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Mammon never opened that drawer.
He refused.
It laid dormant since Bella…left…for good.
She’d claimed it was temporary, that she needed space for a little while, but the “little while” turned into “a lot of while” until, after a few months, it was permanent.
She was never coming back.
Mammon wasn’t sure what he did, but it hurt like hell knowing she was out there living her own life…without him.
He wasn’t sure what possessed him to open the drawer that night when the clock struck two in the morning. Lack of sleep. Insomnia. Nostalgia.
The empty shoebox beside the dresser started to look really inviting. Throwing away her remnants would help him heal, right? He’d forget everything without anything to remind him of her.
That thought was all he needed.
He didn’t want to miss her any longer.
It was over.
I've been searching for an empty box, that's what I need
The memories of you left in my room’s drawer
Still makes it feel like a rainy day
I think it’s time to let go now
And I'll never miss you
I’ll never miss you
And I’ll never miss you
I’ll never miss you
Belladonna Vexx sat at the vanity in her trailer outside of the Devildom opera. Her performance had ended not ten minutes prior, finishing with the most beautiful of proposals in the audience.
She remembered her own proposal, and her ring finger throbbed at the vacancy of the love she thought would last forever.
Mammon deserved better, more than what she could provide. He deserved his family. His money. His time.
Not someone occupied deeply with the fast, high life of a classical performing artist.
Managing her schedule was a nightmare, not to mention the constant travel away from his family. She saw the darkness behind his seemingly grateful eyes.
When they gazed at each other in the late mornings after a lengthy performance the evening before, his face showed an exasperation he couldn’t hide. In those hours, he revealed his true thoughts.
He was tired, and so was she.
She found herself wearing a mask of happiness that he didn’t break through, refused to acknowledge. Her bubbly personality simmered over the pot’s edge until she had no genuine emotions left.
Falling out of love so slowly took chunks off of her life that she would never get back.
But she wouldn’t miss him.
In the searing bulbs of her private vanity, Bella denied missing him in the slightest.
For all she cared, he could disappear forever.
Wouldn’t it have been better that way?
I got to move on
Countless traces of the past
I can’t even dust them off
Frozen memories trapped in my room
I’m opening the window now to let them go
I got to move on
It's time to move on
Sliding open the drawer, Mammon held his breath as long as possible until his head pounded. Nearly fainting, he gasped for air, panting with a hand flailing over his chest for stability. His other hand clung to the edge of the drawer to stop him from falling to the ground.
He didn’t want to smell her perfume.
Most notably, the scent of vanilla and sandalwood assaulted his senses. Tasting the bitterness on her throat and wrists in his kisses had always sent him rabid. Warmth coated his lips, drawn in a tight line across his face, and his nose scrunched.
But he couldn’t admit anything disgusting was in the room aside from his disgust with himself.
Despite the drawer having been closed for decades, a light layer of dust coated Bella’s remnants. The airtight seal probably broke before they married, and she’d never mentioned it. For the most part, she laughed and brushed away the dust from her knickknacks as a vague nuisance.
That laugh taunted him. Piercing and obnoxious to most, but relaxing to his own ears.
If she was laughing, then she was happy.
If she laughed at his antics, then she was playful.
If she laughed, she was fine.
…Right?
He sought comfort in the loose and broken hair ties, the cracked jar of false eyelashes, the small notepads covered front to back with music notes for songs she never finished.
There was no comfort to be found.
Time had stalled for decades in this drawer of memories.
It was time to trash it all.
Move on.
Shining memories that seemed eternal
I will bury them in timе and let them go
I know I was the only one holding on to something in vain
She thought they would last forever, but the pain behind his eyes hurt her more than anything she’d ever experienced. Considering all of her life’s hardships—poverty, one night stands, abusive work conditions—nothing made her heart ache as much as losing Mammon.
He needed his family, she reminded herself, picking up a bottle of cleansing water to remove her thick makeup. Forgoing her facial crystal decorations that evening, Bella started with wiping away the foundation over her right cheek and closed her eyes.
Cold. Why did it have to feel cold?
Eventually, she would stop feeling the hole in her stomach after every performance. One day, the emotions would stop appearing every time she played an old piece or picked up her once-stolen violin.
Those days…when they first fell in love…were something special.
Why couldn’t it stay that beautiful and gentle? When did everything go wrong?
Was it…her own fault?
At some point, the questions left her exhausted, and she stopped dwelling on the “why” and focused on the present. It didn’t matter why they separated, but rather, that they were.
Holding onto ancient memories from centuries prior did nothing but hurt her.
He’d already forgotten and moved on.
So, too, would she.
I've been searching for an empty box, that's what I need
The memories of you left in my room’s drawer
Still makes it feel like a rainy day
I think it’s time to let go now
And I'll never miss you
I'll never miss you
And I'll never miss you
I'll never miss you
Mammon pulled the drawer out of the dresser completely and set it on the carpet in front of him. This made it easier to see the contents, not that he wanted to see them in the first place. Not him. Not ever. What was the point anyway when she’d been gone for years without a proper goodbye?
The least she could have done was say it to his face instead of over a phone call.
That night had been the worst he’d ever gone through, his heart shattering into a million pieces as she left the silence so long that he thought they’d lost reception.
A soft, “Mammon?” woke him from his stupor.
Arguing, fighting, and complaining lasted for ages. He tried to get her back. He threatened to find her in whatever studio or venue she was recording her latest record. He attempted again and again to figure out what could be done to win her back.
Useless.
He was useless.
Too useless to keep his girl.
Setting the shoebox to the side—the one he’d just gotten with his newest pair of sneakers, another impulse buy along with the stacks of others covering the walls of his bedroom—he hovered his hand over the inside of the drawer, debating what to remove first.
The hair ties? They were trash anyway, almost as worthless as he was. The expired lipsticks? All colors of the rainbow traced praises over his skin throughout the years. The half empty water bottle? Chugged in the middle of the night and tossed into the nightstand before a room inspection.
He needed to let go of it all.
The muted traces of stillness left behind by time
And the lingering regrets I’m still trying to ignore
I can't close this box of memories I’ve opened unintentionally
And it makes me wonder if you too would take them out to revisit them again even for just a moment
So far away
Regret.
Bella knew it well, her chest tight with frustration that she’d put Mammon through great trouble throughout their relationship. All of his organization, something that never came easy to him, was too much on his mind. He worried often whether he could have done better for her, or if he needed to take on more responsibilities to make her happy.
Whatever it was, him being more involved in her job didn’t make her happier.
As she removed more of her makeup, her true self revealed in front of the blinding mirror. The straight, brunette hair down to her shoulders. Her emerald eyes sparkling with tears a long time coming. A light glisten to her tan skin from the moisture of baby oil.
Beautiful, she thought, and yet always too much to handle.
She closed her eyes for a few silent moments, praying to any god who would listen for peace and tranquility. The meditation had gotten her this far, so it was worth another shot.
Without thinking, she touched her fingertips to her ring finger and felt for the wedding band that had been gone for years. She had sent it to Mammon from a distance, unable to bear giving it back in-person. Having not heard anything from him after the first year following their separation, she assumed he’d received it by now and taken the hint that it was over between them.
In a way, she also regretted not signing a note in the package.
He deserved less of a scumbag as his life’s partner. Sure, maybe others thought that he was the annoying one, but she…
Well, she didn’t have many redeeming qualities either.
Had she just tried harder to bury her true self beneath her makeup, to hide it behind layers of walls, then he would have been okay. All of her stresses made him yearn for the comfort of his brothers. She couldn’t support him by herself, and it was unfair of her to believe that she could.
It was supposed to be easy. They partied all night long, attended a few performances, made bank, and lived happily ever after.
But there was more to a relationship than celebrations.
The hardships were too heavy on her shoulders.
Did he still remember her? Had he moved onto someone else?
Dropping her head onto the vanity’s countertop, she fumbled around for something to put in her hands. Anything to occupy her revving mind. Her palm landed on a perfume bottle, molded into a princess crown, complete with gemstones and gold. One of her favorites, and one that she kept close to her side during her concert tours.
Mammon loved that one too.
She wondered whether he passed by others who smelled like vanilla and thought of her. Did he nearly faint at the scent, like she almost fainted when someone wore a cologne like his? That cinnamon or citrus smell, depending on his mood.
What else did she leave behind in his life? Her little drawer of curiosities, of course, but that was all garbage he’d thrown away by then.
When he tossed it all, did he grieve?
She hadn’t cried when she donated all of his gifts. In fact, she’d laughed it off, claiming it was all trash anyway, that she never liked the stuffed animals from the carnivals or the earrings from night markets around Devildom.
Had she kept them, would she have revisited them? Even once, would she have pulled them out to live in nostalgia over the marriage that once was?
Her forehead burning a divot into the vanity, Bella took in a deep breath.
I can’t make new memories to fill it
Like you
No warmth can reach this cold place
Like you
Though it was chaotic, my heart had something to hold onto
Now we’ve reached this ending, where it lies hollow
End
An icy draft ran through Mammon’s room as his fingertips brushed over a clump of knotted ribbons.
Was this…the end?
Once he got rid of all of these things, no trace of Bella would remain in his life. There would be no drawer of weird things he insisted on keeping for no reason, and there’d be nothing holding him to the relationship any longer.
Without Bella in his life, no more memories could be made.
She’d disappeared with little to no trace, and that was that.
Sure, he sometimes heard about a concert happening somewhere in Devildom, and there was an occasional mention of her performing at a local event for Lord Diavolo or some other rich-ass nobles, but Mammon avoided those.
It was…easier…that way.
For both of them.
While he seemed like a demon of a million words, always talking his way out of—and into—trouble, the one constant for centuries was her. Her calming smile, her pat on his back saying that everything would be okay, and her sturdy hug around his waist when it wasn’t. For centuries, they fought the darkness of the world together, and now, he had no one.
So what if his brothers were around? If he didn’t have the one he’d promised his life to, then what did it matter? She was supposed to be his ride or die.
In the end, he had no one by his side.
It was him, alone and destitute.
No one to receive his gifts.
No one to warm him on these late, cold nights.
No one to love him unconditionally.
His fingers wrapped around the emerald ribbons, the fabric sparkling like her eyes when they filled with tears, and he realized that it didn’t matter anymore.
She wasn’t coming back.
She was never coming back.
It comes and goes, leaving no trace
The hot night cools, and the warmth dissipates
As if all that time were meaningless, took them on, bid farewell
I wanted you, I hoped for you, but I’m left torn apart and abandoned
Bella released her breath and lifted her head to check the time: two o’clock in the morning. Back in the day, she and Mammon would be stumbling home in each other’s arms. He’d scold her for going too hard, and she’d scold him for the same.
They fell into the bed together, usually far too tired to do anything exciting. Instead, their bodies melded into a pile of skin-to-skin embraces and comforts, their limbs intertwining as they slid like snakes from their skintight clothes and dropped into dreamland in each other’s arms.
In the morning, they awoke to the other either snoring or staring at their phone. Very rarely did they climb out of bed without the other heading with them.
Glued at the hip, yet losing what made them individually glow.
They were a couple first, themselves second, and it hurt. Losing her independence, losing his independence…It wasn’t fair to either of them. They stifled each other’s wings, preventing them from soaring and succeeding outside of their partnership.
At least, that was how Bella considered them. She couldn’t be convinced otherwise, so she never brought it up.
For the last few decades, she drifted in and out of bedrooms and janitor’s closets with dozens of partners, but none held a candle to Mammon. Her ability to handle anything more than a month or two of connection disappeared; nothing anyone did filled the hole in her chest.
She pricked her fingertips on the spikes of gems on her perfume bottle to distract herself from the angry tears building on her cleansed lashes. Salt water would ruin her moisturizer—the expensive one that she purchased for herself.
Stealing? What was that? She hadn’t stolen a thing in her life, she told herself—a blatant lie.
But thinking that she was similar to Mammon made her throat tighten and fill with knives, so she denied any resemblance to him at all.
Nothing that happened in the past meant anything to her anymore.
It was meaningless.
Despite yearning for a partner like Mammon and putting herself through agony her entire life under the thumb of oppressive contracts and poverty, she found that she lost everything during their marriage.
So, too, did he.
Did his soul tear as much as hers had?
Somehow, she hoped so, but she hoped not.
He didn’t deserve the pain of a broken heart.
He’d get over it.
Surely he already had.
What am I hoping for so desperately?
Am I crying because the dam I built within me is collapsing?
What is this emotion that’s holding onto me, shaking me up?
In the end, we ran towards a goodbye parting
Once he began, Mammon struggled to stop.
Crying, that was.
With each item he took from the drawer, a tear fell down his cheek. Then, a river. His nose dripped, his eyes overflowed, and he wiped them both with a stray towel he’d thrown on the floor from a shower a few days before.
Ever since they’d broken up, he hadn’t cried. He did well, all things considered, hiding his emotions behind a curtain of spending too much money and acting out like usual. Like the normal Mammon.
Sure, he noticed Lucifer’s punishments were less brutal for a while, but they got stricter as the years passed. Now, Lucifer had no idea that Mammon never properly grieved the dissolution of his relationship.
Somehow, he preferred that Lucifer didn’t realize how much Mammon held onto Bella in his soul. At the same time, his older brother never pressed hard enough to reveal just how much Mammon hurt beneath the surface.
Really, what did Mammon want from all this?
He didn’t want to date anyone—not unless it was Bella. He didn’t want Lucifer’s comfort—just Bella’s. He didn’t want anything physical—only Bella’s body in his arms.
After all these years, the mask he’d built was crumbling, and nothing he did could stop it. Trying to picture the drawer full of Bella’s things as garbage riled him up further; this wasn’t trash when it came from her. Cursing at himself under his breath forced him to listen to the trembling in his voice. Each moment of sobbing solidified that he needed a release of this frustration eventually.
Two o’clock in the morning on a warm summer night was all it took. The draft running through his room froze his tears to his bare collarbone as they skirted down his chest to his pajama pants.
He’d taken advantage of having someone as clingy as Bella in his life. Never in his wildest dreams did he imagine getting a call from her to break up. Sure, it happened before with other partners, but with her? She would never.
Well, she did.
The love he’d poured into the relationship circled the drain, and he hadn’t realized it until it was too late.
I've been searching for an empty box, that's what I need
The memories of you left in my room’s drawer
Still makes it feel like a rainy day
I think it’s time to let go now
And I'll never miss you
I'll never miss you
And I'll never miss you
I'll never miss you
With no physical reminder of Mammon, forgetting him seemed like it would be easy, but it wasn’t. It simply wasn’t.
Everything inside Bella ached for a return to his open arms.
She’d apologize, and everything would go back to normal.
Could she love him again?
Had she ever stopped?
Memories were tough to discern as realistic or fantasy. All those times she thought he missed his family…Was she part of that family? Did he miss her now as much as he missed them then?
Had she just decided on a different career, then…
She groaned, tossing her makeup messily into their organized containers and making as much noise as possible to drown out the thoughts in her head.
Nothing would make her miss him, not even memories.
It was over.
Get over it.
If you're feeling the same way
I wish you better than, oh, our time together
Leave everything behind
Hope you come across something more than better
When he reached the bottom of the drawer, he hesitated.
There, the package she’d sent after their breakup rested, pristine as the day he received it.
Her ring.
He’d never opened it, knowing exactly what it was. What else could it be? There wasn’t anything she could have sent back that was worth anything except sentimentality. All of those expensive trinkets he bought over the years were probably in a dump somewhere, knowing her.
Her personality was a bit explosive, but she loved hard. That made the break up all the worse for Mammon; he should have noticed when the spark left her feeling alone and restless.
He hadn’t, so this was all that was left.
The empty box had been filled to the brim with her curiosities, except the small package with her ring.
Finally, steeling himself, he placed it gingerly into the shoebox and closed the lid.
Pulling himself to his feet, he walked to his bedroom door with the box in hand, preparing to toss away the final pieces of his former life.
He’d get stronger in time without her.
He’d…
A phone vibration caught his attention. His D.D.D. sat on the carpet near the now-empty drawer, its screen lit with an unknown number. What kind of telemarketer would call at two in the goddamn morning? Really?
With a heavy sigh, Mammon placed the shoebox on the nearest table and headed for his phone. Man, and he was all hyped up to trash away the last bits of Bella after decades of loneliness, and now he had to deal with some jerk and give them a piece of his mind.
Feeling the same way
I wish you better than, oh, our time together
Leave everything behind
Hope you come across something more than better
Bella dialed the number she had never blocked, having hoped in a small way that he would try to win her back somehow.
But he couldn’t have won her back. She was stubborn and had made her decision.
Still, she dared to dream.
This time, however, it was her turn to reach out.
Holding the speaker to her ear, she held her breath. He would be asleep, or at the club, or with a new partner at this hour. Either she was already blocked, or he’d answer the phone balls deep in someone other than her. “Ya miss me?” he’d ask. “Should’a thought about that when ya fucked me over, babe.”
But there was a ring, so she wasn’t blocked. It would have gone straight to voicemail with a dial tone.
It rang for a long while. Four, five, six rings before she pulled the speaker away from her ear.
Then, a loud, “I ain’t buyin’ anything you’re sellin’ at this hour! In fact, I ain’t buyin’ anything you’re sellin’ at all!”
Her hands clutched to her D.D.D. as she tried to find her voice.
Finally, it came.
“M…Mammon…?” she mouthed, barely audible even to herself.
Time froze.
Time stopped.
Time ceased.
Then, the softest response arrived on a tender tongue.
“Bella…?”
“Are you…busy?” she dared to ask, listening closely for any sound in the background—people talking, people hushing each other, or just…people.
“Uh…” There was a long pause and a shuffle. “Nah. Nah, I’m not doin’ anything.”
“Good,” she said, somewhat relieved. “Good.”
“Yeah…Good.”
She bit her lower lip until it bled, knowing what she had to say.
Mammon spoke first. “I was…thinkin’ about you…tonight.”
Nodding, she understood completely. “I was thinking about you too,” she replied. “I…I’m sorry. For everything. I…did you wrong, and I’m…sorry.”
“It, uh…came outta nowhere back then, but…” He took a deep breath. “I know where it came from now. I can see…I mean, I know where it went wrong, I guess.”
“It wasn’t you. I fucked up. Big time.”
“Yeah.” He left it at that, waiting for her to continue.
“I just…” Bella took a moment to steady her voice, but the tears stabbing her throat destroyed any mask of confidence. “I’m so sorry, Mammon. That’s all.”
Silence filled the air over the phone, leaving Bella wondering if they lost connection.
But Mammon responded eventually.
“Thanks, Bella,” he said, voice devoid of emotion. Robotic. Practiced. “Appreciate it.”
And with that, they went quiet.