Zack Kauffmann, a handsome green-eyed and dark-haired young man, was returning from his Wednesday evening classes at Haussen School. He would find that his roommate, Matt Kovaks, was already back from his own classes and reading up to do his homework. In stark contrast to Zack, Matt had very light dirty-blonde hair and gray eyes, as well as being fairly plain.
“Are you still going at the books?” Zack rolled his eyes as he dropped his bag onto his bed, frowning.
“Just because you wait until the last moment to do your homework doesn’t mean everyone else does.” Matt wrote down another answer, then began to search through the book once more.
“All you ever do is study. Not to mention what you do study is completely stupid. Psychology? It’s the most intellectual thing you could be studying.” Zack sat down, grabbing a remote and starting to flip through the television stations although he knew it distracted Matt—or rather because he knew it distracted his roommate.
“I don’t see how medieval literature and Theology are much better.” Matt glanced irritably at the television before writing down his final answer and beginning to pack his books away. “Besides, it’s all a matter of opinion anyway.”
“Whatever…” Zack turned off the television when he noticed Matt was finished, since he hadn’t really wanted to watch it in the first place. “You’ll see one of these days that I’m the smart one, and all of your efforts are pathetically worthless.”
“Sure I will, sure I will.” Matt shook his head. “…Anyway, O brilliant one, I’m going on a date. Try not to burn down the dorm with your devil worship while I’m gone, alright?”

“It is NOT devil WORSHIP you moron!” The book Zack had thrown after his roommate bounced uselessly off the door and to the floor as Matt narrowly escaped it. “…As if someone as stupid as you could understand. Theology is going to get me everything I ever dreamed of.. And you, my ‘friend’, will be… Ah, I’m talking to myself.”
Sighing, he went over and picked the book up, dropping down on his bed and flipping mindlessly through the pages of it. He had it memorized, there was no point in re-reading it. Continually flipping, he found himself at the usual page—rituals to summon demons.
Today, though, one of the passages seemed to stand out to him. As he read it, he felt as though it were new information—although it couldn’t possibly be—and came upon a realization. That realization was that he finally knew exactly how to make the ‘devil worship’ as Matt called it actually work.
Smirking slowly, Zack relaxed against his pillow, reading over the paragraph a few more times. “I have to figure out my words carefully before I get to this… I know I can do it… I’ll teach you to talk back against me..”

Being careful to make sure that he had all of his plans in full detail, Zack mulled over them for an entire week. The following Wednesday he came into his dorm after class and didn’t bother heckling Matt—he would be proven right soon enough after all.
After several minutes of actual silence, Matt looked up and raised an eyebrow. “Something wrong with you? I expected the usual routine. Ah, I know. Someone proved you wrong and now you’re Atheist, right?”
“That’s exactly right.” Zack rolled his eyes, “No… I just decided you’re too stupid to comprehend, so I wouldn’t waste my time anymore. That’s all. Don’t you have anywhere to be?”
“My very presence sickens you now, does it?” Matt shook his head, “I’ll just go to the library to study to leave you in peace.” He collected his things and left, wincing slightly as the door was locked as soon as it fell closed behind him. “…Really now? Have fun with your devil worship.” He continued off, shaking his head again.
“I fully intend to… And I won’t let you coming back early screw it up for me.” Zack turned and went back into the room, beginning to set up for the ritual.

The technique he had chosen was, of course, a medieval one, but it was a ‘proven’ method, and that was all he needed. Some of the ‘ingredients’ for the summoning, he knew, were quite illegal to even consider especially on a school campus, but that didn’t bother him. It only meant that unfortunately he couldn’t force his idiot of a roommate to witness his greatest hour.
Once Zack had set up, he took a deep breath and began the ritual with a stone-serious look on his face. This was it, his chance to finally obtain everything, and he knew it would work.
At the end of the ritual, the candles blew out around him and the room stood in stock silence. Just before he began to wonder if he had done the ritual properly, he heard a small cough from behind him.
Zack jumped up and turned around toward the sound, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. He wound find a man with slicked back hair and a goatee lounging on the couch. “Ah.. You…”
“That’s right, Mr. Kauffmann. Lucifer. Satan. The devil. Take your pick. Though in the end, it doesn’t matter what you call me.” He stood up, menacing in his black suit and shining black dress shoes. “The fact is, Mr. Kauffmann, I’m a very busy man. So we should get down to business right away. What exactly is it that you called me here for?”

Zack took a deep breath, “Right.”
This was his chance, he couldn’t—and wouldn’t—screw it up. It was time to prove everyone in the world that this monster in front of him was nothing to fear and could be controlled with the right state of mind and the proper wording.
“I want to be put in the state where, as a living human being, I can learn the most.” He watched the lord of demons for his reaction, full of confidence.
Lucifer’s reaction couldn’t have been better, a dumbfounded look on his face. Disbelief in the fact that a mere human could have been brilliant enough to come up with just the set of words to get exactly what would put him in control.
After a few moments, the disbelief turned to annoyance, then anger. “Tch… As you wish.” He pulled a vial filled with a glowing red liquid from his breast pocket, holding it out to him. “Once you drink this, you will have your state of being.”
Knowing that he had tricked the devil himself into a contract that couldn’t be broken, Zack took the vial and drank it in a gulp. It went down hot, then he felt a cooling sensation. As that too faded, he felt his body tingling with the power that had been bestowed on him, slowly grinning.
“…Your wish is then granted. I’ll be on my way until you need me again, Master.” Lucifer hissed the final word in disgust, disappearing as the candles that had gone out on their own lit once more.

Snickering softly to himself, Zack packed away the materials that he had used for the summoning, looking down at the vial in his hand. It was marked with the Sigil of Lucifer burned deeply into the glass. “…He won’t be able to ignore the proof.”
As he set the vial on his desk, he heard a knock on the door. “Come on, Zack. Stealing my keys was not a funny joke. If you don’t open the door I’ll have to call someone to open it from out here. Then we’ll both need new keys—“
Zack strolled over and unlocked the door, opening it. “Sorry about that, buddy. I just had some business I needed to take care of alone.” He held Matt’s keys out to him. “Here you go, I never intended to keep them.”
“…Sure. I believe you.” Matt took the keys. “Can I come back in, or are you expecting me to find a hotel for the night?”
“No, come on inside.” Zack returned to his bed, scooping up the vial into his hands and looking it over with glee.
“…Uh-huh.” Matt walked inside, closing the door behind. “Buy that from some Occult store or something? That’s a weird symbol.”
“That’s why I said you don’t understand anything.” Zack waved the bottle at him, “You’re only given this symbol when you meet with Lucifer.”
“You mean Satan.” Matt sat down.
“Call him whatever, it’s not like it matters so long as you can win.” Zack continued to stare happily at the vial. “And win I have… I said it so perfectly, I’ll get the most knowledge a living human can… ‘I want to be put in the state where, as a living human being, I can learn the most.’ It was pure poetry…”
“So what, you’re saying Satan was here?” Matt rolled his eyes. “…Well although you’ve already been asleep and had quite the dream, I, on the other hand, am going to bed.”
“Do as you please, non-believer. You’ll see soon.” Zack tucked the vial under his pillow.

The following morning, Zack woke to find that the clothes he had gone to bed in somehow felt looser on his body. Deciding it was just part of the process—you had to be in good shape to be said to be the most brilliant didn’t you?—he continued on as though nothing had changed.
Changing into his favorite outfit and pulling a belt around the loops of his jeans, he headed out for his Thursday morning classes. He’d probably have to go shopping for some better fitting clothes that afternoon, but with the money he could make with ultimate knowledge, it wouldn’t be a problem.
As class went on, he felt bored. The teacher was going over things the class had tested on, so what was the point? He knew this, everyone in the class knew this, what he needed was something new that he could absorb quickly and move on. Perhaps he'd even beat Matt at his own game and learn some Psychology in a week.
By noon, he found himself tightening the belt yet again as he took a break for lunch. The weight loss was rapid, but he figured again that it was just part of the learning process. Tomorrow he would find himself some new clothes, since he couldn’t possibly keep losing weight for two days.

That evening as Zack returned to the dorm, he adjusted his belt another time. In the hours since lunch he seemed to have lost more weight despite how much he had eaten.
This action caught Matt’s eye as he packed up to study at the library again. “Gone on a Devil’s Diet?”
“Very funny.” Zack shot back irritably. He hadn’t managed to learn anything new yet, so he just wanted Matt to leave him be. Although he could count on himself to be able to learn it, he apparently couldn’t count on idiots to show him the things they knew. He’d have to get it himself. “Just get lost, would you?”
“I’m going.” Matt picked up his bag and left while shaking his head as usual. Even that sight hadn’t changed.
Zack irritably picked up one of the books on Psychology that Matt had left behind. If nothing else, he could learn all he needed to know about that and then rub it in his roommate’s face. That, at least, would be an accomplishment for the day.
Two hours into reading the book, though, he dropped it to the floor and groaned. “Why the hell don’t I get it? I should be able to learn this and memorize it with no problems.”
He grabbed the book and threw it back on Matt’s bed. “It must be that information is false… Can’t learn something that’s not true if you want ultimate knowledge… I knew I was right all along. What a fool he is.”

Friday morning, he pulled on some of his older clothes. By now his newer ones didn’t fit at all, even with the help of a belt. Though by now he began noticing other things—he wasn’t just losing fat weight, his muscle mass was also diminishing along with his strength. As he thought it over, he went into the bathroom to brush his teeth, reaching up to pull his toothpaste from the small shelf—only to find it just out of reach.
“What the?” he stared, then slowly looked down at himself, then to the mirror. Having pulled on a pair of shorts he hadn’t noticed that fat and muscle weren’t all he was losing—he had also lost several inches in height over the past two days. “No way…”
Zack slowly backed up to lean against the wall, staring at himself in the mirror. It couldn’t be possible, could it? He seemed to be losing age, how could that possibly lead to ultimate knowledge?

Something was clearly wrong, the deal wasn’t being held up. The only thing he could do was to call Satan back and insist that he explain this result. But Matt was currently sleeping still, so he couldn’t call the demon back with his roommate still there could he?
After he’d done it once he shouldn’t need to perform a ritual, and calling Lucifer in front of Matt would prove it once and for all that he was right. But it would also prove that he had messed up somehow, and that was the last thing he wanted to admit in front of his moron of a roommate.
“Think, think, think…” he slid down to sit, putting a fist to his forehead while struggling to keep calm. “There has to be somewhere I can go to safely do this… Somewhere I won’t be caught… Somewhere, somewhere, somewhere….”
Hitting slightly at his forehead in fruitless hope that it would make him think faster, an idea came—there was a place in the woods very near the school that no one went to because of the difficulty in getting to a clear place. He had the time and the need, so that’s what he would do.
Standing up, he moved quickly and silently into his shoes, took his key, and went out the door. After getting silently off campus, Zack burst into a run all the way to the edge of the trees.
He then made his way through the winding briars and sticking bushes to a small clearing. Clenching his fists from the stinging of both having been caught in a few of the bushes and the injustice of something going wrong with his plans, Zack called out.
“Come before me, foul Satan!”

The wind kicked up roughly around him, making the small cuts on his arms and legs burn, before the master of demons appeared in front of him, his red eyes glowing maliciously and a smirk painted across his thin lips. “Is something wrong, Master?”
“You know something is wrong!” Zack pointed at him, “Stop this right now! There was no loss of age in our agreement, there was only my attaining a state in which I could learn the most as a living human! This wasn’t part—“
“But it was.” Lucifer tilted his head slightly to the side as he folded his arms. “I’m returning you to the state where a human has the most to learn. That would be infancy, would it not? As a child, the entire world is open to you. I’ve done as you wished, Master.”
“No!” Zack shook his head fervently, making a slight ‘cutting’ motion with the arm that had been pointed at the devil. “That’s not what I wanted, I wanted to be able to learn more as I am now! You’re contracted to give me what I wanted when I summon you!”
“Then perhaps that’s what you should have asked for?” Lucifer absently inspected his fingernails for dirt as if he were bored with the entire situation. “I did as you asked, Young Master. You shouldn’t complain.”
“Then I want to change it! I summoned you here again, I can change what I asked for!” Zack hardly realized, in his anger, that his closeness to Lucifer was speeding up the de-aging process even further. His body was growing steadily shorter and his voice was becoming more high pitched.

“That isn’t how the contract works, Young Master.” Lucifer easily sidestepped as a Zack with the appearance of a 13-year-old charged him. “Now, now… You can’t get what you want through talking so you resort to violence? You should learn better.” He chuckled softly at his own joke.
“No… No, no!” Zack stumbled and turned around to face the demon as he pulled the shoulder of his shirt back up, only to have it slip back down. “You can’t, you have to stop it, I don’t want to! Please!”
“As you said, we already have a contract.” Satan reached forward and held his hand out, the empty vial that Zack had left under his pillow now there in his hand. “You accepted it by drinking this. Look at you… About 10 now, is it? Won’t be long now, little one.”
Lucifer pat Zack’s head as the small boy was now clinging and pulling at the devil’s suit, begging for the contract to be taken back.
“Please, please! I’ll do anything you want me to, I don’t want to be a baby!” Zack fell to his knees, tugging still, “Please, I don’t want to!”
“I don’t think so.” Lucifer pushed Zack’s hand off him, stepping back. “…Learn well, my little demon.”
With another gust of wind he disappeared, leaving Zack alone in the woods.

After several minutes of cowering on the ground, Zack forced himself up, running back toward the college.
He now ignored the briars, being torn by them as he went through. He was still losing age, now appearing to be about 5. Having lost his shorts in the woods, it was only lucky that the shirt he had chosen was long enough to cover to his knees.
Arriving, bloody, back to his dorm, he struggled to reach and unlock the door, finding it more difficult from the new angle and his panic. Managing to get the door open he left it so, running straight through and jumping onto Matt where he slept—this was the only conclusion he could come up with. “Wake up, wake UP right now!”

Matt jumped slightly, rubbing his face and slowly looking at him. “…Oh dear. Are you lost little guy?” he sat up, inspecting the cuts on the strange child who had come running in.
“No, no! It’s me!” he pushed at his hands, “It’s Zack! He did this to me, he… I’m gonna be a baby!” Zack pulled at Matt’s shirt. “You have to help me!”
“…So you were serious, weren’t you?” Matt slowly rubbed his face, Zack silently grateful that he believed him, “I knew this would get you in over your head… I tried to warn you… You can’t change what you’ve done. But I’ll do my best to hide it… Believe me though, you’re going to be learning exactly what I want you to.”
He stood up and sat Zack down on his bed, fixing up the cuts as he continually de-aged. “…So I’m a father thanks to the devil. I need diapers.” Matt covered his face, the only response he received from Zack being tears and sobs.