Dancing With The Devil

• Hannah Collins, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2020

Burning flames lick against my charred skin and I feel no pain but heat instead as sweat drips off my face while his has no tiredness whatsoever.
My lungs were dying, my arms were aching, my feet were bleeding and my body was losing all strength.
No matter how many times I cried out to him, he would not stop.
He would smile at me and stop then go faster than before, practically dragging me with him.
I hated him, I hated him with a passion but he loved me, not in the usual way.
He loved that I hated him, he loved how my angry eyes were always focused solely on him and only him, he even said loved me more than his previous lovers.
Apparently all his lovers were annoying and suffered screaming in agony and thriving on the floor in great deals of pain.
I like them was also in pain but I wasn’t going to let him see any more signs of remorse or hurt in me.
Like my father once told me, if you show yourself weak to someone, they’ll eat you alive and I have no doubt he was right.
He continued to pull me around and my feet were trying so hard to keep up and I knew I would fail but I would get up and keep on going, I wasn’t going to fail.
I made a promise to everyone I would try no matter what the consequences, though I was already regretting my choices.
My toes no longer had feeling in them and my hands had grown so sweaty, they were sliding off his silken clothing but he always caught them and placed them on.
My eyes were hurting badly from the ashes and terribly humid temperature the lava radiated I had no choice but to close them for a second.
But it was a grave mistake as he held my hip closer to him and grabbing my chin with his claw like hand, kissed my lips.
My eyes sprang open as he pushed even harder, even bending me backwards to go further.
There was a pro and a con to the situation I was in; the pro was that he had finally stopped so he could kiss me and my feet were finally relieved as well as all my aching muscles but now my back was in dangers of snapping in two.
Having no way out of this, I grabbed his head and shut my eyes tight, to make it seem as though I liked this, hoping he would let go.
Surprisingly, he rose up and held me gently, his hand rested softly in my hair and on the small of my back.
Then I felt as though I was healed as he fixed my body up of wounds, even fixing my rich dress and shoes.
For a second, I thought he was being nice.
Then, smiling with a wicked grin, he spun me around and we danced yet again.