The Devil Likes Lemon Cupcakes

The Devil Gets Lonely In Hell

          »I will bruise your lips, and scar your knees and love you too hard.

                    I will destroy you in the most beautiful way possible.

                And when I leave, you will finally understand why storms

                                             are named after people.«

                                                          M. K. Wilde

Melancholy is a strange thing. Sober thoughtfulness; pensiveness. I had one of those numb days when I was sad for no reason. Perhaps I had a reason. I just wasn’t sad because of it. He was gone for quite a while now, and I began missing him. Perhaps.

I was afraid of Lucifer, yet strangely drawn to him.

But then again what is the Devil, really? Just evil with a D.

Intense light from the computer screen was almost blinding. I’ve been doing research to find out how to get out of the deal. Internet has come up with nothing, except with a brilliant idea to lit some candles, thus making it too bright for the Devil’s eyes, and he will vanish. Another site said; if you have made a deal with the Devil, you’re obviously a masochist. That was great, since Lucifer seemed to be a sadist, which made us strangely compatible.

They say that the greatest stories come from writer’s greatest tragedies. So why didn’t I feel something?  Why couldn’t I just destroy myself and place bloody pieces of my mind on that illuminating, blank page on the computer screen? Pulsating little dash on the empty sheet was mocking me. It was like my heartbeat. Empty.

Pauses just kept saying the same word. Write. Write. Write.

Silence was too much to bare.

I sat up, and began ruffling through my vinyl collection, rapidly. There is no better cure to mend a tormented soul than music. Most of cardboard covers had ripped edges, some were even hardly sticking together. These vinyls’ weren’t particularly valuable, they were just old. Aged cardboard split the corners into grey layers of fluffy paper. If you touched it the wrong way, it fell apart.

With a swift movement I pulled one of the records out of its cover. It was hard to imagine that those carved-in lines on the glistening, black surface, were actually music. A few scratches here and there gave the melody a charming, and rustic appeal. Scratches were chiseled in like lines on the palm of your hand.

Carefully, I placed the vinyl on the gramophone player, and pricked it with a needle.

Pensive tune brushed against my ear. The singsong voice burst through my room like fire. Shades of red spattered the wall like an ominous sign.

I watched how the sunset painted the clouds in carmine and amaranth colors. We had a saying for an occurrence like that; *Nicholas is baking cookies, and the black devils are helping him.

I fished in my pockets, then dropped a wrinkled cigarette onto the window shelf. I am not a real smoker, just an opportunistic one. Opportunity showed itself when I was in Jan’s room. My brother thought he did a good job of keeping a secret stash behind books. That was all he used them for, anyway. As if he had ever read The Catcher in the Rye.

The sweet ashy sensation filled my mouth and lingered in my throat. It burned my lungs so I coughed it all out. Smoke was the way I knew I was actually breathing, that I was alive. It was a captivating habit. Even as a child, I enjoyed breathing in that cold air of winter time, then breathing out clouds of steam.