I gave my soul to the devil so that my wife could live again. My wife, so young and beautiful, dances around the house like she normally does and kisses me on the cheek before she goes to work. Everything is normal. When I gave my soul away, I forfeited my ability to feel any emotions.

Now, I am just a hollow shell that can walk and talk.

My wife kisses me on the cheek before smiling and leaving the house. I stand in the kitchen emotionless and empty. I cannot love or feel happy even when I have my wife, who I sacrificed my entire being for, by my side.

I go to the fridge and start making my breakfast for the day, then it hits me – a wave of dizziness and nausea. I can tell it was him, with a presence so big and dark that can he make anyone in a ten-mile radius feel sick and dizzy. I grasp on to the fridge’s door handle to keep my balance and try not to throw up.

“I need your help, Robert.” His voice is deep and rough as though it has something caught in its throat. I stay facing away from him, quite. “I need you to summon someone for me, an old friend that will be glad for it. If you do this for me, Robert, you will have your soul back. But of course, that does mean I would have to take your wife back with me.”

Though I may not have emotions, I still have the instinct to protect the one I had loved from any evil.

“You will have to take me,” I choke out. My vision is blurred as I sway from side to side feeling the clump of bile at the back of my throat. A bony, icy cold hand slowly clenches my shoulder and throws me backwards on to the floor.

Pain stretches throughout my back as I desperately try to breathe. Darkness surrounds my eyes as I try to force feeling and sensation back into my limbs. They are completely useless. My head aches as if someone is putting a hammer to the inside of my skull, moving over the contents of my brain. Slowly, I fade away and into the darkness.

My body feels sore and weak. I slowly sit up, hoping to be in hospital recovering. As my vision comes into focus, I see my wife by my bed, her head resting on the side. In that moment I cry – I had loved her for so long, but I had never told her how much. Her death would have been the end of me if I hadn’t given away my soul. I cry because for once I am able to feel emotion – everything lost before comes flooding back in like a tsunami.

I look around our old, quiet room to see a dark figure standing in the corner, watching us…