In moonlit hush, the forest sighed,

A velvet path where shadows lied.

She ran with fire beneath her skin,

A fevered pulse, a breathless sin. Branches clawed like jealous hands, While whispers stirred the sleeping lands.

He followed close, a phantom flame, Desire unmasked, no need for name.

The night grew wild with aching need, Each step a promise, dark and freed. ‘Til tangled hearts in moss were laid— The hunt complete, but never stayed.

# Scene 1

The devil’s horns pinched his scalp, already slick with sweat under the rubber, and the trident had broken in half before they even left the parking lot, but Nick refused to break character. The path twisted ahead through the corn: ten-foot stalks whispering and clacking together, row after row of desiccated gold. It was the last hour of the maze, and the only light came from the occasional jack-o’-lantern, its candle guttering in the wind, and from Sasha, who glowed with some private inner fire in her nurse’s uniform.She’d insisted on authenticity: her skirt so short that every step threatened to flash her black panties, the top clinging, the little white hat pinned to perfect effect in her blood-red hair. Her stethoscope was real—Nick had checked, had felt the cold disk pressed to his bare chest in the backseat of the car, had shivered in spite of himself.Now, in the dark, between the murmurs of lost children and the distant grumble of the generator, Nick chased her, the tip of his rubber tail wagging somewhere behind. He could not stop grinning. “Nurse! I think I need an exam!”Sasha stopped, spun on one heel. Her grin was less playful, more predatory. “You’re the one with the fever, Nick.”He caught up, blocking her path. She let her hip meet his pelvis, left it there. “Why’d you run?”“Wanted to see if you could keep up.” She held his gaze, her hand a pale starfish on his bare, painted chest. “Devil’s got stamina, right?”He bared his fake fangs. “You have no idea.”She reached up, slid a finger under one horn, yanked his head down to hers. Their lips met, all cinnamon vodka and wax from the horns. It was awkward, then suddenly ferocious, tongues dueling, teeth scraping, Nick’s hands splayed across the small of her back, pulling her against him. The ground was cold mud, but her thighs were hot through the nylons.She broke away, breathless. “We’ll get caught.”“Let them find us.” Nick dragged his tongue down her jaw to the place behind her ear, where the paint from his own face smeared her skin. She let him, head tilting back, the stethoscope bouncing against his chest as she laughed.“Nick.” She said it like a warning. He didn’t slow.He pushed her, gently, until she was pressed to the wall of corn. He felt every ridge of her body, the urgent shivers. With one hand, he nudged the hem of her skirt upward; with the other, he traced the elastic at the top of her stocking, fingers lingering in the gap of bare skin between the two. Sasha arched, gripping a stalk so hard it snapped.He knelt, mud caking his knees. “Gonna take your vitals,” he said, voice low. She bit her lip, peering down at him. He ran both hands up her calves, kneading the meat of her thighs, lips following, then the tip of his tongue. She gasped, loud enough to startle a flock of crows on the far side of the field.There was a kind of fever. Nick licked, kissed, devoured. He let her ride the waves, her hands tangled in his hair, nails scraping. “Good patient,” he whispered, and she kicked him in the shoulder, a playful rebuke, then dragged him upright.She spun him, sudden and strong, so his back hit the corn. “My turn,” Sasha said, and there was a flash of white as she knelt before him, fingers at his zipper. She made a show of it, her hands slow and sure, her tongue tracing the outline of him through the briefs. He groaned, losing his grip on the trident, which fell with a muffled thud.She looked up, eyes laughing, mouth full and red. “You have to stay hydrated, Devil.”“Water’s for mortals,” Nick gasped, but he found himself begging.Sasha took him in, deeper each time, a rhythm that matched the wind and the rattle of the dried leaves. When he tried to take control, she bit him, just a nip, and he gasped again. The world was only mouth and heat and the ache of wanting. She didn’t stop until he was shaking, one hand buried in her hair, the other clutching at nothing.She rose, wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “Vitals are spiking.”Nick couldn’t answer. He wanted to take her, fuck her against the dirt until they both melted, but Sasha grabbed his wrist, spinning him around corners, leading the way. He chased, half-delirious.Around the bend, the path dead-ended in a little clearing, a tarp laid out with hay bales for a photo-op. The devil and the nurse stumbled into the light, faces painted with sweat and lust. They laughed so hard they had to lean on each other to stay upright. When she kissed him again, it was different—hungry and soft, a promise.The stalks shook, and for a moment, Nick thought it was someone coming. But it was only the wind, the cold, and the rush of what came next.

# Scene 2

Sasha pinned Nick to the hay bale before he could say a word. Her hair was wild, the nurse hat askew and trailing in the dirt, but she looked more dangerous than any demon—her jaw set, her eyes black with need. Her weight pressed him back, into the bale’s prickle, his costume a thin membrane against the scrape.She tore open the fly of his briefs with the same clinical precision she reserved for her pill cutters and suture kits. “Stay still,” she told him, and Nick almost laughed until her hand clamped around his throat. She squeezed—not hard enough to scare, just enough to say who was in charge. Her other hand found his cock, hot and thick and so desperate it hurt.“Jesus,” he croaked, but she squeezed harder.“Try again.” Her voice was velvet wrapped around a blade.“Lucifer,” he said, eyes watering. Sasha eased up, just a fraction, and stroked him with rough, perfect rhythm, her thumb circling the head on every upstroke. He bucked against her hand, and she used her other palm to slap him—his cheek, sharp and stinging. “You like that,” she whispered, a secret between the two of them.She knelt, straddling his legs, skirt riding high. The cold night air hit the backs of her thighs, and she shivered, but her hands never left him. Nick reached for her—her hips, her chest, her neck—but Sasha batted him away, punishing him with her teeth on his collarbone, the bite blooming instantly red.He was aware of the corn, the crickets, the distant pop and cheer of other maze-dwellers, but mostly he was aware of Sasha, who peeled her top over her head and left her breasts bare to the night. She pressed them to his face, smothering him in heat and vanilla sweat. Nick devoured her, teeth and tongue and greedy moans, leaving marks of his own. When she reared back, there was a bright pink arc across her breast, a trail of his need.Her hand found the stethoscope, still looped around her neck. She dangled it in front of his eyes. “Tell me what you hear.”He didn’t get it, at first. She put the buds in his ears, then pressed the disk over her own chest, right over the heart. There was nothing in the universe except the thud of her pulse and the sound of her breathing. Nick closed his eyes, drunk on it.Sasha guided his cock with the same authority as before, nestling herself onto him in one slow, dizzying drop. They both hissed at the stretch, the ache, and then they found their rhythm. She rode him with ferocity, thighs clamped to his hips, hands braced on his shoulders. Nick gripped her ass, hard enough to leave bruises, and let her grind against him, each thrust louder and more frantic than the last.It was not gentle. It was not slow. Every time she moved, the hay bit at his skin and her nails carved half-moons into his biceps. She slapped him again, just to watch his reaction; he answered by biting her shoulder, a dark animal joy in both of them.She bent low to his ear, sweat and saliva on her upper lip. “You’re not going to come yet,” she hissed.“Fuck, Sasha—”“Not yet.” She drove down harder, and his vision swam. He needed to finish, needed it more than breathing, but she denied him, slowing, squeezing, torturing. She reached between their bodies and found her own clit, fingers working in tandem with his rhythm, and her face went slack with pleasure. “God, yes, keep going, keep—”He could feel her, spasming around him, each contraction dragging him closer to the brink, but he held on, desperate to please, desperate for the reward.Sasha’s hands cupped his face, and in a rare moment of gentleness, she kissed him—slow, deep, tongue seeking his. She whispered into his mouth, “Now.”He thrust up, losing all control, pounding her so hard the bales shuddered and hay flew into the air, a golden storm. He came with a gasp and a spasm, fingers digging into her waist, her name ripped out of his lungs. She shuddered and shook, riding him through the last pulses, refusing to let him go.After, she slumped forward, their sweat mingling, her breath hot in his ear. Nick was limp, empty, every nerve scraped raw. His face tingled from the slaps; his throat ached from her hand.Sasha traced circles on his chest, feather-light, then pressed her lips to each of his bruises in turn. “You okay?” she murmured.He grinned, teeth pink with blood where he’d bitten his tongue. “Fuck yes.”She rolled off, lay beside him on the tarp, fingers tangled in his. They stared up at the sky, the stars mostly blotted out by corn and cloud, and for a moment neither said anything.Then Sasha laughed, a low, warm rumble. “Next time, you wear the skirt.”Nick squeezed her hand, and for the first time in his life, the devil felt at peace.

# Scene 3

They lay side by side, their bodies an inventory of wounds and warmth. The moon had risen, fat and yellow, painting everything in the kind of soft focus reserved for memories and regrets. Sasha’s skirt was bunched around her hips; her knees were smudged green and brown. Nick’s devil horns dangled lopsided from his head, and the trident, now a mere stick, served as a makeshift backscratcher as he fidgeted against the hay.“Don’t move,” Sasha said. She perched on an elbow, reached over, and examined the darkening bite mark on his shoulder.Nick tried to turn his head to see. “That bad?”She made a face—somewhere between impressed and guilty. “Not mortal, but you’ll have a bruise for Halloween.” She kissed it anyway, lips gentle, and lingered there until the skin warmed beneath her mouth.“Your turn,” he said, rolling her onto her back. He traced the scratch down her side, the shallow welt on her breast, and the tiny cut on her cheek where a stalk had caught her. “Nurse Sasha, I think you need a suture.”“Stitches are for quitters,” she shot back, but when he kissed the wound, she closed her eyes, a smile floating up.For a long time, they didn’t move. The corn shielded them from everything except the sighs of wind and the occasional giggle of someone lost on the other side. The hay poked, the ground cooled, but Nick felt only the quiet tingle of her fingers playing with his. She seemed suddenly small, almost fragile, her bravado shed like a molted shell.“What now?” he asked, voice barely a whisper.She shrugged, the motion drawing the nurse hat lower on her forehead. “We get out. Or we stay. Or you turn into a pumpkin.”“Wrong costume,” he grinned.She lifted the stethoscope, looped it around his neck, and pulled him close. “Fine. But you’re still coming to brunch with my mom tomorrow.”Nick pretended to protest, but her arms around him melted any resistance. He cradled her, thumb stroking circles into her shoulder, and when she shivered, he pulled the tattered devil cape over both of them.The warmth between them was slow, lazy, a radiance that built from skin to skin and settled somewhere under the ribs. Sasha burrowed her nose into his chest. “Didn’t think you’d be so good at this,” she admitted, voice muffled.“At what, hay fever?”She laughed, soft and genuine. “No. Letting me win.”He smiled, thinking of the fight, the surrender, the way she’d taken everything he gave and gave it back double. “Wasn’t losing. It was… mutual destruction.”She punched him, feather-light. “That’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”When the chill crept in and their muscles ached too much to ignore, they cleaned up, brushed off the hay, and tugged their clothes into something like decency. Sasha re-applied her lipstick by the light of Nick’s phone, smudged it intentionally onto his mouth with a slow, deliberate kiss. He didn’t wipe it off.They walked out of the maze together, sometimes hand in hand, sometimes arm in arm. At the exit, a bored attendant handed them each a caramel apple, not even bothering to look up from his phone.“Happy Halloween,” he mumbled.“Best one yet,” Nick replied, glancing at Sasha, who looked back with a conspirator’s wink.They stepped into the night, the devil and his nurse, and behind them the corn rattled, keeping all of their secrets.

You’re stuck between wanting someone to save you and not wanting to be a burden so instead you suffer in silence afraid to speak up.

My brain just logged me out due to inactivity and now I can’t remember my password.

My brain just logged me out due to inactivity and now I can’t remember my password.

I try to be upbeat but somehow someone always brings me down and it just sucks. But I’m working on it and doing my own thing. It’s always a matter of what people are pushing onto my shoulder when I’m trying to keep my own mental health above water