reference art:

content: goat anthro, references of gay shit, "subtle" flirting, manipulative language



Dijkstrawoo. Part 1 of however many.


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music: night noises
(no reference art)
Another day on the job. Another day grinding money. Money for loans, money for food, money for rent, money for utilities. Money, money, money, money, money. It's all about money. Sacrifice your life to live.
Gary has vices, but he doesn't let them get in the way of his work. "Due diligence is its own reward," he often tells himself. Gary has put himself to bed for yet another night to spend yet another day at work tomorrow. The birds will chirp, the sun will ring, the clouds will roll, and his work will end after nine hours, approximately one hour of which is composed of a nice, relaxing lunch break and maybe some shooting the breeze with a boss that is unusually relaxed.
Gary is 24 and already feels like his entire life is planned. No plans to marry, have kids, or anything -- just grinding through the system and hoping that something will just happen by mere chance. Probability dictates that surely, eventually, something weird will happen eventually, right?
Lately, it's not been enough. It's gnawed at him little by little that it's not enough. It feels as if doubt itself has crept into his mind and wrought havoc upon his normal, relaxing daily routine. Lying in bed, Gary, as if praying to whatever God may exist, says out loud: "Sometimes, I want to escape."
"I can help you with that." A voice from nowhere.
Gary looks around the room in a cold sweat, letting out a sheepish "Who's there?" as if he'd receive a valuable answer. "I'm armed!" He immediately guns for the pistol in his nightstand, pointing it in seemingly-random directions.
The voice responds simply and clearly: "Wanna find out? Put your pillow on the other side of the bed."
After some trepidation and putting the pistol away, Gary decides to go along with it. He guzzles down a glass of water, moves his pillow to the foot of his bed, then proceeds to lie down to sleep with his head now resting at a yet-unexplored position of his bedscape. Zounds -- such mystery awaits. Maybe he'll try changing his brand of toothpaste next time he goes shopping.


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music: Cafe Voile
art reference. pic unrelated to his beverage of choice.
Rather than the unfamiliar void, Gary finds himself sitting in broad daylight in a cafe. Instead of the usual dream logic that he's grown to know, there's a very clear order of events.

"Glad to see that you've come!" A tall, goat-like figure sits on the other end of the table. Horns swirl out of his skull, clearly somehow trained to do so like a middle-American housewife might curl her hair as an expression of status. He's got the air of a salesman around him, but at the same time he seems friendly enough. A third eye sits atop his forehead, not nearly as expressive as the two in more familiar positions. Is it an accessory? Regardless, the appearance alone has caught Gary's eye.

The goat sits on the other table, lazily spreading his legs in his chair like trying to air out a sausage. His jet black suit is pristine and immaculate short of some coffee stains and the occasional piece of fur. The only hint as to his goal or history is the yellow in his eyes and on his tie.

"Okay, I've seen enough fiction of the supernatural to know this trope. You want my soul, and you're going to give me... what, exactly?" Gary taps a finger on the polished, recently-cleaned wooden table currently housing two mugs of what appears to be coffee. The opportunity itself is nice, but at face value he'd still not take it because the demon's existence proves to him that there is an afterlife and therefore that he has something to lose. It'd have to be something pretty good to justify the apparent risks. Yet, even as Gary exercises caution, there's something calming about Gary's appearance. He's seen cartoon characters that look like anthropomorphic animals before -- ultimately, that makes a goat in a suit much less disarming.
"Slow your roll, buddy. I don't want anything. I'm here to make a proposition." He's clearly also heard that response before. The goat shuffles some papers in his hands. "You've been sighing, looking out the window wistfully, taking up non-hobbies, and seeing your friends less. You clearly want for some meaningful change--"

Blah blah blah, more of this "your life is shit let me take your soul" nonsense. "Just make your pitch, please." The frustrated interjection catches the goat off guard.
The goat bleats out: "Call me Mammon. You want to escape your job, right? I want a favor from you. I want to borrow your body to see the outside world without fear of being dragged back down."
"In exchange for?"
"Being more attractive, being able to perform magic, having untold wealth and the ability to generate an alibi, and therefore being able to sleep in as long as you like instead of going to work in the morning six days a week for the rest of your naturally boring life."
Big pitch. Gary's first line of thought is to play to weaknesses that Mammon's displayed -- chiefly of which being his need to occupy Gary's body and the clear angle at sex that was just made. "And are you going to let me set rules for how you get to use my body, or are you going to just expect me to give you free reign of my meat sack?"
Mammon gets flustered again, avoiding eye contact at the expression "meat sack". "No, no, I of course want to establish a relationship of m-mutual trust, Gary."
Success. Time to show that you know what you're talking about, Gary. "And I've read enough stories of a man selling his soul and losing everything just for some feeble worldly ambition."
"You've seen the episode of The Twilight Zone about a man who sells his soul for eternal life, yet you still wish you could live forever sometimes. Do you want more than what I've proposed?"
Gary leans forward and angles his face as if to intimidate. "You and me. We fuck in this space whenever I want it. I want a space where I can freely and at my own will escape reality to have you as my fully complicit and loyal boyfriend. An entire separate world eschewed in the name of providing a secondary existence to the world outside. A blink in the eye of time itself, but practical eternities in here." Gary gestures like a businessman who has it all planned out on the table, drawing imaginary shapes on the surface with his fingers like a child left to draw a Christmas list to wealthy parents.
Were there not fur on Mammon's face, he'd be as red as a beet. A growing bulge in his pants that he tries to hide by crossing his legs makes itself apparent through his body language. He bites his lip a bit at the word "boyfriend", clearly wanting some action himself. Seconds pass idly, Gary staring down Mammon and expecting an answer.
"You can't just demand a full-assed liminal space for one soul, you know! If I could make something like that so freely, I'd have... I'd have done so myself instead of coming to the physical plane just to hitch a ride in someone's noggin!"
He places a hand on the table. "We can work something out, but I've only got this cafe rented out for so long. If you want to make a deal so badly, then quit wasting my time--"
Gary places a hand over his in turn. "Isn't that what I should be telling you?" The manipulator reveals himself. "If you want to ride my dick so badly, then maybe the one who wants to live in my body so badly should be more... cooperative." Gary crosses one leg over the other, sitting back while sipping at what he's learned to be hot chocolate. Bad drink for the summmer, but it's comfy here.
Gary gently sets down the drink, then pulls Mammon over by his tie like a leash, coaxing a bleat out of the large, sheepish goat. "You clearly want something from me, goat boy. You basically already told me that you have something to lose by not nailing this deal."
Releasing Mammon's tie, Gary leans back again as if playing "good cop" to counteract his "bad cop". "If you can't create a space separate from time in here, then I want you to be able to manifest in reality and go out in public with me. I want a boyfriend, and I want to be able to tell the universe itself that I control him, not the other way around." During this monologue, Mammon fixes his suit, rubbing out a wrinkle introduced by the tie grab.
"Geez kid, you're playing rough and hard to get. You're lucky you're right, otherwise I'd have left at the word 'eschewed' -- seriously, who uses that word anymore?" Mammon glugs down his coffee. "Look. I don't want your eternal soul. I want a body I can at least use to hide from The Powers That Be. I'll do whatever you want for it. Every other possible vessel in the area is either taken or in someone else's domain -- can't fuck with that."
Gary cracks a smile, folding his hands to place his chin atop them. "Then let me make this clear, and in writing." The slightest hint of a smile forms on Mammon's face -- the first positive emotion Mammon's had since their mutual introduction.


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music: More Touhou music, I guess. Improvise manipulator doing thing if you don't like this one.


What feels like literal hours pass as Gary and Mammon quibble over a document for a contract. Terms and conditions, tit for tat, function for operands. A good part of this time is taken up by the addition and removal of certain conditions, some of which causing visible or audible frustration from Mammon. Gary, finally, reads it aloud after dusting any loose ink from the page:
I, Gary Anon Emus, permit Mammon to inhabit and use my body only with my persistent, active, and non-coerced permission such that coercion is in the form of situational, physical, magical, existential, familial, or otherwise personal leverage.
I, Gary Anon Emus, permit Mammon to use my body to hide from The Powers That Be without actively making use of it short of verbal suggestions, using me as an active and persistent witness even when not in direct view or audible range except when on errands.
I, Gary Anon Emus, will receive Mammon's loyal servitude, title being "Husband" complete with a traditional marriage and all implications that said marriage would hold upon contracts imposed exclusively upon Mammon.
I, Gary Anon Emus, will maintain eternal youth, significant wealth, and a lifetime of enjoyment punctuated with cutesy, mutually-loving exchanges.
I, Gary Anon Emus, will be able to make physical contact with Mammon at any time I wish.
I, Gary Anon Emus, will be able to make any request of Mammon and have it fulfilled promptly except at the existential threat of Mammon or myself.
I, Gary Anon Emus, will gain full access to Mammon's abilities through the wedding band used.
"Hard sell, kid. You're gutsy to talk to a demon like you do. I hope you don't do something stupid! Hah. This contract's fine. Just make sure to lube up before unloading those balls of steel in me, alright? Prick your thumb on my horn and press it down on the page to sign." He leans forward, inviting Gary to make it final. "You're lucky I hate the underworld as much as I do. It's like roller coaster that doesn't stop, I tell you!"
"Just let me sign the contract, Mammon." You jab your thumb on the-- ouch!-- surprisingly sharp tip of his horn. The glow of Gary's blood shines in the light of the artificial sun, blood slowly pooling into a drop at the tip of his thumb like dew on the morning grass before you'd drive to work. Miserable, boring, clerical, soul-sucking work. He thinks to himself, "Not anymore!", then jabs his thumb onto the paper like a judge banging a gavel, decisively declaring to the universe the course by which the rest of his life will take place.
"Looks like my job is done. You'll see a lot more of me from now on, Honey." He lets out a hearty chuckle, kisses Gary on the cheek, then disappears with the rest of the cafe like ink and wet paint being cleanly wiped from a page of construction paper. Gary feels himself start to fall.


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Reference art.

music: birds chirping.
Gary wakes up in a cold sweat, drawing sharp, quick breaths. The salts from his sweat cake on his forehead like he spent the last nine hours in a fever. All he can properly remember is a long, drawn-out nightmare.
A warm, slightly-calloused hand touches his shoulder. In a soothing voice, he hears Mammon gently whisper a "Babe, babe, babe, it's okay," like Gary didn't just nearly die in his dream or something fucked like that.
Gary looks off to his left, a completely unclothed male Baphomet laying in bed next to him. His husband for the last... as long as he can remember. He clutches his left hand, feeling a warm, familiar wedding band as he remembers every vow, every funny memory, every heartfelt reaction. His family was unusually supportive of the whole "three-eyed goat demon" thing.
"How long was I out?" Gary has done this before. Entire days would pass and he would be practically comatose. Mammon would remodel the bedroom every time, though, so that Gary would always have something to come back to. He leans back against the brick house of a goat, letting Mammon gently comfort him in the glow of the morning sun.
"It's 7 PM, Gary. You were out for... about two days. I'm just glad my sleeping beauty's awake, though!"
Exchanging some cute I-love-yous and disgusting kisses, Gary and Mammon pass the "morning" together by watching TV. The "morning" news consists of a breaking news bulletin documenting another spree of murders.
"Probably some Satan at work again. The Satan that we're currently living in the territory of is somewhere on the order between 'massive' and 'frighteningly powerful', but I think he'll leave me alone as long as he knows I'm just here for the human meat!" Mammon gently nibbles at Gary's shoulder as if nursing a teat, clearly trying to initiate sex.
"Hey, dork, calm down. I thought Asmodeuses were the horny ones." A playful flick to the forehead and Mammon backs down, choosing instead to wrap his arms around Gary and whisper "I wub youuuuu" like a needy child in his ear.
Day passes to night, night passes to day, and things go on like this for seemingly ever. Gary is glad to have never, ever held a job -- everyone else seems so miserable by comparison.
Good thing he's got Mammon to support him.