Devil House

Sometimes she'd say, "I want to do this."
He would always say, "Maybe" – but he never took it seriously.
He would never help. The kids and his career always came first.

One day, after the kids had left home, she is gone.
He goes seeking her.
He looks and looks for weeks in vain.

A man comes to him, and says, "I represent Someone who knows where she is. Come meet Him."

He meets Someone in ill lit marble halls. Halls so dark, there may have been no light at all, in all the world; so dark there could have been no outside, no sun or moon or stars. But Someone has a light for Himself, like that of a white flame glimmering off a bent plate of steel. Someone is wearing black, and a wooden mask, and does not speak.

Someone takes this man to a theatre somewhere in the dark halls. Here there is a stage, framed with red velvet curtains.

She is on the stage.
Here, she lives every dream he wouldn't let her live in life.

Every private moment he stole without thought, she now enjoys.
Every solitary thought, she now gives voice.
Every word she ever swallowed, now she says.

Every secret, now she tells. Every grudge, she now utters. Every chance she ever gave up for him or for the kids, she now has back. Every man she ever wanted, now she takes; every lewd and unwifely act she'd ever fantasized, now she performs.

Every pretense now is gone.
Every truth about herself she now revises before his eyes.

And he watches, silent.

I sit at the back of the theatre, watching him watch.
Someone whispers to me in His hollow voice,
"He made her live in his house. Now he lives in mine."