Everyone knew the sound of death when they heard it. No firework or engine backfire could shake your heart like that. The gunshot was loud, and before the echo had fully dissipated, the body was found.
They didn’t find the gun, or the bullet, or any kind of evidence at all, but there was no doubt in anyone’s minds that it was Mira.
The witnesses came later, though they weren’t much help. Just said what was obvious to everyone—a body was sprawled on the linoleum floor, the sickly reflection slowly getting engulfed by a pool of blood that spread like wings from where it lay.
Something malicious and dark possessed her, and when she was found, she was smiling, ripped, and torn.
But here’s the truth, naked and bare.
It was never a gunshot, that sound.
It was the sound of something inside Mira breaking.
And the thing full of malice within her is what became of the fragments, but more honest still, none of that matters. Because of the body on the floor, which is still dead. Very, very dead.
The events leading up to this scene started a long, long time ago. With Mira’s dad, Papa. And Mira. Papa, when he couldn’t find it in other women, found comfort with cheap convenience store-bought beer. Soon enough, Papa stopped hurting Mira where it wouldn’t show and began to hurt her where it did. It began to hurt everywhere, inside and outside. And when Mira wanted to pull her skin off it hurt so bad, she stole a few sips from Papa’s comfort.
Right then, what Mira needed was a mother, but Mama didn’t deal in mothering. She cried most of the time and hugged Mira on occasion, but that wasn’t near enough to heal Mira’s relentless pain. Didn’t get anywhere close.
She was seventeen and just wanted it all to stop.
Everything.
It was so terribly awful that Mira began to call for someone to make it all end so the pain would stop, please. And who else could come in such dire times but the Devil himself?
He held her in his arms, and to her, he looked just like the angel he used to be.
“I can save you,” he whispered to her in the dark. “I just need a little something from you in return.”
“What’s that?”
“You know, nothing much. Just those dreams of yours. You make more every night, so it’s really not much to ask.”
Mira was never stupid, but it is rather difficult to think straight when you’re in an inexplicable degree of pain. In her hurt, she agreed.
“Just quickly,” she begged. “Just do it fast.”
And so in small doses, the Devil began to save her. She expected it to smell putrid, like the stench of the dead, but it was so sweet, like honey. And she began to smile again even if she looked like a husk of herself.
She was still a mess for sure, but she laughed and danced and was sublimely happy.
Mama watched it all unfold and felt as though she should say something. But how could she? Who was she to speak against such things? After all, she was the one who hurt Mira in the first place.
The Devil stayed by her side and called her pretty every day and saved her, and she gave him her dreams, which she did create more of every night, she supposed.
But Mira, she was never an idiot. She began, soon, to question it. This freedom and joy. How could such pleasures come from the Devil? After all, the price the Devil tells you isn’t the price you’ll likely pay. So she stayed awake one night and waited for him to take her dreams. Mira held herself still as he climbed her body and calmed her breathing, though it was hard because he was crushing her heart and soul out of her. Like a large boulder sitting on her chest. And she was screaming suddenly. She remembered then that she had once wanted something more from life; she remembered her dreams, and not the kind that flashes beneath your eyelids. Real dreams, big ones, to be someone bigger than she feared. They all felt so far away in that moment, that realization.
She slapped him and shoved him, and at first he raised a hand to her, but just as fast he began to speak softly to her. Words of what he had done for her, what they had, and, oh, how he loved.
And though she was ashamed to admit it, she thought about it. Something inside her was aching to be pieced together, and he could do it. He could save her. That should have done it for her, but the very thing he saved told her not to go to him. It screamed and pleaded and so she gave in.
And she was sitting on her bed crying when he knocked. Of course he knocked, because the Devil was very polite.
But when he knocked, there would be no answer. So he spoke through the door, pleading, begging, and promising. Mira wanted so badly to drug herself again with his sweet promises and smile and dance and be happy, but they were all of them lies. And suddenly Mira was Mira’s Mama now, and that’s why what was happening was happening.
Mira chased him back, all the way down, down, down to Hell, and stood there facing him. Mira was done with the Devil. All of them.
And the black, putrid, fragmented thing came forth from within her. Then it was just her. Just her and a young boy—the Devil, Papa, whatever you wanted to call him—and he was dead, dead, dead as far as she was concerned.
So when the police came, Mira was gone, and he was gone, and all that was left was the faint stench of death.
And honey.