A rotten deal

There are stories; old, unrecorded things that pass between lips in the dark. Not the kind you tell children. The kind you whisper to yourself when sleep won’t come. About people who made pacts; not with gods, but with creatures that existed before gods had names. Things that live in corners of the world that maps deliberately forget.
They say some people once worshipped a chaathan. A demon, yes, but not the loud, theatrical ones from movies. This one is quiet. Patient. It follows. It waits. It promises favors in a voice like still water. A job, a lover, a lucky number on a lottery. You’d think it’s a coincidence. You think you’re clever. You think you made it happen. And the chaathan laughs; a dry, brittle sound like burning hair.
The deal is simple: it gives while you live; it takes when you die. Your eternal soul for a few worldly favors.
But what they don’t tell you is that sometimes, if the contract is especially rotten, it doesn’t wait that long. It begins early; with small things.
Your focus starts slipping. No big deal. Just forgot your keys. Just missed a deadline. Just misplaced a sentence halfway through saying it.
Then the carnival kicks into high gear.
Your mind becomes a tent with the flaps open during a storm; thoughts fly in and out; none stay long enough to be useful. There’s noise, constant noise; like ten TVs screaming in different languages. There’s static, like your brain is stuck between channels. You try to read a page and your eyes crawl off it. You try to listen and your own thoughts interrupt. There’s always a next thing; and a next thing; and a next thing. And you chase them all like a fool; hands full of nothing.
You forget people’s names. Then faces. Then birthdays. Then yourself.
Whatever happened to the smartest man in the room, the multi-talented artist, the one who had promise? You ask yourself as you’re being ridiculed trying to cling on something that never was.
And the worst part? You won’t even remember making the deal.
You just live in the punishment; a sentence served without knowing the crime. You wake up every day in a body that is somehow yours and not. A brain that you pilot like a bad shopping cart; pulling violently to one side, resisting every turn. You try to fix it; with apps and journals and willpower. It’s like trying to cage fog.
You think: maybe I’m just lazy. Maybe I’m broken. Maybe I deserve this. And the chaathan, always walking just behind you, rests its chin on your shoulder and says, “exactly.”
And this; this soul-eviction, this fractured loop of shame and noise and forgetting; this is what they call adhd.