For Whom the Belle Tolls

by Jaysea Lynn

Lily pressed her fingers to her eyes so hard she saw stars. She’d be dead in less than a year with no treatment. With aggressive chemo, she could buy herself some more time… miserable, painful time. And debt.

All she had to do was die, and with death would come the end of the pain, but they would have to live with the memory of it. Of her. So, she’d swallowed the bitterness and rage down—mostly—and tried to give them as many good days and things to remember her by as she could.

It crept up on her though, until she wasn’t strong enough to hide it anymore. The pain. The fatigue. The way breathing had grown more and more difficult. Her utter lack of appetite and frequent bouts of nausea had made her body weak and skeletal, any movement sapping what little strength she had. She didn’t want to go, but she didn’t want to linger in the prison of her failing body either. A deep, primal part of her felt it coming one evening. Her heart had beat a little bit harder in defiance of the inevitable but had stayed steady until the end. She’d hugged her parents a little tighter that night. When death came for her, it was bittersweet. But nothing hurt anymore.

She’d wondered if all religions had been a little right and a little wrong.

A delicate filigree, woven from wrist to shoulder, to help the designs tie together. The stack of books twined with her favorite flowers on her forearm. The illustration of a dragon and a mountain from The Hobbit, as well as a round door with a little backpack beside it. A line from one of her favorite songs near the crease of her elbow. The Evenstar from Lord of the Rings on her inner biceps. A quote from one of her favorite books above that. The snake coiled among lines of filigree and stargazer lilies trailing along the outside of her upper arm.

Lily’s smile turned genuine. If Judgment went well, what awaited her? What would coffee be like in the Afterlife? Oh, the books. There had to be so many new books!

If I’d known demons looked like that, I wouldn’t have had such an irrational fear of letting my foot hang over the edge of the bed. Hell, I might’ve done it on purpose.

Lily mused over the thought, curious. Hopefully, having a high sex drive wasn’t a bad thing when it came to the Universe’s idea of right and wrong, though she couldn’t fathom why it might be.

Trying to live. Trying to die, once. Trying to be kinder. Trying to be worse. Trying to make an impact. Trying to not make things worse. Trying to love better. Trying to heal. Trying.

It looked like retail during the holidays. Demon retail.

In front of … 🫣🤣

She’d shaken Persephone’s hand. That hand had probably shaken Hades’s cock at some point—

Beauty feeds the soul, my sweet boy. It takes many forms, some of them obvious, like a flower in bloom or the laughter of a child, but sometimes it is hidden, though it is never absent. Find beauty.

A little girl with a wild mop of shaggy blond hair and large, uncertain blue eyes looked up at her from under the hood of a shark onesie. She had a snub little nose and a round face, and carried herself hunched, like she was trying to minimize the space she took up. She hugged her midsection and swayed slightly—self-soothing—meeting Lily’s eyes hesitantly, frequently looking down in the general area of her shirt.

He looked at her for a moment. “So you have no practical experience. You’ll learn. So you might mess up sometimes. What parental figure doesn’t? So you might not immediately know the answers to everything. Who does?”

You don’t have to worry about changing the whole world, princess, that’s too big for anyone. But if anyone can change that child’s world, it’s you. So, don’t turn it down because you think you’re not qualified.

Bel rolled his eyes. “Even I knew that. Though according to this article, lemon sharks do occasionally get possessive over certain divers and get jealous when that diver gives other sharks attention.” “Relatable,” Lily said, stretching her back.

Seeing herself as unimportant was safe. Unimportance was safe, being a disappointment was safe. There were no expectations, no standards, no more pedestals to fall from.

The unconditional love she’d been told to expect had had some conditions after all.

How many times had she told her friends that no one’s opinion of them mattered more than their own? She’d cheered for them as they learned to care for themselves, to see themselves as wonderful and flawed and complicated and unique, convincing herself that while others deserved to take up space in the world, she was inherently too much, required too much space and effort.

take. She paled, grabbing her companion’s arm.

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.”

One of her friends had once described parenthood as having a piece of her heart walking around outside of her chest. Lily understood that now.

Be yourself, but not the self that loves to casually tell sex jokes, you filthy-minded gutter rat. This is his mother.

Bel snorted and shook his head, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand and making his biceps flex deliciously. Down, girl.

“I love you. You love me. You can fuck me properly on the desk, the couch, or the fucking floor, but you’re going to do it now. You can take me to a bed properly later, okay?”

But as someone who’s used isolation as a self-harm technique, I’ll tell you that, even though it’s what you think you want, it’s not going to help anything.”

“I’ve been screaming inside ever since I realized something was wrong, and I feel like I’m one wrong move away from completely losing it, but I can still be mostly rational. So, better than I expected, really.”

Survivor’s guilt.