The Devil and I

The fiddle is not an instrument I can play,
But I still bet the Devil my soul today.
He appeared before me as I sat at my desk,
A demon with red eyes and a face so grotesque.
He wanted to see who could weave the darker tale,
And said he'd take my soul to Hell if I should fail.
I took his bet with an odd sort of glee,
For there is no one that has a muse darker than me.
Then that old Devil pulled a pen from behind his ear,
Leered at me, laughing as though I had something to fear.
His ink ran red as blood as he wrote,
And I couldn't hide the chuckle that rose up in my throat.
He told of the things he knew best, the depths of his Hell,
Where the damned and his loyal demons eternally dwell.
A chorus of souls dictated his tale as it was penned,
Speaking in voices almost too ghastly to comprehend.
He expected me to scream in terror, to quiver perhaps,
But my confidence was too great for my knees to collapse.
And as I began to write his anger with me grew and grew,
For he knew I had won even before my tale was through.
I didn't need brimstone nor a chorus of a thousand dead,
But only a pencil and the little muse sitting on my head.
She whispered in my ear and I went to work,
And the Devil didn't seem to like my satisfied smirk.
I wrote of disease and hatred, of famine and fire,
War, betrayal and the ghosts of humanity's death desire.
Then that Devil tossed his pen at my feet,
For there was no doubt that he had been beat.
As he made to depart, the room around us burst into flame,
The Devil screaming and raging, cursing my very name.
But before he did fade back into his Hell,
He asked how I knew such horrors so well.
And I explained, making sure to give him wide berth,
That there is no Hell quite like the one on this Earth.