Sue Sylvester reclined in thoughtful silence behind her desk. With her fingers steepled beneath her chin and her feet resting on today's half-finished diary entry, she ruminated on her most recent Nationals victory.
As usual her Cheerios had won by a mile. The routine was flawless, Sue had outdone herself, once again. Of course, thanks to Sue Sylvesters's patented fear-based coaching techniques, her troupe of personified eating-disorders had performed impeccably . With one exception; the newest addition to her squad, Angela Lehane. Yes, she had waited until the routine was over, and yes, she had made sure she was safely out of sight of the judges before fainting, but the fact was she had fainted. She was weak. Sue Sylvester did not tolerate weaklings on her squad. She made a mental note to demote the little disappointment to the bottom of the pyramid and was half way through mentally preparing a venomous demotion monologue when there came a polite knock at the door.
"Principal Sylvester?" The door opened, wafting in a vague stink of strawberry hair gel and revealing a wide eyed young man. Sue planted her feet on the floor and leaned forwards, her forearms crossed flat against the desktop.
"I'm sorry, did the outrageously out of date protein shake I accidentally drank this afternoon propel me back in time to 1971 or have you, Burt Reynolds, recently undergone some truly age defying surgery? Either way, I am completely underwhelmed and slightly nauseated."
"I, um,"
"Sit down, Anderson. I have very little time for your homosexual quips and bow ties this afternoon." Uncertainly but with some haste, the boy sat down in the leather seated chair in front of Sue Sylvester's desk. "Now, tell me, to what do I owe the; oh, I was going to say pleasure but the sight of you summons bile and frankly, your hair repels me. Why is that do you suppose?"
"Principal Sylvester, I-"
"Tell me honestly, did Schuster and Rachel's concrete-jawed mother have a night of insidiously boring show choir sex and produce you, their secret, curly haired love child, some twenty years ago? Did Schuster smother you in hair gel for the entirely of your childhood, until it got to the point that you felt naked and ashamed without it, in turn giving you the same disgusting hair product fetish he so fervently denies he has?" Sue smiled to herself as she hastily scribbled something down in her diary. "Speak to me, Anderson." she waited half a beat before banging her open hand upon her jotter and bellowing, "what do you want?" her eyes blazed furiously for a second before she fell back in her chair and grew calm once more.
The boy took a steadying breath. "Principal Sylvester, as much as it pains me to ask," and the boy did certainly look pained "I need a favour."
"I do not do favours." She said dismissively. "Please get out of my office." She gestured with one hand towards her office door and once again went back to writing in her diary. The boy shifted uncomfortably in his chair and quietly cleared his throat.
"Sorry," he hesitated. His eyes flitted to the window and he lowered his voice "What I mean is, I'd like to make a deal."
"That," Sue leaned forwards conspiringly "I can do."
…
Sue Sylvester smiled, revealing every single one of her teeth. They gleamed wetly, mirroring the suddenly curious gleam of her eyes. Without looking away from the straight backed young man before her, she reached into the middle drawer of her desk and recovered a small bronze key. She rose from her chair with an air of grandeur, unlocked her filing cabinet and retrieved a polished hardwood box from the top drawer. Setting the box on the desktop she sat back down and looked her guest firmly in the eye.
"What is it you wish for, young Burt Reynolds?" she asked gravely.
With obvious trepidation the boy leaned forward and whispered his heart's desire. A sheen glazed his eyes as he explained to his former High School Principal that he was in financial ruin. She listened patiently as he told her of how he was secretly stealing from his fiancé, how he was held fast in the clutches of an addiction that was threatening to tear his life apart. "Kurt must never find out!" his voice broke as his fiancé's name left his mouth "He can't know about my problem, he can't know that I came to you asking for help. I know he would leave me if he found out what I had done, what I had thrown everything we have away for." His eyes were glossy with tears "I just need time to fix things, just a little relief. Please, I'm begging you."
"Oh, you don't have to beg me, that's not what I'm after. I am curious though, as to why you haven't just asked me for money? It seems to me that eighty percent of your problems are only monetary. The other twenty percent of course being those hideous bow ties you insist on wearing."
The boy brightened "You can give me money?"
"Money? Heavens, no! I just wanted to see you squirm." Sue unlocked the dark wooden box. The small bronze key fit neatly into the mouth of a horned demon, the biggest of all the effigies carved into the wood. Tattooed skulls, shrunken heads, ancient looking symbols and creatures with huge teeth and claws were engraved all over the surface of the box; the detail was so fine that at a glance you could have missed it completely. Sue lifted the lid and carefully withdrew a short feather quill, from a pocket in the dark red velvet lining. Next she extracted one single sheet of thick, ragged parchment, which looked to the boy more like cloth than paper. Last of all came a stout wooden ink pot, masterfully carved like the box it resided in. As Sue opened the bronze clasp of the little pot, the boy raised himself slightly in his chair and surreptitiously peered into its depths. He saw that it was filled two thirds of the way up with a dark red liquid which seemed, somehow, to be giving off heat. Sue's lips pursed ever so slightly as she carefully dipped the quill into the ink, she glanced at the boy, sighed heavily and put quill to paper. With surprising speed and dexterity, she jotted a few short paragraphs in a graceful gothic cursive that was a world away from the furious, scrawling mess of her diary entries.
When she had finished, Sue turned the paper for her guest to see. "Let me explain," she said with a devilish grin "the terms and conditions of this little contract."