Page 36 of Devil Inside

“Begging us to take her away.” Kim’s arm lifted over her head, holding it there for a moment. Now Greg could see the meat tenderizer. Its broadside was purple. Dripping wet.

“Away from your children.”

Down it came.

“Away from this prison of a house.”

Up it went.

“Away fromyou.”

Down it came.

“Can you see it?” Kim asked between strikes. “There’s a lighthouse on the horizon, burning bright... Drawing us in. What a brilliant beacon it is. Aren’t you curious, darling?”

Kim kept talking, but truth told, the words all blurred together by the tenth hit, no matter how hard he tried to listen.Let the words sink in. Greg felt the crater in his face deepen, expand, that meteorite of a mallet crashing down on the surface of his nose, killing off Ben’s dinosaurs,bye-bye, brontos, so sorry, T-Rex, been nice knowing you,the epoch of their marriage come and gone.

Extinct once and for all.

The last thought to slip through Greg’s pulverized mind was simple:Kim’s going to wake up the kids if she keeps at this...

She did, regrettably, so she dealt with them next.

sticky rice

Jordan

I spot her a week later. Kid you fucking not. Right out of nowhere. I’d just about given up on ever seeing Lilith again. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been looking for her, keeping my eyes peeled on the offhand chance that I might find her in the crowd somewhere in this city.

Richmond is a small town. Too small. It doesn’t take long before you cross paths with folks you’re either hoping to see—or never wanting to bump into ever again.

Believe me, there are a fair number of exes in town that’d probably be happier if I wasn’t around. That’s my cross, I’ll bear it.

This is all to say it’s inevitable that you’ll stumble across that other person when you least expect it. Never when you’re looking for them. Murphy’s Law dictates it’ll happen when you’ve finally given up hope on ever seeing them again.

You’ve got to lose faith to find them.

Simply a part of living in this city of ours. All roads converge, eventually. Only a matter of time. You just need to let go of looking. That’s the Richmond way of things.

So why am I on the prowl? Wounded pride? My wounds are all I’ve got right about now, so... maybe. They still sting.The tiniest vibrations rise from the scratches on my skin, that latticework of scabs, all feverish. Just the slightest flare-up along my flesh.

I swear, it’s as if they’re burning.

After a week of peeking around, I’m ready to throw in the towel. I’m going out more, accepting invitations to social occasions I’d normally skip out on, just to see if I could find her.

No dice. I felt like a bit of an idiot, pub-crawling across town every night.

Maybe she didn’t live here? Had she just been passing through? She said she was from out of town. Way out.Nowhere you’ve been, she said. Yeah, but...where, exactly?

She never told me.

I asked a few friends if they knew who Lilith was, but everybody shrugged.Never heard of her. She wasn’t a regular at any bars. Not the ones I used to frequent, at least.

Maybe I really had dreamed her up...

But what about these scars? Where did they come from?

Real. She seemed so real. I feel like I’m losing my mind, thinking of her. She’s a song that’s gotten stuck in my head and I can’t sing it out.