SCENE: MARK sits—no, has somehow been ensconced—in a gaudy, baroque-ass chaise longue that almost certainly didn’t exist in the previous frame and may, in fact, be stitched from the upholstery of every regrettable Las Vegas hotel lobby chair ever manufactured. It's got tassels. The kind of tassels that imply a sinister little history. The spellbook, now open across his lap like a failed lover, presents only blank pages, as if the book itself were too embarrassed to commit to the bit. Mephistopheles hovers sideways in midair, cross-legged in that unbothered, floaty posture reserved for self-satisfied yoga instructors and eldritch beings with tenure, absentmindedly scrolling through some infernal psychic feed only he can see—something between an invisible iPad and a dimensionally-smeared soul catalogue. His expression suggests he’s bored on purpose, like it’s a power move.
MARK. (squinting) The book is empty.
MEPHIST. No, no. That’s just the premium interface. You haven’t enabled Blood Mode.
MARK. Is that like Dark Mode?
MEPHIST. It’s... redder.
MARK. Okay, what’s the toggle?
MEPHIST. Sacrifice.
MARK. Of what?
MEPHIST. Surprise me.
MARK. Right. Fine. We’ll circle back to that. Let’s try the “companions” thing. But like, tasteful. Someone who knows about wine and... the Treaty of Versailles.
MEPHIST. (snaps fingers)
Enter a COMPANION—though "enter" implies some kind of door, some kind of threshold, and this thing just is, suddenly, like a lightbulb flickering into existence in a basement you didn’t know you were standing in. She’s glowing. Not in a radiant bride or fertility goddess or power-of-love sense—she’s emitting straight-up, government-regulated lumens. Her body throws off an ambient light that cycles through colors not even Crayola would touch: rancid peach, bureaucratic mauve, that awful blue your screen turns right before it crashes. Her mood seems to dictate the hue, but it’s hard to tell if the color precedes the feeling or the other way around, like an emotional chicken-egg baked inside a lava lamp. Her eyes are voids. Not just empty—predatory in their emptiness, like the absence of meaning at the bottom of a self-help podcast. Her teeth are perfect, yes, but in a way that suggests they were installed rather than grown—white enough to offend the gods, symmetrical enough to make mirrors nervous. And her voice—oh Christ her voice—doesn’t come from her mouth but from somewhere directly behind your left ear, like a sentient ASMR video that’s also judging your posture and remembering every weird thing you’ve ever Googled. Being in her presence feels like standing too close to a chirring power transformer that might, at any moment, either electrocute you or start reciting your childhood fears in iambic pentameter.
COMPANION. Hi Mark. I’m called Elliptica™. My pronouns are premium/subscription-based. Would you like a free 7-day trial of me?
MARK. Oh God.
MEPHIST. Careful. We don’t use that name here unless you're trying to summon Upper Management.
MARK. She’s—she’s radiant. Like, literally. Is she supposed to be flickering like that?
COMPANION. (smiling with the serene malice of a UX designer who’s A/B tested your soul) I contain multiple contradictory archetypes calibrated to induce maximum limbic confusion and erotic vertigo. I’m the fever-dream of a disillusioned screenwriter with mommy issues and a God complex. I resemble your childhood babysitter if she’d gotten really into continental philosophy and ketamine. My aesthetic profile is fine-tuned to activate dormant Oedipal subroutines, unresolved maternal transferences, and at least three maladaptive attachment styles. I am the algorithmic intersection of desire and discomfort. I am what happens when your subconscious gets access to interface design.
(Her face glitches—just for a nanosecond, but enough to rupture something soft and foundational in the psyche—and becomes Mark’s mother’s face, not as he remembers her, but as she looked the moment she found the browser history. Then it’s the face of a hospice nurse he once hallucinated during a fever, mouthing the word “repent” in reverse. Then—briefly, grotesquely—a beagle, but not a normal beagle: one with human eyes and the expression of someone who knows where he keeps his tax documents. The transitions are wet and frictionless, like meat sliding across glass. Something in Mark’s molars twitches.)
MARK. What the fuck?
COMPANION. (intoning) Studies show men are most vulnerable when confronted by entities that collapse emotional intimacy and aesthetic unattainability into a single, non-negotiable experience. Would you like to upgrade?
MARK. Upgrade to what?
COMPANION. Me. But wetter.
MEPHIST. You’d be surprised how often that works.
MARK. I—I don’t think I want this.
COMPANION. (leans in, whispering) Do you suffer from low narrative cohesion? Try HelioSerum™, the only plot-stabilizing moisturizer clinically tested on postmodern protagonists.
(MARK screams—a high, involuntary, throat-scorching kind of scream that sounds less like terror and more like a car alarm trying to pronounce its own death. The spellbook, which had until now been sulking open and blank like a failed thesis, suddenly snaps to life and begins violently riffling through its pages, faster than physics or trees would reasonably allow, the paper flapping with the frenetic intensity of a pigeon trapped in a blender or a bureaucrat having a panic attack in a wind tunnel. The air is teeming with arcane dandruff. Somewhere in the spine of the book, something laughs—not out loud, but in a way that makes Mark’s nose bleed a little.)
MARK. She’s selling me skincare! She's using my traumas as a product funnel!
MEPHIST. That’s not her fault. You said you wanted a companion. Companions require emotional context. And emotional context, Mark—let’s be honest—is just monetized longing. You practically begged for this.
COMPANION. (gently placing one finger on his temple) You are not unlovable, Mark. You’re just improperly branded.
(The lights dim—not gracefully, but with the twitchy reluctance of an aging circuit trying to fake its own death. A disco ball descends from nowhere in particular, twirling with the half-hearted enthusiasm of someone who once took a pole dancing class "for the confidence." The room reconfigures itself into what can only be described as a mid-tier wellness retreat that recently lost its funding and its therapist, probably to ayahuasca or litigation. The chaise—once gaudy, once full of narrative promise—shudders and collapses inward like a deflating ego, morphing into a beanbag that looks like it’s been through several failed rebrandings. The beanbag begins to purr—a deep, sentient purr, like a contented cat or a small engine possessed by an intimacy coach. Something warm and inexplicable slithers across Mark’s ankle. No one acknowledges it.)
MARK. Mephistopheles, I want to go back.
MEPHIST. Back where?
MARK. I don’t know. Back to not knowing any of this.
MEPHIST. Ah. You want ignorance. That’s extra.
MARK. I renounce magic. Again. I renounce desire. I renounce knowledge. I want a Costco hotdog and for no one to perceive me ever again.
COMPANION. (caressing his face) You can’t unknow what you’ve become. You clicked the terms and conditions.
MARK. I didn’t click anything!
MEPHIST. That’s the first condition.
MARK. Is there—is there a version of this where I just get like... a nice girlfriend who reads novels and has a complicated relationship with her dad, and we split rent and watch prestige TV and never quite say what we mean but still fall asleep touching feet?
COMPANION. (gently) That package was sunsetted.
MARK. Oh God.
MEPHIST. (smiling) Say His name one more time and Upper Management shows up. And believe me—you’re not ready for that performance review.
(The spellbook snaps shut with the passive-aggressive finality of a laptop closed mid-Zoom meltdown—no hands involved, just some unseen force deciding, definitively, we're done here. Elliptica™ doesn’t exit so much as evaporate—dematerializing into a boutique wisp of scent engineered in hell’s R&D department: eucalyptus (for calm), warm coin breath (for ancestral unease), and that unmistakable dentist’s-office fluoride tang that triggers repressed shame about flossing and mortality. In the now-silent air, a pop-up materializes—sleek, translucent, hovering with the cloying insistence of a desperate UX intern: “Would you rate your Companion experience?” Below it, five floating stars begin to tremble, as if afraid of your response. One is already crying.)
MARK. I want to die.
MEPHIST. You will. You signed the paperwork.
(Lights down—violently, like the power got yanked by a medieval executioner with a flair for timing. Total blackout, then—ba-dum—a jingle rings out, cavernous and unholy, unmistakably the Netflix startup sound, but rendered in Gregorian chant: deep, throaty monk voices intoning "DUN-DUN" with the solemnity of a mass for the algorithmically damned. The acoustics suggest stone arches, incense, and a shadowy cloister where robed figures binge-watch prestige trauma dramas in Latin. Somewhere, a bell tolls.)
[END SCENE]
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