Zenith

“Ask me anything at all. I’m only here to serve,”

Beelzebub whispers. He leans back into the ether and waits for the

child’s reply. She peers back and considers, weighing her

decisions. She has so many questions, but she’s afraid of the answer for

each. She whittles them down and

finally begins typing her request into the ever-present, all-knowing

Google. Underhand and behind the screen,

his minions mine her like a chunk of coal, her

innocence teetering as they glean and hack.

Jenny has no idea that he knows everything about her, that he

keeps a ledger. Her travels. Her habits... her growing tendencies. He tallies every

like, every millisecond, twirling her on his perfectly

manicured

nails.

Otherwise, she might have asked one of her parents, but

probably not. She

quit doing that when she was five. She has

reconciled her life and dreams - her very

Self to the master of disguise (unwittingly at first).

Tethered on an insidious

umbilicus, she taps away, unaware that he has sculpted her primrose

vanity. As she asks how she can ever be loved,

when she finally reaches the end of that dotted line he has already marked with an

X, he showers her with flat promises of

Youth and Evermore. It is the

zenith of his day. And his crow feet uncrinkle and he puffs up his chest.