgent.”

“I only said that because you started yanking me around out of nowhere!” Theo shot back, his hand shooting outwards and grabbing the line that had been suspended between them. It was a leash, binding a thick collar around the human’s neck to a loop the apparition wore on his pinky finger. Theo wasn’t sure how or why it was made, but it appeared to be constructed out of whatever supernatural energy Pazu was made of, thus making it invisible and intangible to any normal human — for that much, he supposed he was grateful. But thanks to that “oh-so-omnificent” exorcist lineage of his, not only could Theo both see and feel it; he had no choice not to. Furthermore, he had no idea how to take it off.

When the playful ghost pounced to clasp it on first thing in the morning, of course Theo feared the worst. But throughout the day, Pazu had only hovered close by, even holding out his hand so that there was some slack on the lead. The thought that the giant nuisance just wanted to give his human toy a reminder of who he “belonged to” was deeply aggravating, and the large, gaudy, functionally useless bow Pazu attached to the side of the collar got in the way sometimes, but ultimately, the whole scheme had been harmless. Until the exact moment Theo let his guard down. His mistake, the exorcist grudged inwardly, to put any degree of trust in that ghost.

“Mmm, but…that pretty girl liked you, I think,” Pazu pointed out, readjusting so he laid on his front. With one hand, he propped his head up, and with the other, he idly twirled the leash around his pinky, reeling Theo closer at an ominous pace. “And you liked her too, I think!”

“Gh—! What?” Theo was, quite frankly, more focused on struggling against the unstoppable force that came from what was essentially the giant merely waggling his finger than he was on whatever unrequited feelings a rookie had for him, “She’s just a coworker, I don’t—“

“You like her, right?” Pazu jeered, his toothy grin growing much closer than Theo preferred, “You wanna make babies with her, right”

“No! Could you not be so crass about it?!” the smaller of the two objected, having now been drawn as closely as the leash would allow. Had the monstrously sized spirit been human, Theo was certain this proximity would be suffocatingly warm from his body heat. But all that radiated off of Pazu’s flesh — if you could call it that — was an unnerving coldness that made the exorcist shudder even more.

“Really? Boo. No fun,” the apparition pouted, sinking his cheek further into the hand propping it up in a childish display of disappointment, “I like chasing them away. It’s funny.”

“That’s because — You. Are. Fucking. Deranged,” Theo reiterated, giving another useless tug against the collar that restrained him, “Now, can you just hurry up and do whatever you’re going to do? I have to smooth things over with marketing thanks to a certain someone, and the sooner I can get this damn thing off, the better.”

“Kehehe! So now Teddy wants to play?” Pazu asked in a delighted tone, denoting his good mood by sticking his tongue out. He was already so close that the ghost hardly had to tilt his head for the cyan appendage to reach him, and though Theo had grown dismayingly familiar with the inside of Pazu’s mouth, he certainly hadn’t grown used to it. His insides churned in disgust as the massive, slick muscle laved his body in cold spit, adding one final indignity as it flicked across his cheek. He hated every aspect of this ectoplasmic gunk — it seemed to seep straight through his clothes and cling to his skin, it was damn near impossible to wash off, and Pazu seemed to produce a copious amount of it at any given time. His tormentor liked to remind Theo of all those facts. Constantly.

“But, ah…nah, I’m not taking it off. You make a good pet. Started behaving yourself once you got used to it ‘n all. Good boy, good Teddy!” the giant cooed the unwanted praise, extending the pinky Theo was tied to in order to crudely pat his head, which only ended up in jostling him around to the point of nausea. “Makes me wanna spoil you ‘n spoil you, then spoil you some more!”

Theo felt that he and Pazu had different understandings of what the word “spoil” meant.

“What? No, this is the part where you do whatever twisted shit you feel like putting me through in the middle of my goddamn work day, then leave me alone for long enough to finish all my tasks! Which, by the way, keep piling up because of you!”

Pazu tilted his head. “But that’s not the game we’re playing today.”

“Game?!” Theo repeated, voice strained with rage and incredulity. Of course all of his suffering amounted to a fucking game for this freak. “Bwisit ka— look, okay, whatever. You can do whatever the hell you want to me when we get home, I’ll sit and take it, just please, for God’s sake, take this collar off of me.”

“Whatever I want?” Pazu parroted. His deceptively innocent smile widened. “As if I couldn’t already do that?”

Theo groaned, realizing he truly had no leverage in this situation. The only chance he had was to swallow his pride deep, deep down and get this over with. “Pazu, please, I…” the exorcist exhaled and gritted his teeth, already wishing he could drop dead. But if it meant becoming a spirit half as wicked as this one, then he’d force himself to keep on living. “I’ll be a good pet. Is that what you want to hear?”

Instantly, a booming cackle rattled through the room, though Theo knew by now he would be the only one who could hear it. Clearly, Pazu’s little game was going precisely how he wanted it to.

“Well! How can I say no to my adorable puppy?” Pazu trilled. Theo fumed silently, and briefly considered how badly he envied the deaf. “Yay, this game is so fun! I can’t wait to go home and play more! Just remember, Teddy…”

Without warning, the ghost lifted his hand up, effortlessly dragging the human tethered to it along with him. Theo burst into a fit of panic as this simple movement simultaneously removed the ground from under him and crushed his airways, his body twisting wildly in an attempt to free himself or make any room to breathe. Even with these primal instincts, his urge as a living being to fight for his life ingrained into every cell of his flailing body, it all stopped with one piercing glare. Pazu’s wispy hair shifted just enough to reveal a deep-set eyeball, an iris that swirled with colors humans weren’t meant to comprehend, a void-like pinprick of a pupil that served as a core for unfathomable malice…all staring directly through Theo.

“I’ll be thoroughly testing every last one of your delicate little limits tonight. I wonder what else I could tie that leash of yours to? How long you’ll last before you’re begging for my assistance again? Whether or not you’ll entertain me enough? If you’ll go back on your promise of being a good pet? What the consequences for lying would be? Oh, I’m so desperately thrilled to find out. Aren’t you, little exorcist?”

His voice was deeper and colder, his vocabulary significantly more articulate. It was times like these that Theo fully understood the extent to which Pazu was just toying with him most of the time. Understood what he was truly up against. And it terrified him.

But it didn’t last long. After all, if it had, Theo would have asphyxiated then and there. Pazu opened up his hand, and with that movement the collar and leash dissolved. Not in a beautiful cloud of sparkles and light like in the movies, though — no, in fact, a more accurate description would have been that they ‘melted.’ Theo collapsed to the floor, heaving and coughing as he desperately refilled his lungs with much-needed air. The ghostly objects morphed and dripped into the same substance that Pazu secreted from his tongue, soaking the human’s trembling form even further. By the time he’d hacked and gagged enough to get his breathing somewhat steady again, the human was kneeling in a puddle of the stuff.

“Okiedokie then!” the spirit announced, abandoning his previous disposition. Lifting off the floor and hovering in the air once again, he watched as his toy struggled to regain his footing, fruitlessly batting away the viscous ectoplasm in the process. “Go n’ run along! Play nice! Eat your drugs, don’t do vegetables!”

Theo didn’t have the energy to unpack the absurdities of that sentence.

“I’ll let you recharge so we can play extra hard tonight. Call for me if you get lonely! Well, not like I can go very far anyways, kee-hee!”

And, finally, Theo was alone. He stared absently at the floor, wiping away (what he presumed to be) his own saliva from his chin and straightening his tie. He really, really needed to stop dealing with the devil. It seriously may have been better to put up with a day of getting yanked around by a ghost’s whims.

But what was done, was done. He needed to make the most of the daylight he had, seeing as he bargained so desperately for it. He pushed his way out of the empty conference room, half-staggering towards the marketing department, attempting to appear as if he hadn’t just had a near-death experience. Maybe that nice woman wouldn’t mind picking up where they left off, and at the very least he could get a coffee date out of this whole ordeal.

(He didn’t. She never approached Theo again.)