Mack looked at the clock. 11:53pm. It was so close to midnight. He looked up again at his computer screen. No words had magically appeared. He had hardly written anything at all the entire night. It was just too incredibly difficult to be forced to write under such constant pressure. The words were tucked away in the various dark folds of his mind, but no matter how much he attempted to concentrate, they remained utterly inaccessible.

11:55. The deadline was looming.

“Do you know why they call it a ‘deadline’?”

Satan had been standing in a corner most of the evening. Quietly, patiently waiting.

“No, I don’t,” Mack replied through gritted teeth. “Please enlighten me.”

“Oh, I don’t know myself,” Satan said coyly.

“Then why even bring it up?”

“Just making conversation, I suppose,” he said with a grin.

Making conversation. Wonderful.

11:57. Mack started to prepare himself mentally for midnight. In just three minutes, he would be dead. And there was really nothing he could do about it.