He smiled, and gave them exactly what they wanted. It started as always with the things that in life would have been considered unrealistically, unattainably luxurious. An apartment, then a penthouse suite. A mansion. Servants, and then ones in every room. Attending to every whim. Slaves to carry one on their backs. Your own chaffeured car, jet, airline. Vacations all year round in all the most exotic locales, and then in ones which didn't exist. He always gave them exactly what they asked for, no monkey's paw twists, fulfillment in both word and spirit.

Their actual spirit, of course, never got fulfilled. Some may take forever to realise, which really is no issue in this line of work. But eventually, eventually, many of them come round.

First of course comes denial. Then anger. Raging at their slaves, their personal fiefdoms. At him who provided their every wish. You didn't fulfill it, they would scream. I didn't ask for this! He would have every patience with them. Yes, yes, they did. He figured out long ago that it was worse if he did not twist and pervert their every wish, but simply let them be exactly as intended. And let them suffer their own consequences, with an eternity of time for that to be played out.

Some would drive themselves mad after a while. Others would scream themselves hoarse, even in a realm where that was not possible - while the body never broke, their spirit could. Some just went through the motions after a while, and became a shadow of themselves. Some grew desperate and tried to figure themselves out of it through cleverness and intellect.

A rare few eventually saw the way, and gave it all up. Always took some time, for those who were coming to him in the first place, but a few actually figured it out, and then their penitence could actually begin.

It was all the same to him, really. He had all the time in the world, and no real preference on how they wanted to torture themselves.