Marilyn Daniels watched the fire in Martin Van Buren High School from Apartment #519, and it reminded her of home. Though many people had told her that Apartment #519 in Medallion Court was her home, Marilyn knew better. Her home was in the depths of the underworld, where the flames never died down and the wicked came crawling to her after they had closed their eyes for good.

The explanation for this was simple. Marilyn was the Devil.

She couldn't help but smile as she spotted Matthew Clark running away from the school with a book of matches in his hand. Before long, his soul would be hers. Marilyn didn't care whether he died tonight or ninety years from now. Either way, his sins would ensure that she would see him again someday.

Marilyn brushed her dark, curly hair away from her face and looked around at her apartment. It looked nothing like her palace in Hell, but it was far from the worst place that she had visited. Apartment #519 was quite cozy in its own special way.

Sadly, Marilyn's four walls had declared her insane long ago. Everyone else she knew, from her neighbors to her coworkers to her own family thought that she was crazy when she spoke of her exploits in the underworld. "Marilyn, you've gone mad," her brother had once said to her.

They would see who was the mad one when Marilyn watched him burn one day.

Marilyn often laughed at other peoples' conceptions of the devil. Nobody ever said that the Devil had to be a little red creature with horns and a pointed tail. Why couldn't she be a perfectly ordinary young black woman?

As Marilyn watched the fire die down, she missed home even more. Though the fire and brimstone of Hell was terrifying to anyone who wasn't her, Marilyn loved it more than anything else. She missed the screams of the damned and the intense heat that permeated throughout the land. Perhaps it was only because she ruled it, but Marilyn couldn't help but appreciate her kingdom.

Before long, Marilyn would need to return home. Apartment #519 was only a brief stop on her journey through the world of the living, or so she kept telling herself. She had already stayed her longer than expected. Marilyn blamed the length of her stay on the number of evildoers in the vicinity. Every place had its mix of saints and sinners, but Medallion Court seemed to have more sinners than most. Marilyn supposed that this was why she felt drawn to the building when she had first encountered it. She couldn't resist one of her own kind.

Marilyn took one last look around her apartment. By the end of the month, she would be gone for good. She was almost certain that she had business to attend to in the underworld, despite the number of people who had told her that she wasn't the Devil, but rather the ordinary woman that she appeared to be.

"You're insane," Marilyn's walls told her.

For the first time, Marilyn thought that they might be right.