Bought by the Devil

My name is Sophie, a young woman in the bloom of her twenties, whose beauty has become a quiet yet undeniable force. To those who know me-or rather, to those who gaze upon me with a mix of admiration and longing-I am often called the "Marshmallow Angel." It is a name that evokes both delicacy and warmth, a description that mirrors my pale, porcelain skin, which seems to glow with an almost ethereal light. My hair, long and wavy, cascades in soft honey-colored waves, framing my face, while my lips, tinted a rich shade of cherry red, add a hint of vibrancy to my otherwise serene visage. My eyes, dark blue like the deep ocean, glisten with the weight of untold stories, their lashes long and sweeping like a gentle tide. My form, slender and light, is as if sculpted from air itself-a delicate creature whose presence can leave one breathless, as though they have encountered a figure more suited to a dream than to reality.

Yet, despite this ethereal exterior, my life is far from the fairy tale that my appearance might suggest. I have existed in the harshest of realities for many years-just my father and I-since I was thirteen years old. My mother, weary of the suffocating weight of our poverty and my father's unrelenting gambling addiction, left us without a second glance. She fled to the arms of a wealthier man, leaving behind the wreckage of our family and abandoning me without so much as a word. Her departure, fueled by selfishness, was as sudden as it was final. Since that day, I have not heard from her, nor have I dared to seek her out.

My father, once a man of promise and ambition, had slowly descended into despair. The debts from his ceaseless gambling, which he insisted would one day be redeemed by some grand stroke of luck, consumed him entirely. Our home, once filled with the warmth of family, was sold to satisfy his creditors. We moved into a basement apartment, damp with humidity, its air thick with the smell of decay and abandonment. It was a place that mirrored the disintegration of our lives, a cramped, suffocating existence where survival itself became a daily struggle.

And yet, through all of this, my father never ceased his self-destructive cycle. He returned home each night in a drunken stupor, demanding money from me with an air of entitlement, convinced that one day his luck would turn in the casino, that the jackpot was just around the corner. He was a man devoid of any moral compass, willing to sacrifice anything and anyone-including his own daughter-in the pursuit of that fleeting, intoxicating hope of fortune.

The idea of family, of support, had long since dissolved in the sea of his addiction. As for my mother, I could not-would not-place blame solely on her. Though her departure left a permanent scar, I understood, in some cold, distant way, that her escape was born from desperation, just as my father's actions had been.

But that does little to ease the bitter truth of my life-the truth that I am left to bear alone the weight of both their choices. My mother's abandonment, my father's decline, and the broken dreams of what might have been.