The Devil is in the Details

“You have one of those faces you know.”

“What?” The young man gasped out, his eyebrows raising behind a mop of dirty blonde hair. His was a handsome kind of face. Easy smile that crinkled those honest blue eyes. He looked young, but they always sent them young. The older ones were too smart, too wary or worldly to come anymore.

“The kind of face that…” I paused and ran a finger over his full lips, drawn into a scowl as he tried to shift out of reach only to find the silk at his wrists didn’t go that far. “People trust.”

It was a poor description, too vague, not quite enough.

“People trust me because I’m trustworthy.” He snarled back. The rest of the sentence was left implied. He was trustworthy and I was not.

“What is worth I wonder? Is it something we are born with or something we acquire?”

“Are you being serious? A philosophical question?”

I felt a smile twitch onto my own face, “Why? Are you not tied up right now? Nowhere else to be. Even though your body is confined, your mind is still free.”

“Let me go and I’ll show you, your worth.” The young man threatened pulling against his bindings. I watched him struggle for a moment before sighing and stepping lightly across the room to where the bookshelf stood sentry beside the door. I sensed him still and knew he was worried I would leave him alone.

A free mind is a dangerous thing.

I ran my fingers over the spines of my books. So much of my work was tied up in stories, myths and legends. Cautionary tales told to children to make them behave. But children are fickle creatures. They only ever want to know things they should not know or do things they should not do.

“Are we born with a certain amount? Of worth that it. Do we acquire and lose it as we live? If that is true, then are we not all born equal, and it is humanity or perhaps circumstance that defines our differences. The choices that we make. That our ancestors have made. How does one decide worth? To weight something above something else.”

“Bravery is worth something. Being true and kind are worth a hell of a lot more than being cowardly and tying someone up to taunt them with meaningless questions.”

“Hardly meaningless. The contemplation of one’s humanity. If you had done your own before coming here perhaps you would not have come at all.”

“I am brave enough to face you. Worthy enough!” He spat the words at me as though they could be used as weapons, but they were only feathers brushing across my skin.

“I grow tired of your posturing.” I said turning back to the boy and for a moment the fear was on his face before he remembered he was meant to be brave.

“What do you want then?”

“You know what I find fascinating is the difference between want and need. Do you know what I mean? The act of wanting something is so different from needing something and yet you all lump them together. Does needing something diminish it because it is not a choice? Does wanting something give it power because it is?”

“I..I don’t know.” The boy flicked his eyes over my face. He wanted to see the human in me. He wanted to see that I was somehow still like him. I was, just not in the way he wanted.

“If you had to guess then, what do you think I want and what do you think I need?” I continued to walk around the room, circling closer to the boy again. He leaned away from me, his back hitting the cold stone blocks of the wall behind him. My footsteps were silent on the rug and tapped along the wooden floor. The sound of his breathing filled the air between us. I only continued to roam, coming to rest at the window. The world spread out below me, ripe with possibility. The summer sun threaded through my fingers as I held them out to the diamonds of glass. It refracted across the floor, beautiful, yet lifeless. The sun, the bringer of life, with no life of its own. 

“I’ve heard about the things you’ve done. I came here to stop you.”

“You cannot stop me.” My captive flinched at the utter certainty in my voice. “There is no one who can stop me.”

“What about God!”

“God.” I repeated and turned my attention back to the window. “There is a whole world beyond this place in which god reigns, but they have no power here. No sway over me.”

The fields below were green, dotted with the innocent musing of sheep and smaller animals clever enough to avoid their hooves. The woods beyond were darker, the sunlight swallowed by greedy leaves and trunks scratching at heaven. The sky held the dream of clouds, the air sweet and bright. The wind pulled playfully through my hair, impish little thing. 

“Because you sold your soul to the devil.”

“Because I am the devil.” The look on his face was the same as all the others. Incongruity, disbelief, horror. All the muscles in the face coming together to display the mind.

“You have not answered my question.”

“I am not selling my soul.” The man’s self-righteous anger was back. He flipped his hair out of his eyes. It was the color the grass would turn in the fall, the color of death. Life and dead, so close. The sun and cycle of time. Lovers caught in an endless dance. 

“I did not ask for your soul, only that you answer the question I posed you.” I continued languidly. Those angry eyes tracked me as I moved back to the bookcase. Moving, always moving. I had done this so many times, no dust dare to cling to my companions as I touched them. Watching, always watching. 

“If you are the devil, you want souls. You want to steal them and to have minions do your bidding. You want to devour them.”

“No. I do not want those things.” I said crossing back to the boy. I caught the side of his head in my hand and leaned in close enough I felt his breath hitch across my cheek. There was life in that breath, moisture in those baby blue eyes. Strength in the muscles under my hand. I could feel his warmth. A candle of light in a forest of hungry dark.

“I need them.” A confession, an animal confession. Shame, such a shame.

His fear was palpable now. It rested in the air between us like a cobweb as I came even closer. So, close our lips nearly touched. He was as far away from me as the confinement allowed, I as close as I wanted to get. Any closer and the need would win.

Only a little bit closer.

He was shaking against me. My body pressed into the hard lines of his. The desire was rising in me, a monster without leash. He was burning, the heat wicking into my body. So alive, but I was built to devour.

“What do you want then?” The words were barely an exhale of breath, only a whisper against the ocean of need beating inside my mind. His clothes smelt like the wind. Young, grasses eager to sway in the breeze. Enticing, cloying. Alive, so very alive.

“I want what it is we all want. I want to choose.”

“Choose not to.” The boy continued breathless, his heart beating fast, so very fast, against my chest. He wasn’t so brave now, not so self-righteous.

Scared.

The animal living below the sheep. Alive, barely alive.

   “Too late.” I whispered, “Much too late.”

Our lips met. It could have been me giving in or him giving up, but it was only a moment. A weak moment. A choice neither had. A detail so small it was easy to overlook until it became too late.

Much too late.

His face didn’t look trustworthy anymore. His eyes did not burn with indignation. He did not protest as my fingers undid the knots. They had done this so many times before. He did not cry out as he hit the floor, did not move from the place fate had lain him.

I had not bothered to learn his name. I had not bothered to learn any of their names in a good long while.

A choice perhaps, one still afforded to me.