For Whom the Belle Tolls

by Jaysea Lynn

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.

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.

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.

“Haven’t you met dear Sariah? It’s far more likely she’s been doing him.”

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.

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.

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.

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.”

“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?”