Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil

by Ananda Lima

The writer had not been a writer then, at least not openly so. But the Devil had known. He had known the space she had inside her to carry her stories. He had known her hunger. She typed, and her young self took a sip of her drink and looked straight back into the Devil’s eyes.

The Devil said stories were more than knowing things, facts. There was no soul in that. It was in the telling and the words, the spaces between them.

The Devil had been right about my wanting what I couldn’t have. But at least from then on, I knew myself. And eventually, it didn’t hurt. And eventually, I learned.

I wished I could explain to myself in 1981, and myself now, how time worked. Its mind-boggling speed, even when each day can be slow like a trudge through tar. How you blink, and here you are.

Sometimes she wondered if she was writing what was expected of her. Or if she prevented herself from writing things that were true and she wanted to say, only because it was expected.