Lonely Stories by Xavier St John (best management books of all time .txt) 📕

grimy sweat. Then I saw him: a large, elderly man, draped in a billowing white toga that rested below his long, curly beard. He radiated an aura of power, but his smile wasn’t quite right. I knew who he was - I had a book about him that I kept in the cockpit, which I foolishly thought would bring me luck in dire circumstances.

He was God.

“Am I dead?” I muttered. God laughed and knelt down to see my face. His toga swept dust from the ground behind Him, leaving a maelstrom of dirt in his wake. Slowly, je nodded.

“Where... where am I?” I asked. He laughed again. However, this time he didn’t stop, his face stretching to accommodate his booming fits of laughter that filled the cavern. His eyes met mine, and jis bellowing abruptly ceased. The, he took a step back, regaining his full height, and opened his mouth to speak.

“You are dead. After you die, heaven awaits you.” God’s smile was not one of happiness or excitement, but one of something I couldn’t quite place – it looked like pity. I nodded.

“wrong.” said God. I stopped. I must have misheard. Chuckling to himself, God offered me an empty smile that hung across his face.

“Wrong. All of you have got it the wrong way around.” I creased my brow, shaking my head as I tried to decipher what God had said. The wrong way around? How could that be possible? But that must mean...

“Yes. Your time in heaven is over. Welcome to life.”

 

Hell Bent

 

Hell Bent

 

The man staggered up the sand dune, the air whistling past as the desert snatched his breath from him. Heavy with exhaustion, his feet left large footprints, cutting deeper with each step. His eyes were barely open - the sand was being whipped into a storm by the wind, blinding him to the sea of yellow that stretched on to the horizon. He slumped onto the incline, his feet still driving forwards lethargically as his eyes began to close. The night was clear and cold; his hands were completely numb as they grabbed at the sand in front of him, and under the full moon they were as white as bone. With all his strength he dragged himself up to the top of the dune, the coarse grains seeping into his raw skin as the storm grew stronger. On his hands and knees, he outstretched his arm in one final grasp before he collapsed, alone, in the desert.

"MORTAL."
The man, slowly waking, squinted with one eye. It was still dark, yet the wind had subsided and heat radiated from in front of him. All he could see was yellow, red and black. As his vision focused and he opened his other eye, he saw the sand dune and a figure, illuminated in the darkness by a throbbing red. As the figure stepped closer, the horns on his head became visible and the man's eyes widened as he propped himself up. Looking down on him as his tail idly flailed from side to side in the sand, a voice pierced the air.
"Hello Damien," said the devil.

The bargain went simply enough. In return for his soul, Damien would receive 5 favours. The devil would grant these to him without question, and at any time of Damien's choosing. In order to summon the devil, Damien was given an ivory needle. He was told that when he required a favour, he was to plunge the needle into his finger and the devil would appear before him. Damien took the needle without hesitation, tucking it into the pocket of his ripped cargo shorts.

The bargain was cemented with a blood pact between the two parties - atop the sand dune, the devil and Damien stood facing each other. A brief moment of silence passed. Suddenly, the devil's tail whipped around and sliced a gouge into Damien's hand. He screamed in agony, crashing to his knees and clutching his palm as blood poured from the deep gash. The devil smiled, and, as he held it out, his demonic hand spontaneously began oozing a red sludge. As Damien's face contorted in torment, the devil grabbed Damien's bleeding hand and pressed it against his own. A loud boom reverberated through the desert as a wave of wind hurtled past Damien's face. The sand around him began to rise. The gale whipped up a tornado encircling the dune as they stood in the storm's eye. Spears of sand jutted inwards from the edges of the sandstorm and blasted against the two hands until a writhing ball of sand covered the ungodly handshake. Damien looked up at the devil's face, which was painted with a mixture of glee and madness as the tornado grew stronger and the wind sped up.
"GOODBYE, DAMIEN," bellowed the devil, locking eyes with him. The spinning walls of sand exploded inwards, and Damien instinctively threw his hands up to protect his face. When he uncovered his eyes again, the devil and the sandstorm were gone. The pain from Damien's hand quickly evaporated, and upon inspection the wound was now a long, jagged scar from his index finger to his wrist. Looking around, there was nothing but sand. Delirious, Damien's eyes rolled back as he thudded against the dune, unconscious.

Damien woke with a cold sweat and the hairs on the back of his neck on end. Staring at the ceiling of his bedsit, he took a shallow, shaking breath and sat up. He was at home. His grubby room was the same dingey grey, and the smell of cigarettes and cannabis hung in the air. He dressed himself, ready for his day job, and his boring, dead-end life continued as normal - with just one small difference. Beside the stacked pile of Nuts and Sports Illustrated on his desk, a small needle sat, ready and waiting.

Months passed, yet the dream of the desert clung to Damien like a parasite. It plagued his mind as a constant afterthought, worming it's way into his life again and again - it was unbearable. Nothing felt real. He was trapped in a cycle of spending money, getting drunk and feeling nothing, and each night Damien became more numb to the world. After a long, lonely night, Damien crashed back into his bedsit. Gripping the table-edge, he lurched towards the bin in the corner and threw up on the carpet beside it, spraying chunky vomit into the mottled fabric. Drooling into the mess, his eyes began to shut as he slowly drifted forward. His forehead smashed against the wall as he slumped to the floor, face-down in his sick.

"Well that was disappointing," said the devil, a seething anger behind his soft words. "We didn't even get a chance."
A lava stream seeped from high above the devil, pooling at his feet. Molten rock poured across his brogues and spattered against the bottom of his crisp dress trousers. The lava oozed towards the arc that had been sliced into the rock by his swinging tail, bubbling and steaming along the volcanic floor. At head height, the flow was unnaturally warped, providing a bubbling image of Damien in the lava. the magma gurgled and spat a glob out of the stream and onto the devil's black waistcoat. A boiling hole forming on his chest, the devil swiped the lava away with a talon. His jaw clenched as his companion cleared their throat. Beside the devil, a tall, pale human, his silver hair hanging across a long, dark robe, peered at the shimmering image of Damien asleep in vomit.
"Surely this isn't the end?" asked Dracula. Damien murmured into his sick one final time before his body went slack.
The devil nodded, his teeth gritted as his clawed hand slowly closed into a fist. The ground shifting as a tremor shook the floor. Dracula stumbled slightly, losing his balance as the earthquake intensified. The devil's clenched fist suddenly released, and the tremor stopped. The devil, his black eyes fixed on the image, growled:
"You're going up."

Damien's eyes opened. He blinked a few times, furrowed his brow and looked left and right. It was white. All of it. The fluffy, cotton wool floor, the three doors, even the air - all the same, pure white. Looking down at his hands, Damien's jaw dropped. They were semi-transparent, with a pale ethereal glow. Through his left hand, he could see a dull green spreading through the cloud below him. The needle, now covered in some green goo, sat there at the source of the contagion. A flash of the desert filled Damien's head. He bent down, reached out for the white ivory within the gunk and missed it. He went for it again, and missed again. He was sure his hand was in the right place. Frowning, he knelt down, rummaging with both hands, but still couldn't touch the needle or the goo. He stopped and stared. Slowly, he stretched out his index finger and pushed it towards the palm of his other hand. His finger went straight through.
"Hello there!" a voice said cheerfully from above him.

"Welcome to the afterlife. I see you have something to declare! That's rare..."
The cherub, whose golden wings bobbed him gently up and down, had a friendly smile and clipboard in hand.
"I see you are... Damien?" The cherub said, his angelic features furrowing as his finger traced his way down the clipboard.
"You've got a strange mark next to your name. Let me get my manager."
There was a sudden pop, like a balloon bursting, and the angel disappeared. Damien blinked, his jaw slack as he knelt beside the needle's green infection. Moments later, a second pop echoed around him and the cherub sprang back into existence alongside a man in a toga.
"See, someone's overruled it!" the cherub explained to the toga. The clipboard was exchanged, and after careful inspection the man looked at Damien. He had a young face, with curly brown hair and a small beard. His toga was white, slipping over his arms and shoulders with effortless grace all the way down to his bare feet.
"W-what's happening?" stammered Damien.
"Oh boy... Do you want to take this?" said the cherub, turning to the young man. The man sighed, turned to Damien and spoke.
"Hello. Normally this is a lot more streamlined, and we're sorry for the hold-up - this time will be taken off your time in purgatory. It's an administrative nightmare. The long and short of it is, not only have you somehow brought contraband through, you've also been re-routed straight to hell. I'm sure this is a mix-up or the devil's work, both of which are not your fault."
Damien's mind boggled as he absorbed the words.
"But... but... Who are you?" asked Damien.
"Oh, I apologize, I forgot to introduce myself. I am Jesus."

Whilst Jesus escorted Damien to a pristine oak bench, the cherub popped out and popped back in with a full-body orange hazmat suit, complete with wing protectors and a pair of tongs. Carefully picking up the needle, he held it at