When I write, I overwrite. I get as many ideas in the manuscript as I can, and trust the editing process will trim what doesn’t serve the story. Case in point, this excerpt that I have now gladly tossed on the floor. I was trying to compare and contrast the thoughts of Cancer and Satan:

Her life had split into two distinct parts: Before and after cancer diagnosis. There was no going back. Her perception of herself left her questioning what would come next. She had been thrust into the role of a cancer patient, a role she never sought but would now have to live with. And so she would find her footing in this new life, even as the realization of it settled in permanently.

Now that the diagnosis had been delivered, every test and every doctor’s visit carried a heightened sense of urgency. No longer was there any prospect of a somewhat benign ailment, a gallbladder infection, gallstones, or acid reflux. She was dealing with a devil of a disease, one of the Western world’s “top three”.

The word “Cancer,” much like “Satan,” was something tutted with trepidation decades earlier. Folks would refer to the disease only by its first initial, “C”, similar to how they retitled the Devil, skirting around his name, fearing that to call him by it would be to invite him in, to give him dominion over their lives. Where Cancer and Satan both reside, names hold power.

The two are synonymous in their actions. They slither into the cracks, where the heart beats a little quicker, and where faith sometimes founders.

Patient, relentless, Cancer would watch for a moment of weakness, a moment when the body let its guard down just long enough to allow it space to grow. It flourished in isolation. Cancer stole time. It stole dignity and peace. It twisted life into something unfamiliar, something that resembled pain more than it did joy.

Cancer and Satan both shared a taste for erosion. But where they sought to destroy, in the battle between good and evil, Arlinda would soon stand once more: Defiant, determined, fighting for the light they could not touch, and unwilling to let the darkness claim more than it deserved.