I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me (I Feed Her to the Beast, #1)

by Jamison Shea

In every room was a chance to have our graceful suffering acknowledged.

Firm but still broken. And always beautiful. Just like the perfect ballerina.

Maybe two years from now, one of us would be cannibalizing her. We hated her as much as we loved her, because she had our dream caught between her perfect, pearly white teeth, dangled in front of our faces.

My eyes stung under those unrelenting lights, and I blinked back tears that probably looked like joy or gratitude from afar, to anyone who didn’t know me. My starving sneer would soften to a smile.

Soon I’d be a name no one would forget. A raging fire they couldn’t escape.

The applause became thunder. I was their god.

The moss in Elysium could make a home of my bones and I’d welcome it wholly just to feel permanent and part of something. The darkest part in me hungered for that brand of ruin.

I fed her to the beast, and the beast was me, and the beast was within me.

And though he looked the part, I was monster enough for both of us.