If Found, Return to Hell

by Em X. Liu

It’s hard to have insight, when you’re within something. Harder still to know what you’d even do differently, if you could.

The problem with you is that somewhere deep down inside, you still kind of believe that magic is supposed to be a miracle. You wish you didn’t.

maybe life is just a toss-up between the agonies of routine and the agonies of happenstance.

There’s a price to pay for those who defy Heaven or Hell or management.

The living and the dead are all plagued by the same thing these days. Bureaucracy, and the banality of stupid men.

That’s the thing about having been stuck in place for so long. You stop being able to see the possibilities you can carve out for yourself.

Perhaps Death deals in absolutes, but there is no bargaining for life. There is no handshake to make it go down easy, nothing you can offer up to guarantee your happiness. Maybe that’s not so bad, with the right sort of company.