Page 59 of Devil Inside

I’m so fucked. Am I damned for having a one-night stand with the devil? I’ve been to hell already and I’m definitely not in any fucking rush to go back.

But do you know what the craziest part about all this is?

I miss her.

Lilith.

Chasing that current of her, watching it seemingly drift from one person to the next at the farmers market, I couldn’t help but feel the electricity of it all. The thrill.

What if it’s real? What if she’s real?

I haven’t answered my phone for the last ten hours. I’ve missed a dozen calls, all my friends checking in to see if I’m okay. If I’m still alive. They don’t know what’s out there.

Lys must’ve told the others I ditched her at the farmers market. Not my best move, but I haven’t been thinking straight for a while now. She’s been texting to see if I’ve been kidnapped or something, lord knows what. What kind of friend would leave her like that?

Me, that’s who. This asshole. Is this who I am now? Maybe I’ve always been.

I’m aching for a drink, but the thought of letting go—cutting loose—doesn’t appeal. Something about unwinding. Letting the stress relent, I don’t know. Fuck numbness. I need to feel. Hold onto my nerves. Stress is a testament. Proof of a pulse. The anxiety is keeping me alive and that feels like a good thing. I don’t care if I’m hallucinating human-sized spiders, I need to be a bundle of nerves right now. My fight-or-flight response is all I’ve got.

I wonder... How long before I burn out?

Burn in hell?

I slip across my mattress toward the window and peer outside. I’m on the fifth floor of a ten-floor apartment building. Grace Street is lined with apartment complexes. Cheap housing for college students. I’ve got a fire escape, total bonus. My own patio in the sky.

There’s a potted plant I’ve forgotten about out there, the shriveled husk of some abandoned plant browning in its dried soil. Cigarette butts sprout out from the planter, over a dozen tiny buds reaching up from the dirt. They’re thriving better than the actual plant.

A bouquet of cancer sticks. Seems fitting.

It’s late enough that all the college kids have stumbled back to their dorms. The streets are quiet below. Barely any cars pass by. The city is ready to slip off to sleep.

Richmond, the slumbering beast. I’ve got an elevated view of the skyline. A webbing of streets, beaded by lights. I can’t help but think of the people living in these apartments, the sheernumber of bodies, all of them going about their own business, living their lives.

Lilith is out there, too, somewhere.

I push away from the window, slipping deeper into my room, across the bed, until my spine meets the far wall. I press my head against plaster until I feel like I’m balanced.

Just me and my personal demons.

I light up a cigarette. Take the smoke into my lungs. Let it burn between my fingers.

Look at you, my mom said from her hospital bed. Her last few words to me.

Mom passed away when I was ten. Cervical cancer wiped her off the face of this fucking planet. My father never knew how to handle me after she died. Expressing his emotions wasn’t something he ever did, even before my mother passed. He only got more distant once it was just the two of us, trying to figure out how to survive, leaving me with a whole mountain of angst I could never scale. It just overwhelmed me. All of it. Everything.

I remember being with her in the hospital room. Dad left me alone with her to grab a coffee from the commissary. He told me she’d be asleep, that I should just sit with her.

I hadn’t known she’d opened her eyes. That she was awake.

You burn so bright,she’d said. Her voice dry. Lips chapped and cracking. There was a cup of ice next to her bed. I offered her a sliver. She shook her head.I just want to see you.

A beacon, she called me.You’re my lighthouse.To help light her way.

Guide her.

She passed away not two days later. I’m not sure if the bulb burned out of me the day she died or not, but I tried so hard to stay lit for her. Burn bright. For years, I believed I’d bring her back. That I had what it took—the will—to light her way home. To guide her back.

She never returned. What kind of beacon am I?