My Friend is the Devil

Chapter 7

A week goes by and I'm back in the same auditorium I was in when I ditched with Graeme. The professor waits for everyone to quiet down before pointing to the writing in red marker on the whiteboard.

"Who wrote this?" he asks. When no one answers, he says, "Come on, someone tell me!"

He looks proudly around the room, convinced that one of us was enthusiastic enough to write it. Some of the words don't even look like English.

"Is it Gaelic?" a classmate asks, squinting at the board.

"Gaelic!" the teacher exclaims.

He looks around the room one last time before his excitement dissipates. He must realize none of us wrote it.

"It's Robert Burns. He's on our syllabus in a fortnight. I thought one of you were getting a head start..." He pushes his glasses up his nose and reads the poem aloud:

"An' now, Auld Cloots, I ken ye're thinkin,

A certain Bardie's rantin, drinkin,

Some luckless hour will send him linkin,

To your black pit;

But faith! he'll turn a corner jinkin,

An' cheat you yet.

But fare you weel, Auld Nickie-ben!

O wad ye tak—"

He stops and looks at me. For a second I think he's about to call me out for ditching last week, but then he asks, "Question?"

I must've made some sort of noise at hearing the familiar words. I shake my head.

"Do you want to take a guess at what it means?" he asks.

Now everyone is looking at me. I can feel my heart pounding.

"Um... It's about the Devil?"

"Yes! Well done!" He points to me proudly. "Rabbie Burns was a satirical poet. He liked to poke fun at the church and undermine Calvinist teachings. Do you know what Calvinism is?"

Everyone mutters a no.

"In the sixteenth century, John Knox brought Calvinism to Scotland and led the religion reformation away from the Catholic church. Regarding the Devil," he motions back to the poem, "Knox taught the people to live in constant fear of the Devil. He could be anywhere, at anytime.

"I haven't put Hogg on the reading list, but if you're interested, give this a read." He uncaps a marker and scribbles The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner on the board. "This is another Calvinism satire with the Devil in Edinburgh!"

Okay, now he's got my attention. Though it soon drifts off as the professor insists that we read the book ourselves, he doesn't want to give anything away. I hide my phone under the desk and search for the book. Scanning the Wikipedia plot, I read that the narrator meets someone named Gil-Martin, who can change his appearance to look like the narrator and convinces the narrator to murder people. Apparently the narrator is insane and Gil-Martin is a "figment of his imagination". He writes everything down in his memoir and then he kills himself.

This is silly. I lock my phone and put it back in my bag. Despite the first letter of Gil-Martin's name, there's nothing similar about him and Graeme. The narrator just needed to make up an excuse for his crimes.

I scan the auditorium, hoping that maybe Graeme is here again waiting to steal me away. No one gives me a smirk, or a suggestive look to reveal themselves. I guess today I'll have to actually endure this lecture.