This is something I'm working on in my free time between uploads of my other works.

I was far too young when I met the devil. His silver tongue spat lies so fine, my young girl's mind took his darkness and insisted it was light.

He held me in flames and told me it was cold, and I burned for him, convinced that pain was love. He wrapped us in a seclusion so encompassing, even I wasn't allowed inside it.

He bathed my mind in turmoil disguised as lavender soap, and it changed me so much, my own family didn't know who I was. The smell confused them, distracted them, made them see me smiling when I was screaming, laughing when I was dying, and they turned away into a cloud of sulfur.

Alone but not alone, the devil sat me on an island of his creation and insisted we were stranded by choice. Just a girl, I danced in his flames and called them the sun.

But the devil couldn't blind me when his spawn grew inside me. I felt it's tiny motions and saw each pile of ashes one by one. I watched my stomach expand, pushing tight against his hand, and I pulled away before his stain could tarnish another piece.

I smelled the smoke and felt the vile, coughed and choked on fumes and bile. I plunged into a lonely ocean with no idea how to get back.

I got to know myself again, as I swam to where I'd been, and the angel we'd created helped to strengthen my desperate limbs. She guided me as we went, her light both a beacon and a whip, and the fear of her suffering kept my chin from dipping down too low.

I'm like a broken vase, glued together and incomplete, but I've grown to love the new shape and push aside the pain of shattering.

Still, I know that he is real, and any day he'll reveal himself to snub out the tiny fire I've used to keep his shadows at bay.

I'm frightened of that day.

***

My beginning could be painted onto postcards and mailed off as wishes for a happy Fourth of July. Fresh cut grass and southern summer showers. Catching fireflies with a dozen smiling cousins in my grandparents' front yard. Hokey country music about sad men who quit drinking to make their wives happy.

My childhood was as American as apple pie. It's unfortunate that in America, one in every nine girls will experience some form of sexual abuse in her lifetime, most commonly between the ages of twelve and seventeen. Find any woman you'd like and ask her whether or not she's felt unsafe, and the odds are, she could tell you a million different instances.

But I'm not here to tell you about the first time, or the second, or the third. That chapter is dead, and those events all feel like blimps on the massive red line marked across my life's map.

He is the one that stands out. He is the detour that skirted me around my entire youth and forced me down paths no child should ever travel.

It didn't look how you'd think, and I suppose, that's why I'm choosing to show you. Young girl, if you're reading this, I know you.