Beatrice’s Inferno

I would love nothing more than to burn the manuscript!

It has always been an honor and a joy for me to be Dante’s muse. But ever since he began working on his new piece, which he has titled “The Divine Comedy,” everything has changed. Comedy? What a mockery! All lightness and cheerfulness have left our lives since then. It is as though a dark, fateful cloud hangs threateningly over our heads.

Previously, Dante would often place a cooling cloth on the back of my neck when the oppressive summer heat caused me pain. But now, when he touches me, it feels as if his fingers scurry feverishly across my body like an agitated swarm of insects—reading my rough, cracked skin like Braille and eagerly jotting down the message. His kisses, too, are no longer tender intimacies. My body remains stiff and tense in anxious anticipation of the inevitable. When Dante finally thrusts the scepter of his manhood into me with wild determination, it feels as though a cruel torturer is impaling me with a sharpened club. Like a man possessed, with glowing demon eyes, he maltreats my lotus flower in a staccato of rapid, hard thrusts. No, those are not sighs of bliss or cries of pleasure—they are staccato, guttural sounds of pain and agony escaping my throat.

This must come to an end!

I, as Dante’s muse, confess: I wish with all my heart that “The Divine Comedy,” this devil’s work, becomes a failure! Only then will Dante devote himself to a new creation, and only then will this nightmare end. Only then will the dark aura of damnation holding us in its spell be swept away like the stench of foul rot by the fresh breeze of a new beginning.

I want my lover, my familiar soulmate back!