Brittney stared at the glowing computer screen, her fingers hovering uncertainly above the trackpad. Her brows knit together, eyes reflecting the eerie white text on a pitch-black background. Every instinct in her body screamed at her to close the tab, shut the laptop, and pretend she had never stumbled across this grotesque corner of the internet. The site looked like something out of a horror story--barebones HTML, no logos, no branding, just an ominous interface of sterile buttons and cryptic text. It radiated wrongness, like a digital infection waiting to sink its claws into her life. And yet... she couldn't look away.
Desperation had a way of making people linger in places they normally wouldn't dare to go.
She was midway through her third year of college, and the financial strain had become unbearable. Her scholarships only went so far, and her parents--already teetering on the edge of disownment due to her choice of major--had long since cut off any monetary support. Her part-time job barely covered groceries and rent, let alone tuition, textbooks, or emergency expenses. Every month was a losing game of subtraction, and Brittney had grown tired of losing.
She wasn't alone in this struggle. Her roommate, Kelsey, was in a similarly dire position--bills outpacing income, debt collecting interest like a vulture watching a dying animal. Jobs were harder than ever to find. Half the businesses in town had replaced their staff with automated kiosks or outsourced work to AI-run platforms. It was like the future had arrived, but it hadn't brought anyone along who still needed to eat.
But Kelsey had found a way to stay afloat.
That's what had led Brittney here--this digital void of a website that promised salvation in exchange for something far more personal than time or labor. The site called itself The Covenant, and it didn't pretend to be anything other than what it was. It claimed--without irony or euphemism--to be operated by a demon. Not metaphorically. Not figuratively. Literally.
The contract displayed on the screen was shockingly plain. A few sentences. A few boxes to fill in. In exchange for her submission--for becoming entertainment for the demon's "audience"--she would be richly compensated. The initial payment, according to the site, would appear in her account the moment her application was accepted. Continued payments would follow, tied to viewership statistics. Yes, viewership--because every encounter was filmed, cataloged, and locked behind a paywall that had thousands upon thousands of active subscribers.
There were no safe words. No scripts. No guarantees. The demon had absolute control once the contract was signed. Brittney didn't need much imagination to know what that meant.
It was sick. It was terrifying.
And it was working.
The number of videos available on the site was staggering. Every clip had thousands of views, hundreds of comments, five-star ratings. People--real people--were clicking "Agree," and their lives were being changed. Maybe ruined. Maybe fulfilled. Maybe both.
She couldn't stop thinking about it.
Brittney felt something coiling tight in her chest as she reread the contract. It wasn't long. It didn't need to be. A few typed words and she'd submit her address and bank information. That was it. Submission wouldn't even guarantee selection--but if she was chosen, she would know. Her bank balance would explode overnight.
She sat in silence, staring down a digital abyss, caught between horror and hope. No one could save her--not her parents, not her job, not the system. And so, heart thudding and mouth dry, she moved the cursor over the final button.
She clicked "Agree."
Brittney sat in stillness; her eyes fixed on the computer screen long after she had clicked the "Agree" button. For a few tense seconds--tense enough to feel like minutes--nothing happened. No flashing lights. No cinematic alerts. No howling banshee screams through her speakers. Just... stillness.
The cursor blinked on the empty page, the silence in her apartment stretching out around her like a rubber band pulled tight. She exhaled shakily, a sharp breath she hadn't realized she was holding. The anticlimax made her feel foolish, like a child who had whispered Bloody Mary into the mirror and then flinched at her own reflection.
"This was unbelievably stupid," she muttered aloud, her voice barely above a whisper, as if speaking too loud might somehow wake something up. She closed her laptop with a gentle click and pressed her palms to her eyes. It was done. Whatever game she'd just played, whatever line she had just crossed--it couldn't be undone now.
Still, maybe nothing would come of it. That was the most likely scenario, wasn't it? Maybe the entire thing had been some elaborate joke. Some troll website preying on desperate people. Maybe the "demon" didn't even exist. She forced a dry laugh through her teeth and tried to shove the unease back down into the pit of her stomach where it belonged. It probably wouldn't even be accepted anyway, she reasoned. There were surely thousands of other people who clicked "Agree" every day, hoping to be chosen. Why would she be special?
But just as her nerves began to settle and she started to push herself up from the couch--
Ping.
Her phone vibrated once on the table beside her, its bright screen lighting up the dim room. The sound, so small and mundane, hit her like a gunshot.
She froze.
Something about that notification felt... final. Like the last sound before a door slammed shut behind her.
Heart racing, she reached out and picked up the phone with trembling fingers. Her thumb hesitated just above the screen, unwilling to swipe, afraid to see what waited on the other side. But the suspense was unbearable, so she unlocked it.
It was her banking app. A new transaction.
Her stomach dropped.
The balance displayed on the screen was impossibly large--her checking account had ballooned in an instant. Five figures now stared back at her, cold and undeniable. The amount was precise, neat, and surreal--more money than she'd ever had in one place, and it had arrived without ceremony or explanation.
Her throat tightened.
"Oh... shit," she whispered, her voice hoarse.
She knew what this meant.
This wasn't a joke. This wasn't an elaborate scam. It was real. All of it. Every cursed, cryptic line of that website. Her offer had been accepted. The demon, whatever it was, wherever it existed...had said yes. And now the transaction was sealed. The money wasn't a gift. It was a down payment.
But what happened next? There were no instructions, no follow-up emails, no contracts to sign with blood or gates to hell swinging open in her apartment. Just... silence. The money had arrived, but the demon hadn't.
