The Last Cup of Tea

I stepped out for my last cup of tea on a crisp, clear evening in late September.  
I adored this little spot downtown—a Yemeni café where the baristas donned headscarves adorned with vibrant, mesmerizing spirals, patterns that seemed to stretch endlessly. The steam rising from their kettles wafted the delightful aroma of cardamom and cloves while the air buzzed with soft conversations in a language that was foreign to me.  
I handed over my last ten dollars, filled my thermos with tea I had prepared myself, and strolled beneath the elms in the old park. The trees had grown taller since my college days, their branches forming a skeletal canopy over the paths where joggers raced their dogs into the deepening dusk. Once, the park had been an arboretum, a sanctuary for study and quiet contemplation. It felt like just another slice of urban wilderness, half-remembered by the city.  
I found my bench—the same one I had occupied a decade ago—and dropped my backpack beside me. The thermos hissed as I twisted off the lid, releasing a fragrant cloud of cinnamon and black tea. The aroma mingled with the damp earth, the decay of fallen leaves, and the faint metallic tang of the evening air.  
Hours slipped by.  
Night fell, and I started counting the minutes. Eight o’clock. Then nine. I dissected time like I used to tackle problems—back when I was young and full of myself, convinced that my intellect could carve out meaning from the chaos of life.  
By then, I was flinching at every sound. The creak of branches. The distant murmur of voices. The shuffled footsteps from the homeless men who found refuge in the park’s shadowy corners. I reassured myself there was nothing to fear, but my heart had other ideas.  
Eventually, I shifted to the next bench under a flickering streetlamp. Moths flung themselves at the bulb, their wings crisping in the heat, while I sipped my tea—still scalding, still just right—and examined my hands. The calluses stood out like scars in the sickly light.  
“You moved,” my inner demon remarked.
I shot my head up, scanning the shadows around me. The same familiar faces drifted by—the dealers, drifters, and joggers—but none had said a word. The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, a whisper tangled in the breeze.  
“Sorry,” I mumbled. “Does it really matter which bench?”  
The only response was laughter, fading away like dead leaves skittering across the pavement.  
I let out a breath and relaxed my muscles. It wasn’t meditation—my brief dabble in New Age spirituality had shown me that enlightenment comes with a price. No, this was more primal, a trick I’d picked up while hauling bricks under a relentless sun. My mind retreated into my body like a snail into its shell, and I concentrated on the dull ache in my shoulders, the stiffness in my knees, and the steady beat of my pulse.  
Then—music. Tinny and distant, spilling from someone’s headphones. I glanced at my phone.  
11:59.  
The screen lit up. Notifications poured in—a deluge of memories, both real and imagined. One day since this moment! Five years since this day! Photos I’d never taken flashed across the screen: me in a loft apartment, on a beach, standing next to strangers in front of landmarks I’d never seen.  
I choked. My throat tightened. With a snarl, I flung the phone into the darkness.  
And then—movement. A figure emerged from the fog.  
“Mephistopheles,” I whispered.  
She wore a pink sports bra and black leggings, her pristine sneakers emblazoned with flashy branding. I’d never seen this version of her before, but I recognized her instantly. Her presence pulled me to my feet, holding me in place.  
She stopped in front of me, breathing a bit heavily, and only then did I notice the empty leash dangling from her hand.  
“It’s Mephy, in this form,” she said. “Hey, Jase. Have you seen my dog?”  
“Dog?” I echoed, bewildered.  
She rolled her eyes. “Dad heard I was going to a park and said, ‘Take Cerberus with you.’ Like, no way. Three heads, and he’s still the dumbest creature in the Underworld.”  
“I—uh—”
She blinked, and a third eyelid swept diagonally across her eyes, making the world blink. Suddenly, the park faded—the trees, the benches, the homeless men—everything just vanished. I felt myself falling, tumbling backward, until I crashed into something solid. 
When my vision finally cleared, we found ourselves somewhere entirely different. The fog had thickened, and the lamplight had disappeared. The only thing left was Mephistopheles’ eyes, glowing like molten gold. 
“Stay here,” she instructed. “I’ll just be a second.” 
With that, she slipped her headphones back on and jogged into the darkness, her pink top becoming a mere smudge against the night. 
I kept watching until the color faded away completely. 

The First Deal 
I first met Mephistopheles back in college. 
At that time, he presented as male—tall, effortlessly cool, sporting a curling mustache and a laugh that made you feel like you were in on some secret. He emerged from the shadows of a dive bar where my friends and I were deep in a debate about art and philosophy, and by the time the last call rolled around, I was the only one still engaged with him. 
I didn’t sell my soul that night—not because of booze or drugs, but because my demon had one rule: You have to damn yourself willingly. 
A decade later, it remained the cleanest contract I’d ever signed. 
And here we were, back at the start. The bench beneath me bore the jagged scars of our original agreement, etched into the wood like a child’s handiwork. When Mephy returned, it would be time to settle my debt. 
I exhaled, watching my breath curl in the chilly air, and let my mind drift through the last ten years. Faces flickered in my memory—investors, lovers, strangers—but none had truly stuck. I had raced through life, terrified of wasting time, convinced that every second not spent chasing greatness was a second wasted. 
My pocket buzzed. 
My pocket buzzed.
I took out the phone, and, much to my surprise, there wasn’t a scratch on it – I opened it to be greeted by more notifications of places I had never been to and people I had never met. I saw myself engaged in inconceivable feats and situations: smiling next to a rocket launch, patting a business tycoon on the back, and lying on a yacht.
“Ten years,” I said, putting the phone on the dashboard and throwing the car key back into the darkness.
“Ten years,” Murphy repeated, materializing out of the mist.

The Reckoning
She’d found her dog.
Cerberus was a three-headed Yorkie wrapped tightly in a small jacket with matching shoes. The left head was enraged, the middle of them yawned, and the right one’s tongue rolled out of its mouth like a drug.
Drops of sweat appeared on Mephy’s face; she adjusted and crossed her legs over the other. All three noses turned to face me; Cerberus hopped onto her lap as if there had been an explosion of energy the moment she opened the door.
“So,” she said. “Ten years ago, I took you a present.” You wanted knowledge. Big dreams for what you wanted to be another question we often ask in life
“An inventor.”
She snapped her fingers. “Right! You know, Faust wanted the same thing. Different era, same hunger.” She laughed softly, slightly tapping the side of my shoulder with her shoulder. My special guest: “Oh, my daddy says that I should ‘get more investing niches’ but I think he is just turning into some kind of a money beast.”
A finance demon. I almost laughed.
Claws scraped my leg as Cerberus pushed himself between us. The clay heads stiffened and glared at each other, glaring like they were having an eye-to-eye quarrel I did not comprehend.
“Let me put it this way: ‘I’m so glad you’re here.’ Or maybe just plain, simple: ‘Hello?’ She grabbed my hand, and I winced at the scrawled names that wriggled beneath her skin as if alive.
“I never said this is a hostile takeover,” she whispered. “It’s a partnership. You chose this. And so I said to them, “OK, let me ask you, what have you done with the knowledge I provided you?”
I swallowed. “Not much.”
She flipped my hand over and ran her red polished nail over the rough skin of my palm. You remember you seemed very confident the first time we were in this place. You believed you only needed the right tool and could shift the world.
“I was an idiot.”
“You were young.” She smiled. “Your confidence was intoxicating.”
“It intoxicated me too.”
I rubbed the back of my head, feeling the dull buzz of the now out-of-range phone.
The first few years have been blissful, as seen below: All those myths regarding scientists writing their theories on the table corner or paper such as napkins? You made them real for me, so I am failing my job if I don’t do justice to your creations. I obtained a patent in one year. Then another. The money poured in.”
I attempted to get up, but my legs would not support me. The world tilted.
But I was terrible with people reading: Malkovich said it flatly and unemotionally as if he were reciting a slogan or a slogan-like phrase: I invested in the wrong people – investors, partners, intermediaries. By twenty-five, I was broke. The epitaph would read, ‘Laying bricks by twenty-six.’
Murphy laughed. Her nails were as thin and perfect as scissors, and she was cutting my dead skin off my feet. Blood spilled on the ground, but it was not my blood.
Cerberus yelped. One of his heads wore a small hat, and his lips, shiny from sweat and blood, fell on the table with its opposite – another head – shaking loosely and spitting blood down my new jeans.
Murphy squeezed my hand. “You’ve been a carpenter. A house-mover. A glassblower. You stacked cargo on ships. You recently put up paintings in an art gallery you know was fake. You invented things at times and at other moments—an existence.”
“You’ve been watching.”
She took out my phone from her pocket, which was more or less now in one piece, and gave it to me. It was again a session of more false memories displayed on the screen.
“Everybody has his or her interests,” she said. Besides, who do you think selects those notifications? Indeed, I am in a constant fight with Dad, who is the only other demon who decides to use a computer.
She leaned in, trying to remove the smell of blood with lavender shampoo. “But never mind that. Tell me about your ending. Endings are my favorite part. What have you been doing since you discover that you are going to die?”
I froze for a moment.  
“I wander,” I finally admitted. “I hop trains, sleep rough, and sometimes I go hungry.” I shrugged. “There’s something deeply human about that kind of suffering. With the time I had left, it felt like the only honest choice.”  
I took a sip of tea—still hot, still perfect—and offered the last bit to Murphy. She drank, her golden eyes sparkling.  
“That’s good,” she purred.  
“It cost me my last ten dollars.”  
“Was it worth it?”  
“Damnation or the tea?”  
“You decide.”  
I smiled. “Yeah, it was.” I tapped the thermos. “I made this myself. It keeps tea hot for a whole day. The flavors stay just right—cardamom, cinnamon, cloves. Close the lid, and time stands still. You could have the apocalypse happening outside, but in here? Perfect tea.”  
Mephy’s grin grew wider. “Time stands still? Jase, it almost sounds like you’re scared of me.”  
Then she blinked—and the world blinked with her. Colors bled at the edges. For a brief moment, I saw a parade of lanterns winding through the trees.  
Then we were back.  
“What—?”  
“You could’ve been a god,” she mused. “Most of my contracts end in bloodshed. But this?” She held up the thermos. “This is something new. No one’s ever tried to live so quietly before.”  
She tapped the bench. Our carved signatures blackened, burned, and twisted into a perfect pentagram.  
“I’m changing the deal,” she said. “Ten more years. Meet me here again. Bring better patterns. Maybe whip up a snack—this form loves snacks.”  
Then she kissed my cheek and jogged away, Cerberus trotting behind her. The right head still dripped blood, leaving Rorschach blooms in the dirt.  
I watched until they disappeared into the darkness.  
Then I followed, stepping into the future—into all the possibilities I hadn’t yet squandered.