Be Careful What You Wish For
A parable for modern times
If your name is June, this isn’t about you — unless you have big brown eyes, the color of wet sand.
Before I begin, are you someone who wishes you knew back then what you know today? Think long and hard about this.
Anyway, this is the way the story was told to me.
You all know the saying; eyes are the windows into a person’s soul. But, of course, June’s secret is she has no soul, having sold it to the devil long ago.
But let me continue.
June has a humorless laugh. She lives through every new day thinking to herself, ‘if only’.
You see, June was once a different girl, believing in the Life everlasting. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? Like once upon a time.
Of course, this isn’t who she is today. She is a girl wishing herself to die. She’s weary, bored, frustrated…and tired! Tired to the bottom of her soul, that is, if she still had one.
Sighing, twirling her hair around her finger, watching other children and remembering those days? Children and their silly games.
“Hello,” a voiced says. Startled, June turns sharply, only to fall into the depths. She looks up.
“Oh, it’s you, again,” she mumbles.
“Now June, is that any way to greet the person who gave you your heart’s deepest desire?” the voice questions.
June shrugs. Her deepest desire has now become her darkest hell. The voice comes closer, and as if putting a slender finger beneath her pretty chin, she tilts her face up.
“June,” asks the voice, “Are you unhappy with your life everlasting?”
Again, June shrugs.
The voice nestles down on the bench next to her.
“Are you regretting your decision to desire the story of once upon a time a princess lived forever?”
“You know I do!” she says angrily. “And you knew I would. Yes, you warned me it wouldn’t be fun, and I… of course, ignored you. But still, it was wrong of you to offer me something you knew would make me miserable.”
The voice laughs.
“Wrong?” asks the voice chuckling. “You are amusing, June. I do like you. Tell me this, if I were to offer you your soul back, and let you die a peaceful death… would you do something for me?”
June swallows hard, letting her lashes fall, covering her eyes, thinking, is this true? Is it serious? Or another game to tease me?
“Yes,” she whispers. “Anything.”
“Anything?” the voice smiles, as if lips parting, sharp, gleaming white teeth behind bearded chin.
Staring into her impossible conscience, she nods again. “Anything.”
“You would die for me?”
* * *
June awoke in a hammock, the sun tingly hot. Squeezing her eyes
shut, she rubs a bare arm across her forehead. She is sunburned, and asking herself why she had fallen asleep in direct sunlight wearing nothing more than a bikini? Sighing, she sits up, swinging her legs onto the ground.
Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, she cautiously looks down at the ground, closing her eyes in horror.
“June, you’re awake,” the voice asks.
With sudden dawning, June turns to look into the devil’s green eyes.
The devil smiles, bending at the waist.
“Welcome to my abode, commonly referred to as Hell, for those who pass Heaven.”
Trembling, burning in her eyes with unshed tears, June begins to scream.
If she’d only known then what she knows now.
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