Sugar

by Mia Ballard

T he plan to kill Dean unfurled in my mind like a dark bloom in the midst of an otherwise idle Tuesday evening,

It was a whim, really, until it wasn’t. Until it became the kind of necessity that gnaws at you, a secret you nurture in the darkest recesses of your heart.

we had settled into the kind of comfortable predictability that couples often mistake for happiness.

I saw it—the look. It was a fleeting thing, a mere second where Dean’s gaze held Lilah’s a beat too long, a silent exchange that crackled with an electricity that was unmistakable.

The betrayal was a visceral thing, a punch to the gut that left me reeling. And so, the plan to kill Dean was born not of vengeance, but of survival. It was the primal scream in the face of an existential crisis, the decision to cut off the tumor that threatened to consume me from the inside out.

The meticulous nature of my planning was not born of malice but of necessity. It was a declaration of independence, a refusal to be the victim in a narrative where I had always seen myself as the heroine. The plan was my salvation, my catharsis, a way to sever the rot before it consumed me whole. Killing Dean, in theory, was not about ending his life; it was about reclaiming mine. It was about staring into the abyss of my own despair and choosing, instead, to rewrite the ending.

I study the man I had planned to love for the rest of my life. I find myself lamenting not the impending loss of him but the loss of myself. The vibrant woman who once took pride in her appearance now mirrors his unkempt, subdued existence.

He stumbles up the stairs, looking back at me with his half-hearted attempts at seduction, he doesn't realize he's going to die.

After burying my beloved Dean underneath the lemon tree in our backyard, I did the only reasonable thing left: I bake a cake.

The clock ticks with an almost oppressive precision, dragging me through to the end of the day.

Love, for all its beauty, is fragile. It can slip through your fingers or be buried under the lemon tree in your backyard.

There’s something almost poetic about it—a bitterness that loops back into itself until it becomes sweet.

I wanted to unhinge my jaw like a snake and swallow him whole.

And somehow, in this chaotic symmetry, I find a twisted kind of happiness in my emptiness, a place where feeling nothing feels like everything.

A sliver of control in a world where I often feel powerless.

he became unaware, or perhaps, conveniently oblivious to the tears running down my cheeks.

I'd relent and give him sex because I wanted him to love me.

I wasn’t a murderer—I was just a woman wronged.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” I whispered, leaning over him, my voice soft but deadly. “You manipulated me, broke me, and now look at you—broken, bleeding, finally feeling a fraction of the pain you left me with.”

Life here is different—noisy, relentless—but in every chaotic corner, I search for a trace of you.

The world is vast and indifferent, but within it, there's a space carved just for us.

And though it’s a path I couldn’t walk, it was a memory I’ll carry, a testament to the fractured beauty of what could have been.

T he next couple of years were wild; a whirlwind of chaotic highs riding the back of searing lows.

A few days later, Lizard was found dead in his apartment from a drug overdose. It’s like the universe knew, and intervened before I could.

“Repent to me, you idiot. I’m the one holding you at knife point. I am your God right now.”

I tattoo his name onto my memory.

It feels good to hurt myself.

A dancing, tumbling figure in the panorama of my heart, an anchor I have sought for so long, metamorphosed into a tangible being in my life.

In my head, I marked each chapter of my life with the men I had loved, as if they were bookmarks in the dog-eared novel of my existence.

This is how I viewed love: not just as the most important thing, but as the singular narrative thread weaving through the tapestry of my life.

“We’re alike, you and I. Driven by our desires, willing to cross lines others wouldn’t dare approach,” I whisper.

forcing a smile. It was not a friendly smile; it was more of a grimace. But of course, he was a man, so he didn’t notice this.

It would be unlocked; childless unmarried men were essentially careless and had nothing to live for. If he had a wife or girlfriend I’m sure he’d lock the door then—or she’d be the smart one to make sure all the doors were locked, and the house was secure. Just as I thought, the door clicked open softly.

In the end, it was not just her physical death I mourned but the loss of everything she had been and could never be again.

Her death ripped from me the last fragile threads of my own humanity, leaving behind a cold, relentless void.