The Devil That Dwelt Within

Tommy was twelve when he first started to believe he was already damned. Not because a preacher said so, not because he stole candy or lied about homework, but because of how his father looked at him. Like he wasn’t a boy anymore—like he was a thing that broke something once and never stopped breaking things.

The devil wasn’t red or scaled or dancing in fire. The devil, in Tommy’s life, came home at 1:13 a.m. with the stench of cigarettes and cheap bourbon woven into his denim jacket like a second skin. The devil walked heavy, like guilt, and asked questions you could never answer right.

“Why’re you crying?”

“Why’re you such a little bitch?”

“You think I wanted a son like you?”

Tommy tried not to cry, but tears had a mind of their own. He learned to count: one breath, two, three, four—until the world stopped spinning. Until it was over. Until the belt fell quiet, until his dad collapsed onto the couch, muttering psalms he didn’t believe in. That’s when the devil went to sleep, and Tommy was allowed to breathe again.

Scene I: The Mirror

There was a crack in the bathroom mirror, shaped like a lightning bolt. Tommy stared into it every morning before school, watching how the fracture split his reflection. One version of himself was almost whole. The other, distorted. Mangled.

He started to think of them as separate people.

The whole side still believed in God. The cracked one? He didn’t believe in anything but silence and survival.

One morning, his lip swollen and eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep, he whispered to the mirror, “Maybe he’s right. Maybe I do have the devil inside.”

The mirror said nothing. But it didn’t disagree.

Scene II: Light in the Basement

The first time someone touched him without pain, it was raining.

A boy named Isaiah—older by a year, with fingers that smelled of graphite and calluses from guitar strings—saw Tommy hunched over his sketchbook in the library. Asked what he was drawing. Tommy almost lied. But something in Isaiah’s voice was softer than the rain.

“A monster,” he said.

Isaiah sat beside him. Looked. “He looks lonely,” he said.

Tommy flinched, but Isaiah didn’t laugh. Instead, he took the pencil and added a bird perched on the monster’s shoulder. “Now he has a friend.”

That night, Tommy drew until his fingers ached. Not monsters. Wings.

Scene III: Exodus

The day he left was the day he found his voice.

It didn’t come easy. It came with a bruised cheek and a broken wrist, and the taste of blood in his mouth. His father had thrown his sketchbook into the fireplace and said, “You think that makes you a man? Drawing fairies and demons?”

Tommy had whispered it at first, barely audible.

“I’m not your devil.”

“What’d you say to me, boy?”

“I said I’m not your devil.” He stood. His legs shook, but he stood anyway. “You put it there. You made him.”

For the first time in his life, his father didn’t swing. Didn’t shout. Just stared. Stared like he didn’t recognize the boy in front of him.

Tommy walked out the door with nothing but his drawings and Isaiah’s number in his pocket.

Scene IV: Searching the Shadows

Years passed like ash in the wind. Tommy became Thomas, then Tom. A man with calloused fingers and too many words bottled up inside. He worked construction in the day and painted by night. Exhibits came and went. Reviews called his work “raw, mythic,” like pain wrapped in oil and canvas.

He didn’t chase God anymore. He didn’t chase the devil, either. But the question still lingered: Was it him? Was that rage, that shame, that weight — was it passed down?

Sometimes, in the middle of a cold night, he’d wake up shaking. He'd see his own reflection in the mirror and not be sure which version was staring back. The whole one, or the cracked.

Scene V: The Fire Circle

One summer evening, years after he’d last heard his father’s voice, Tom stood on a hilltop near the woods. A queer youth shelter had invited him to speak.

The bonfire crackled. The kids watched him — a man with scars on his arms and fire in his words.

“I spent years believing I had the devil inside me,” he said. “Because that’s what I was told. Every time I cried. Every time I loved the wrong person. Every time I spoke too soft, or too loud. Every time I didn’t fit.”

The fire snapped and spat embers into the sky.

“But the truth is… it was never my devil. It was his. My father’s. And his father’s. And maybe even his father’s.”

He knelt, looking one boy in the eyes—a boy with purple hair and bandages on his wrists. “You’re not carrying a curse. You’re carrying someone else’s fear.”

Final Scene: The Mirror Returns

Back in his studio, Tom found an old mirror at a thrift store. It had a lightning-bolt crack, just like the one from his childhood.

He didn’t fix it.

He leaned it against the wall, stepped in front of it, and said softly to his reflection, “I see you.”

Then he smiled, tears rolling down his face.

“I forgive you.”

And for the first time, the devil inside was quiet.

End.