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

by Jamison Shea

What if they’ve already seen what I can do, the polish chipped and peeling, and they finally find all the ugly things underneath? Too desperate, too sharp, too uptight? What if I’m not enough?

I imagined my shin bone snapping, bloodied and poking through for the audience to devour.

Intrusive Thoughts for the win

And I was too tired to deny: I was falling apart. I hated it—the weakness, the frustration, the wet rolling down my cheeks. Girls like me weren’t supposed to get tired or fall apart. I was supposed to be exceptional, every time.

I kept eating to hide my grin. And for once, I knew deep down in the dark of my marrow that things were going to turn out just fine. I had a way to see to it myself.

And everyone around me, the professionals and apprentices, all nodded, resolute like little soldiers. Everybody but me. Because we weren’t soldiers—we were ballerinas with careers like mayflies, gliding onstage in gossamer wings. The only enemies we knew were time and each other.

… I was angry. Even now. All the time. At the way people looked at me, what they said, how easily they dismissed me. Reduced me to nothing. I had enough rage to go around.

It grew less clear every day where I ended and the wicked darkness inside of me began.

Even Chaos has rules. To receive, we must be willing to take. To win, you must be willing to fight. To drink in life itself, you must be willing to bleed. And there will be blood.

The world had let me starve for too long, and eventually, the hungry stop caring what we eat so long as we’re fed.

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