The devil she feds

****This story contains sensitive content including gore, physical violence, physical and sexual abuse****

Everybody has a devil and an angel in their head. Feed the angel and it’ll give you hope and light; feed the devil and it’ll grow fat, ravenous, impossible to sate. I usually try to feed my angel. But today, my devil is starving for blood and reckoning.

Especially today. The Goddess Hecate demands it.

The images won’t stop—me slamming his skull until I feel bone splinter, twisting his fingers until they crack, slicing his flesh a thousand times as he leaks out slow. All of it an offering.

“Blood I bear, to the mistress I give. Hecate, accept, and allow my strength to live.”

And he will deserve every cut. Johnny Glyres, pimp and woman-beater, is tonight’s sacrifice.

They call me Honey Bee when I’m on stage- My skimpy neon yellow and black two-piece bikini clinging to me like paint, hips rocking under fluorescent lights, skin shining like syrup as I coil around the pole like it’s my throne. But when the crowd’s roar fades, my true name comes alive: Belladonna. The deadly nightshade. A whispered promise that predators will not walk free.

Tonight, Johnny Glyres will learn that.

⸻

Backstage, Lisa is shaking as she powders her pale skin. Bruises blossom down her neck, raw fingerprints visible even under heavy makeup.

“He sold you again?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

Her eyes dart to the bar, where Johnny leans, abrasive and loud, shoving bills at another dancer.

“He’ll kill me if I leave him.” Her voice trembles, breaking. “Maybe that’s what God wants. ’Cause He sure ain’t saving me.”

“Would you let Him, if He tried?”

Lisa swallows hard, tears sliding down powdered cheeks. “I pray every night. But I think God’s forgotten me, hon.”

The word “forgotten” trembling out of her, fragile as a candle guttering in the wind. Each mark on her body became a psalm of suffering, louder than any prayer.

“No,” I whisper, my gaze narrowing. “He sent you Belladonna.”

Lisa wasn’t always like this. I remember the first night she walked through the back door—clutching a thrift-store purse, smile too wide for the room. “Just a few months,” she told us, swearing she’d save enough for beauty school. Even between sets she couldn’t sit still—braiding hair in the dressing room, sketching little makeup palettes in her notebook, humming pop songs like she was rehearsing for a brighter life.

Then Johnny showed up. At first it looked like a love story—flowers dropped at the bar, a wad of cash so she could take a night off. But petals rot quick. The flowers stopped. The cash never reached her hands. And when he drank—and Johnny always drank—his temper came out sharp as barbed wire.

We noticed the bruises before she learned to cover them. Heard her muffled crying in the bathroom, the lies whispered thin as prayers. “I tripped. I bruise easy. He just gets stressed.” Words that tasted of blood.

Now she’s a ghost of that girl who dreamed of blush palettes and a beauty license. Her laugh is gone. In its place, that fragile tremor whenever she mentions God, as if she’s holding a rope no one else can see. And that’s Johnny’s true crime—not just the fists, not just selling her like property—but convincing her she deserves nothing better.

And that’s why tonight isn’t about vengeance alone. It’s about resurrection.

Lisa drifts back on stage, hips swaying, hiding her pain beneath sequins and rhythm. Johnny watches, hunger slopping across his greasy face. He peels away from the bar as he spots me, bills already crumpled in his fist. He thinks he’s buying himself a private show.

But what he’s really bought is his death.

⸻

The moment he follows me into the back room, Honey Bee transforms. She peels off my skin like a cheap costume, leaving only Belladonna pulsing beneath. My body shifts—not in flesh, but in presence. The sway of my hips turns sharper, predatory, like a blade hidden in velvet. My smile becomes a mask, stretched too wide and dripping seduction, meant to lure him deeper into my web.

I feel the goddess stir. Shadows stretch longer across the floor, even though the cheap fluorescent bulbs above us haven’t flickered. The air thickens with the musk of iron and smoke, the invisible veil of Hecate’s approval settling around me. Inside my head, the angel and the devil collide—one whispering forgiveness, the other urging me to taste his fear. Their voices braid into something electric, running through my veins like fire.

Belladonna is more than an alias. She’s the embodiment of every bruise, every cry I’ve heard muffled through cheap bathroom stalls. She’s the weapon born from survival. Tonight, I don’t just dance. I don’t just kill.

Tonight, I ascend.

The back room reeks of sweat and whiskey. The bass from the club pounds loudly through the walls as Johnny slumps into the chair, greedy eyes crawling all over me.

“How about a little bondage, daddy?” I croon, silk scarf sliding between my hands as I kneel in front of him, tying his wrists and ankles to the chair, slow and deliberate.

He leers, “You’re a kinky little bitch. I like my bitches on their knees.”

I rise, blade hidden in my palm. My voice sharper than steel. “You like beating women, Johnny?”

The knife whispers across his chest. At first shallow—each slice a teasing sting that makes him chuckle, mistaking cruelty for play.

Another cut. And another. His laughter frays, breaking into strained grunts as the honeycomb pattern deepens, blood blooming like bruised petals across his skin.

Soon he’s thrashing, sweat pouring, the chair rattling under his weight. The bravado that once coated his words drips away with every drop of blood.

“Please—please, I’ll stop—” His voice is raw, collapsing into pitiful whimpers.

I silence him with another stroke, savoring the way his sobs dissolve into the thick, humid air. Each cut feeds my devil; each confession feeds my angel. Both ravenous. Both alive.

At last, I drive the blade into his chest with inhuman strength, bone splitting with a wet crack. His scream dies in his throat as I plunge my hands into the cavity, searching, until my fingers close around his beating heart. The goddess demands her penitence.

It comes free with a wet tear—still pulsing, still hot. Blood slicks down my arms, paints my stomach, dripping thickly to the floor.

The club drowns in bass and neon. No one hears but me—and Hecate.

In the shadows, I feel her: the crossroads queen, cloaked in moonlight. She leans close, unseen by mortal eyes, and breathes power into my bones.

I raise the heart high. Shadows coil, flames of unseen fire licking the walls. Power thrums through the room, thick as incense. Then my teeth break the flesh—copper and smoke flooding my tongue. The world tilts, the goddess surges, and I become nothing but feral devotion.

Hecate power surges through me. The Devil is fed.

From the doorway, Lisa appears, sequins glinting under dim light. Her eyes widen at the sight of Johnny—bound, broken, undone. For the first time in months, her shoulders unclench. She steps back slowly, never breaking my gaze, retreating toward the main floor. Past the stage lights she goes, head high, unafraid—gratitude shimmering in her eyes as she looks at me one last time before leaving the club for good.

Johnny Glyres is gone.

Lisa is free.

And Belladonna’s reign has only begun.