Peat Moss and Oil for Burning

1. Open-bellied vanity

The devil’s green coat hangs on the hook by the door.

Elle installed the hook when she moved in. The landlord said she shouldn’t attempt any repairs herself. The way he looked her up and down when he said it, Elle knew he didn’t think women could use power tools. Her mum said, “Fuck that,” and lent her a drill.

Now Elle hopes the hook is sturdy enough. She imagines the devil’s coat is quite heavy. Who knows what he keeps in his pockets?

“Do you take milk in your tea?” Elle asks, glancing over her shoulder.

The devil sits at her rickety round dining table, one cloven hoof on the other knee. He’s dressed in dark green flannel and tight blue jeans, his beard lush.

“Please,” he says, and he bleats the ‘ee.’

When she’s made the tea and they’re sitting across from each other, she’s…nervous isn’t the right word, but there’s something like it sweltering in the creases of her palms. She wipes her hands on her velvet skirt under the table.

“I made you a playlist,” the devil says, and syncs his phone to her bluetooth speaker without asking.

2. Fox stomach mid-yawn

Elle decomposes as she falls in love.

She’s functional, mostly. She can walk and talk and eat. But all she does is lay in bed and daydream about possible futures with the devil. Rot is inevitable.

They kiss for the first time on a tram: the devil brackets her beside the ticket machine, says, “God, I like you,” as he leans in.

Elle’s eye sockets go waxen.

They kiss for the first time in her front doorway: the devil claims the whole space. When he grins, his teeth are a mangled mess and Elle finds it endearing. He whispers, as if his feelings are a secret just for her, “Can I kiss you?”

The dry skin on the back of Elle’s hands splits and leaks yellowing fluid.

The first ‘I love you’ happens after sex: the devil says, “I love the noises you make.” Elle hides her face in the pillow, utters a muffled, “Thanks.” He presses reverent kisses to her shoulder. “I love you, Elle.”

Her hair falls out in clumps.

3. Open wounds

Elle only comes when she masturbates.

After they have sex, Elle always has to assure the devil that it’s normal—as long as everyone has fun, orgasm isn’t necessary.

It’s not that she doesn’t believe it. Feeling wanted is like hairpin wrists, bleeding lips, sliding whiskey. Filed teeth holding her gut together.

That’s enough.

She just wishes she didn’t have to make the devil feel better about not being able to make her come—when she’s, you know, the one who didn’t come.

The devil isn’t bad at sex. His oral is passable, and he holds her down when she wants him to. But he also thinks his penis is bigger than it is. This seems closely tied to his self-perception, so Elle doesn’t tell him when, during their short stint at polyamory, the guy she dates is significantly bigger.

She also comes the second time she has sex with him. She doesn’t tell the devil that either.

4. Keys pressed like flowers between pages between palms

He never asks to read her stories and Elle tells herself that’s okay.

He doesn’t enjoy fiction, he says. He couldn’t give any good feedback. It’s just not his area of expertise.

But writing makes Elle shimmer.

The devil says, “It’s not like I expect you to take an interest in my art.” He’s working on a giant canvas on the floor. The blood of small animals fills buckets around him, and he’s got paints by Stuart Semple (he refuses to use Anish Kapoor; he doesn’t financially support problematic men). His art pulls heavily from expressionism.

Elle doesn’t really like it aesthetically. But it’s his art, so she listens to his rants on technique, even shows him music and writing that reminds her of his work.

But he won’t read her writing, or her favorite book, or watch her favorite TV shows. She has the distinct sensation of her ribcage crackling like twigs underfoot.

5. Step from trees and into headlights

Elle and the devil are getting married.

Her mum and aunt sit in the front row. Her aunt dabs her eyes with a handkerchief. She whispers, “She looks like a cow in that dress.”

Elle’s cousins, an endless sprawl of sticky pre-teen children, take up all the other seats.

Ants make trails from the peonies to the wedding cake. Some of the children wiggle on creaking chairs as ants crawl up the legs of their pants.

The devil clears his throat. “I wrote my own vows.”

Elle’s aunt wails.

The priest says, “The groom was still writing his vows as the bride walked down the aisle.”

“Marriage isn’t necessary,” the devil begins. “No one I know has a happy marriage.”

Elle waits for more, but that seems to be all he’s going to say. Her palms swelter. She says, “We agreed we were doing the classic ‘to have and to hold’, so I didn’t write anything.”

The priest scoffs. “Typical woman.”

6. Fungi stagnant between notches of the spine

“Bears like sweet things,” the devil whispers, breath hot on her ear.

The bar is loud, and Elle feels sweat leach down the backs of her knees.

He chafes a finger against her cheek. One of her eyelashes clings to his knuckle. He holds it before her lips.

She blows, wishing for the same thing she has for years: I wish for me and the devil to live happily ever after.

“If a bear takes a fancy to you, he’ll eat you up.”

7. Gasp. Stumble.

In an alternate life, Elle dates a pretty girl who is nice to her.

In an alternate life, Elle lives with her mum and comes home from work every day to unwavering emotional support.

She’s read all the books on her bookshelf.

She writes everyday.

Her plants don’t wilt because she always remembers to water them, and her cat doesn’t piss on the carpet, and when she hands her heart, whole and beating, to the devil, he holds it safely.

He holds it softly.

Sets it down in a maidenhair fern, nestled among peat moss. He puts tealights in an oil burner and the scent is like warm cotton.

8. The old woman says, “You see? Now I’ve got two souls in place of your one.”

The divorce papers come in the mail.

Elle places them on the rickety table and makes herself a cup of tea. She has all the time in the world.

On perusal, she finds the devil has already signed, a cloven hoof print stamped in glittering green ink. Elle pulls the pen cap off with her teeth and signs where the tabs instruct.

It all feels very casual, this ending.

Elle gulps the last of her tea, then stands and glances around her kitchen.

Here’s the catch: once you’ve married the devil, you don’t get your soul back.

© 2020 A. B. Young

About the Author

A. B. Young has spent the year haunted by the possums living in  their roof. As they fall asleep at night, sometimes they think the  scratching is coming from inside their head. They have named the possums  Gilbert and Gubar. Young has been published in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Heroines Anthology, and was one of the 2019 winners of the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. They tweet at @theunrealyoung.