Great story! I love the imp. It took a while to get used to something from hell not being all bad. In a way he reminds we a michivious pet that you can't help liking.
My favorite plays were Macbeth and Hamlet. It was great studying them in school because there was someone to explain things. If I were left alone with the centuries old language and layers of meaning I would have been completely lost.
I didn't expect to like Romeo and Juliet because romantic stories usualy don't interest me much but after studying the play I learned to apreciate the quality of the writing. I might have been board at first but luckily my teacher gave us a lecture on the history of theater. Among other things he told us us that in Shakespeare's time even the female roles were played by men. The image of Juliet as a drag queen stuck in my head and kept me entertained.
Good Advice: "Eat a good diet."
"Get plenty of rest."
Bad Advice: "Wait until you're older." This can be good advice in some cases but whenever someone said that to me they were just hoping I loose interest. When I still want to do whatever it is I was planning a few years later the wise advice giver can always say, "Aren't you a little old for that?"
Strange Advice: "Don't get old." I keep hearing people at work say that. I'm not sure how to follow that advice, besides I want that senoir discount at the hardware store.
Thank you for writing this. Your story was beautifly written. To me the story had the feel of an old legend or maybe part of some kind of ancienct mythology.
The ending took me by surprise. It looked to me like his chances of surviving were pretty slim but it would be great if he did. There have been some cases where a skydiver's parachute did not open and yet the person survived. Maybe he could land in a human's back yard.