a kiss with the devil
1437 Words
---
A Happy Ending
Annie had seven days left.
Not because the doctors told her—though they had, in their sad voices and euphemistic words. It wasn’t the PET scans, or the blood tests, or the way nurses stopped meeting her eyes. She just knew. The way birds know when to migrate, the way leaves know when to fall.
It was an ache. A knowing. A silent bell inside her soul tolling one last time.
She sat by the window of her hospice room, watching as dusk draped itself over the city like a funeral veil. The world didn’t stop turning just because she was dying. Somewhere, a baby was being born. Somewhere, two people kissed for the first time. Somewhere, someone didn’t feel their world slowly ending.
She envied them.
She didn’t cry, not anymore. She didn’t scream. That was all behind her. Now there was only waiting. And wondering—about death, about what came next, about whether the universe noticed small lives like hers flickering out.
And then he appeared.
He stood on the rooftop, his back to her, silhouetted against a blood-orange moon. She thought at first he might be a doctor, or maybe death himself. But when he turned, she saw he was neither.
He was beautiful in a way that felt wrong. Sharp, angular features like carved marble, eyes the color of ancient galaxies. His presence buzzed in her bones like static.
“You’re not afraid,” he said.
“I’m too tired to be afraid,” she replied.
He gave a smile that was all shadow and smoke. “You should be.”
“Who are you?”
He stepped closer. “Lucifer.”
She laughed. “The devil?”
“Yes.”
“Oh,” she said. “Okay.”
“You believe me?”
“I’m dying. Why not?”
---
The next night, Annie returned to the rooftop.
She had no idea why she expected him to be there again. Maybe curiosity. Maybe desperation. Maybe because talking to the devil was easier than talking to God, who never answered back.
He stood at the same place, watching the moon again. This time, he turned before she spoke.
“You came back,” he said.
“I could say the same to you.”
They stood beside each other, looking out at the world.
“You know, I always thought the devil would come with flames and pitchforks,” Annie said.
He chuckled. “That’s branding. I prefer silence.”
She studied him. “Why are you here?”
“You interest me.”
“Because I’m dying?”
“No. Because you’re not begging me to stop it.”
Annie’s smile was bitter. “What would be the point?”
“You could trade something. People do it all the time.”
“I don’t want to live forever,” she said. “I want to matter before I don’t.”
Lucifer tilted his head, like a dog trying to understand music. “You already do.”
That night, they talked. About regrets. About memory. About heaven, and whether it was even real.
He told her he once loved someone, long before the fall. A being made of light and music.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I loved too much,” he whispered.
---
On the fourth night, he brought her something.
It was a violin. Worn. Beautiful. She raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t play,” she said.
“You did,” he replied. “Before you stopped. Before the cancer took your hands’ strength.”
Annie hesitated, then took the instrument. Her fingers trembled. The bow shook. But when she pulled it across the strings, a broken note escaped.
Lucifer smiled. “Even broken music is still music.”
He sat beside her, humming low harmonies to her hesitant strokes. The sounds filled the night, sad and soft, like lullabies for ghosts.
And something shifted.
She didn’t feel stronger. But she felt lighter.
Alive.
The music wasn’t perfect, but it was hers. And as Lucifer sang quietly beside her, she felt something rise in her chest that hadn’t been there in months—hope, maybe. Or joy. Or both.
When the song ended, they didn’t speak. They just listened to the silence it left behind.
And that silence felt sacred.
---
The fifth night was stormy.
Rain lashed at the windows. Thunder rolled like the growl of ancient gods.
Annie didn’t care. She wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and climbed to the rooftop anyway.
Lucifer was waiting.
“You’ll catch a cold,” he said.
“I’m already dying. Might as well die with a story.”
He grinned. “I like the way you think.”
They played again—this time piano and violin. He conjured a grand piano from shadow, black and gleaming, and sat at it like he was born to it.
Their music was jagged. Intense. Her violin screamed. His fingers thundered over keys like judgment.
But they played in sync.
And when they finished, the rain stopped. As if the world itself paused to listen.
Breathing hard, Annie laughed. “We sound like chaos.”
“We are chaos,” Lucifer replied. “And that’s beautiful.”
She looked at him then, really looked. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because,” he said slowly, “even devils need saving.”
---
On the sixth night, the rooftop was empty.
She waited anyway.
An hour passed.
Two.
Then—he appeared. Not from shadow. From light.
Different.
Softer.
And with him came another figure—one she’d never seen before. A woman in white, with eyes like eternity and wings like morning.
“This is Gate,” Lucifer said, his voice low. “She decides where souls go.”
Annie stood, trembling. “Is it time?”
Gate nodded. “It could be.”
Lucifer didn’t look at either of them. His jaw was tight. His hands were clenched.
“You can come with me,” Gate said. “Now. Or stay one more night. But no more.”
“One more,” Annie said instantly. “Please.”
Gate smiled gently and disappeared.
Lucifer turned to her. “You chose me.”
“I didn’t,” she replied. “I chose music. I chose life.”
And in his eyes, something broke.
---
That final night, they didn’t play music.
They danced.
Lucifer snapped his fingers, and an entire ballroom appeared—somewhere between memory and dream. Candles floated. Stars blinked through stained glass ceilings.
Annie wore a dress made of dusk. He wore midnight.
He took her hand.
And they danced.
She forgot her lungs. Her pain. Her dying.
She remembered being twenty. Running through rain. Playing Chopin in her mother’s living room. Kissing someone once and feeling fireworks.
She remembered everything.
“You could stay,” Lucifer said suddenly. “With me. Not Heaven. Not Hell. Just… here. Between.”
Annie looked up. “What would I become?”
“Like me.”
“A devil?”
“A fallen star.”
She smiled. “I already am.”
And he kissed her.
---
She woke with sunlight in her eyes.
Lucifer sat by her bed, fingers laced in hers.
“You made it,” he said.
“I thought I died.”
“You did,” he said. “But Gate changed her mind.”
“Why?”
He looked away. “Because I asked her not to take you.”
Annie blinked. “You begged?”
“I don’t beg,” he said. Then, more softly, “I pleaded.”
They sat in silence.
“What now?” she asked.
“Now?” Lucifer stood. “Now you live. As long as you can. For as long as you want. The rest is music.”
---
Annie’s cancer never left. But neither did Lucifer.
Sometimes he came as a shadow beside her bed. Sometimes as a breeze in her music. Sometimes as a man with impossible eyes who still couldn't quite smile right.
She never told anyone the devil had kissed her.
She never told anyone that death waited and blinked first.
She played the violin every day. Until her hands couldn’t. Then she sang. Until her voice broke. Then she wrote. Until the pen slipped.
She lived.
And when she finally died, years later, the last thing she saw was him, standing by the door, dressed in light and silence.
He offered his hand.
And together, they stepped into the next movement of the symphony.
---
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- Writer
