I Sold My Soul to Fall in Love with My Neighbor

The avenue lights flickered like a school of fish in the dark. From my eleventh-floor window, I watched them every night, a mute constant that kept me company through my insomnia. I lived alone, in a narrow apartment that smelled of cold coffee and unread books, in one of those glass towers that rise in the city center like crooked teeth.

I was twenty-nine, had an office job that paid enough to cover the rent and nothing else, and a routine so exact I could recite it with my eyes closed. I jerked off staring at the ceiling, without desire, my hand limp, and fell asleep with the stain of semen drying on my stomach.

That was before Mateo moved into the apartment across the hall.

I saw him for the first time in the elevator. He was carrying a box with a cactus on top and laughing to himself at the effort. He was my age, maybe a year older. Brown hair, sharp jaw, big hands. When he asked if I lived on the same floor, his voice went through me like a current. I told him yes, that my door was the one across the way. He smiled and said:

—Neighbors, then.

That word lodged itself somewhere impossible inside me. That very night I wanked thinking about him, about the bulge showing in his jeans, about what it would be like to have his cock in my mouth. I ended up with my hand stained and the pillow bitten to pieces, hating myself a little for how fast it had been.

From that day on, my routine changed. I learned his schedule without meaning to. He left at 7:20 in the morning. Came back at 6:15. On Wednesdays he got home later, smelling of bar smoke. On Fridays he brought Camila, a tall red-haired woman who laughed too loudly and looked at me with the warm indifference you reserve for a piece of furniture in the hallway.

Fridays were the worst. I heard them through the wall. She moaned in a high, theatrical voice, and he growled low and rough, with that voice a man has when he fucks for real. I’d sprawl on the bed with my ear pressed to the partition and my hand inside my pants, listening to the rhythm of the bed frame on the other side. I imagined Mateo naked, his back tense, plunging into her, and I replaced Camila with myself. I imagined myself on all fours on that bed, face smashed into the mattress, taking it all. I’d come in my hand in three or four thrusts and then I’d stay on the floor with my pants half down, breathing in the milky smell of my own seed while they kept going on the other side.

I timed my trips out so I’d run into him. I made up excuses to take the trash out when I heard his door close. I crossed paths with him in the lobby, in the elevator, at the corner store. I always said the same thing, with the same smile, and he gave me something polite back, something cordial, something that was nothing.

Each one of those encounters cracked me a little further open.

***

One autumn afternoon, on my way home from work, I saw a sign taped to a lamppost. A yellow sheet, laminated, with hand-lettered words: “Wizard Eustaquio. Love spells. Guaranteed results.” A phone number. An arrow pointing to a green door two blocks away.

I kept walking. Came back the next night. The third time, I knocked.

The man who opened the door wasn’t what I had imagined. No hat, no necklaces, no carnival look. He was a thin old man, around seventy, with stained glasses and a gray sweater. He lived in an apartment that smelled of cheap incense and soup. He invited me in. He poured me tea I didn’t touch.

—Who is it for? —he asked, bluntly.

I told him about Mateo. About the girlfriend. About how every hello in the elevator left me breathless for hours. I also told him, my face burning, that I’d been jerking off to the sound of him fucking through the wall, that I’d thought about breaking down his door and offering him my mouth, my ass, anything. I spoke more than I had in years. The wizard listened with his eyes closed, nodding now and then, surprised by nothing.

—What you want is a strong binding spell —he said at last—. The kind that doesn’t break on its own. The kind that costs.

—How much?

—I’m not talking about money —he said. He looked at me with a calm that raised the hair on the back of my neck—. I’m talking about a pact. The gentleman who lives on the other side doesn’t grant favors for free. What he gives, he collects for later. Always.

I asked him what that meant. He said I wouldn’t know until the time came. I asked if I could back out. He said yes, the door was still there.

I didn’t leave.

***

The ritual took less time than I expected. The old man lit black candles on a table covered in coarse salt. He murmured words in a language I didn’t understand and didn’t dare write down. He made me cut my index finger with a dull knife and let three drops fall onto a photo of Mateo that I had stolen weeks earlier, while he was waiting for the elevator.

When it was over, the old man handed me the photo.

—You’re going to smoke over this every two days. No exceptions. A long, held drag, aimed at his face. If you fail once, the thread breaks. If it breaks, what he feels for you won’t come back.

—I don’t smoke.

—You will learn.

He put a pack of black cigarettes in my hand. He charged me less than dinner at any decent restaurant. He didn’t look at me when I left.

***

That very night, Mateo knocked on my apartment door.

He was carrying two glasses of wine and a smile I had never seen before. He said he had some leftover from dinner, didn’t want to drink alone, thought of me. He was looking at me in a way no one ever had in my life. I let him in. I told lame jokes. He laughed like they mattered. Forty minutes later his hand was on my knee. An hour later he was kissing me on the couch, tongue down my throat and one hand opening my fly.

—I’ve wanted to fuck you for weeks —he said against my mouth, voice rough—. Since the elevator.

I dropped to my knees on the floor between his legs before he finished the sentence. I fumbled with his pants with clumsy fingers. His cock sprang out hard and thick, the head shiny, a pronounced vein running along the underside. I grabbed it with both hands and took it in my mouth in one gulp, until the tip touched the back of my throat and brought tears to my eyes. Mateo moaned and buried his fingers in my hair.

—Just like that, suck my cock like that, don’t stop —he gasped.

I sucked him like my life depended on it. I ran my tongue all over the shaft, licked his balls, took him whole again. Saliva dripped down my chin and I didn’t care. He looked down at me with his mouth open, and every now and then he pushed my head so I’d swallow him deeper. When I felt his thighs start to tremble, he pulled me off by the hair.

—No, not yet, I want to fuck you.

He carried me to the bed in two long strides. Tore my clothes off. Threw me face down, spread my legs with his knee and spat on my ass. With two fingers he opened me up, inside and out, searching for the spot. Then he got himself positioned, pressed the tip against my hole and pushed slowly, patiently, until I felt the first head pass through the ring and all the air left my body.

—Fuck, oh fuck —I moaned into the pillow—. Put it all the way in.

He slid into me little by little, centimeter by centimeter, until he filled me completely. His balls slapped against my perineum. He stayed there for a second, buried to the hilt, breathing on the back of my neck, and then he started fucking. At first slowly, gripping my hips, then harder and harder, rougher, more animal. The bed slammed into the wall. I bit down on the sheets to keep from screaming. Every now and then he smacked my ass and whispered in my ear, things I had wanted to hear for years.

—What a tight ass you’ve got, you little fuck. You were waiting for me, weren’t you? Say it.

—Yes —I whimpered—. For months. Fuck me, Mateo, fuck me harder.

He turned me over. Put my legs over his shoulders. Drove it back in with a thrust and kept going, looking me in the eye, sweat on his forehead and his mouth half open. I grabbed my cock and started pounding myself in time with his thrusts. I came first, with a muffled cry, all over my stomach, and my ass clenched around his cock in spasms. He held on for two, three more strokes and pulled out just in time to come in thick ropes over my chest, my neck, my open mouth. I licked the tip until not a single drop was left.

He collapsed beside me, gasping. Two hours later, when he left, he kissed me at the corner of my mouth. A slow, hesitant kiss, not a goodbye.

I closed the door, went to the bathroom and threw up from the excitement. Then I got under the shower with his semen still drying on my body and jerked off again, thinking about what had just happened.

The following days were a fever. Camila stopped coming. Mateo looked for me after work, waited for me in the lobby with two coffees, asked permission to come up before I’d even thought about it. We fucked everywhere: against the apartment door the moment we got inside, in the kitchen with our hands braced on the counter, in the shower with hot water pouring over us. He put his cock in my mouth before coffee in the morning, drove it into me bent over the couch, made me ride him while he stared at me. He learned how to eat my ass until I shook, tongue inside, thumbs prying me open. We talked until three in the morning, sweating, with his load still dripping between my legs. He told me things he had never told anyone. I believed everything.

And every two days, when he fell asleep or went into the shower, I locked myself away with the photo and blew smoke over his face.

***

The first year was the closest I ever came to happiness. Mateo moved into my apartment in the spring. He brought the cactus, two boxes of books, and a way of inhabiting the space that changed everything. He cooked for me. He left notes on the mirror. He said my name with a cadence that was only his. The people in the building greeted us like a couple. At dinners with his friends, he introduced me without hesitation.

We fucked every day. Sometimes two, three times. He had a cock that never got tired and a filthy mouth that could make me come just by hearing it. He whispered in my ear while he rode me: “you’re mine, this ass is mine, you don’t give it to anyone else.” I promised him through tears, pressing myself against him, face buried in his neck while he filled me up inside. Afterward I’d stay for hours with his cum inside me, feeling it warm, not wanting it to ever spill out.

At night, when he fell asleep with his head on my chest, I looked at him and wondered if what he felt was real or if it was the smoke. Then I stopped wondering.

I didn’t want to know.

The second year, I started coughing.

A dry, persistent cough that came in the early hours of the morning. I blamed the cigarettes. Bought lozenges, stopped smoking in front of him, hid the packs in a shoebox on top of the closet. I looked for any moment alone to do the ritual. If Mateo went to the supermarket, I took the chance. If he fell asleep on the couch, I slipped into the bathroom with the photo and opened the window so the smoke would drift out.

Paranoia settled into my chest like a second heart.

The third year brought pain.

***

A dull, deep pain beneath my sternum. Stairs left me breathless. Mornings got harder. In bed I could no longer stay face down for long; I couldn’t catch my breath when he rode me hard. I started making excuses, asking him to go slower, sucking him off more so I wouldn’t have to let him in. He looked at me strangely and asked if I was okay. I told him yes, it was work, it was stress, and I opened my mouth so he could finish inside me, so he wouldn’t ask any more questions.

Mateo asked me to see a doctor. I said yes. I invented appointments. Invented test results. Showed him fake prescriptions.

When I finally went, it was already too late.

The oncologist didn’t beat around the bush. He said “lung,” said “advanced,” said “months.” I left the office feeling as if I were walking on a thin layer of ice. In the waiting room there was a mother holding a little boy. The boy stared at me, as if he knew something.

I didn’t tell Mateo. I told him it was bronchitis. I started skipping the smoke sessions. Once. Twice. Three times in a row, because the coughing fit wouldn’t even let me strike a match.

Love evaporated like boiling water.

***

Mateo slowly turned into someone else. First, the notes on the mirror stopped appearing. Then he stopped cooking. Stopped looking for me in bed. One night I grabbed him under the sheets and he gently pushed my hand away, almost guiltily, and rolled over to the other side. It was the first time in three years we slept without touching. I stayed awake, staring at his back until dawn.

One morning he looked at me from the breakfast table with an expression I had never seen on him before: confusion, almost fear, as if he didn’t know what he was doing in my house.

—Damián —he said, and my name sounded strange in his mouth—. How long have we been together?

—Three years.

—I don’t remember how it started.

He started looking for Camila. She was already with someone else. He called his old friends. Some didn’t answer. Others spoke to him with that strange courtesy you give the sick.

One afternoon, while I was lying in bed with oxygen, I heard him on the balcony talking on the phone.

—I don’t know what I did these last three years —he said—. I don’t know who I am.

That night he packed two suitcases. He kissed my forehead as if I were a distant uncle. He apologized without knowing what for. He closed the door slowly. He never looked back.

***

I was left alone, in the apartment that once again smelled of cold coffee. Mateo’s photo was still in the shoebox, untouched, and I no longer had the breath to blow smoke over it. I threw it out. Pulled it out of the trash. Threw it out again. Pulled it out.

The last night, I couldn’t breathe lying down. I sat up against the headboard, photo in hand. I thought about that tea I didn’t touch in the old wizard’s apartment. About the word “neighbors,” spoken in an elevator by a man who seemed like my salvation. About the black candles. About the cut finger. About Mateo’s mouth around my cock, his warm cum running down my throat, the nights I begged him to fuck me harder and he obeyed.

What he gives, he collects for later. Always.

Then I understood. It wasn’t the cancer I was paying for. It wasn’t my body. It was everything else. It was the fabricated three years, the love that had never been mine, every load I swallowed believing it was mine, the mirage that got me out of the closet and left me on the other side of the glass, staring in.

The room filled with a smell of sulfur I already knew. The lamp flickered. And for once in my life, I wasn’t afraid. Only tired. An old, thick exhaustion, one that came from long before Mateo, long before the wizard, long before that yellow sign on a lamppost.

I closed my eyes.

Someone, on the other side, smiled.