For Whom the Belle Tolls

by Jaysea Lynn

“The Underworld is less busy than it used to be, but we still see all kinds. Hell, though, they’ve always been busy. Ever since the early Middle Ages when Christianity really took off, they’ve been ridiculously busy,

Im crying

“We all have terrible thoughts, yes? Sometimes they leap into our minds out of nowhere, other times they creep out of crevices in ourselves we were unaware of or tried to forget. This is normal. It is a condition of life, of being, that our minds shock us sometimes. But this is where we define ourselves: we are either horrified or confused or disgusted by these thoughts and work to change them, or we let them rule us. Our first thoughts about a situation are seldom what we actually believe. They are what we have been conditioned to think, or sometimes they truly are random spits of consciousness. But our second thoughts, ah, that is where we are. It has helped me, working in this position, to forgive myself for my terrible first thoughts, and to pay more attention to my second thoughts.”

Everything in her screamed to fight. She’d always fought. She’d been born for it. Fought nap time, fought reading lessons, fought to ask questions, fought to defend herself, fought to be better, fought

learn, fought to love herself again, fought to live life on her own terms. But she couldn’t fight this.

many ways, God, as she’d been taught about him, reminded her of the worst parts of her father. There, but not there for her. Her father had watched TV in the living room, and God had watched TV in Heaven, both loving her but not being particularly loving in the way that mattered. Except God had never read her a bedtime story or checked her closet for monsters to soften that fact.

He and God were two sides of the same coin.

Though they had been cast in very different roles in the mortal world, both had been warped to fit a narrative, used as the carrot-and-stick of morality. Both had had their character and name used as a method of control.

Being alive was one thing, but she’d fought to live, to savor every heartbeat and take in every experience. Life had been difficult and flawed and stressful and beautiful and surprising and glorious. But she’d died. Over and over and over again she’d died young. In painful, sad, tragic ways. But she’d had hope, had dreams.

There are many things in this world both terrible and beautiful, and all of them require courage.