She shivered, stepping away from the dance. Goosebumps covered her otherwise naked flesh. It had not been what she thought. She felt so—what was the word?—empty.
“You sold your soul,” said a voice from the darkness. “What did you expect?”
“I don’t know,” she said, casting a glance over her shoulder at her frolicking elders as they circled the bonfire. “The way Mother talked, I thought it would be, well, more fun. That I’d—hey! Who are you?”
“I am what I am, what you came here to find, my child.”
“Ha! I hope you have a bigger dick than that looney tune wearing the goat’s head. I’ve seen through one costume tonight.”
“I wear nothing but the darkness.”
“That’s a good line. What, do you have a Bandcamp link?”
The little grove she had wandered into was silent.
“I’m sorry,” she said after a pause. “I wasn’t, I’m just, it’s not what I wanted it to be.”
“It never is. Your mother felt the same way, but she’s told herself another story for so long that that’s all she remembers now. Every time she comes here, she says it wasn’t as good as the last time, then she comes again. These things are only ever good in fantasy, but I don’t think you like feeling this empty.”
“What, and you’re going to fill me? Possess me? I guess, if you want. You could have grabbed all you wanted back there just now.” Back there, where she had offered her soul only to find that all she was good for was flesh.
“I hear you crying,” said the voice, “when you were trying to laugh at that goat, the same cry I hear when your uncle would visit and your Mom chose not to know what he did. The same cry I hear the first time you took those little pills, before you decided not to know what you had done.”
“You certainly hear a lot,” she said. “Besides, you’re the devil, aren’t you? Don’t you like those things?”
No answer came.
“No? What, is the devil just, ‘Misunderstood’?”
“He is, often. It is his trade. To understand that is to understand him.”
She did a quick calculation.
“So, what are you then? What do you want to be? Ancient god? A ghost? The prince?”
“I have had those names. I am what you came here for, what you’ve cried for again and again. Every time you’ve tried to name me, you have felt empty. It was Brian, for a while, but you realized he wasn’t me. You tried sex, after that. Came closer as you got further away. I was there in the music, sometimes, but rarely the same song twice. You almost found me on that college trip, but I wasn’t the mountain or the sunrise.
“Now you’ve come here to a witches’ sabbath, thought you would finally corner me. You had put it all together, sex, music, nature, but what did you find? Emptiness. And maybe you’re realizing that I’m not the devil you thought I was. I do have a name.”
“What is it?” she asked, trying to sound uncaring.
“As with you, I called a man up a mountain. He found me there, and I gave him my name. I called him back to that mountain when I had clothed it in darkness, and all the world thought he was dead. You are naked, broken, and empty. I can fill you, heal you, and clothe you.”
“I’ve tried everything else. What are you going to fill me with?”
Then she heard the screaming. Turning around, she saw the bonfire like a pillar in the sky, and the dancers were sparks leaping from its heat. Screaming in the night, they ran, and quickly fell, dead, in the darkness, their bodies burned up like embers.
“With fire,” my child. “With fire.”
Tale Told 