Alysha Ellis | Are You an Angel? Or a Devil?

We all want to be good, don’t we? And when it comes to the big things in life, we mostly
are. Your angelic-self shouts at the rotten driver who cuts you off in traffic, but you
don’t ram your car into him. Even if that’s mainly because you don’t want your car
wrecked, it’s still a plus and a reward for not giving in to your baser instincts.

But when it comes to the little things, the Devil sitting on my shoulder wins much more
often than I’d like.

Take the very expensive box of chocolates someone gave me on my last birthday. The angel
in me said, “Nice girls share them around.” My inner devil screamed, “Mine. All mine.”
The devil also warned me that once the chocolate-starved hordes—aka my kids—knew there
were chocolates, I’d be lucky to get even a whiff of creamy, cocoa-beaned, Swiss heaven.

So—and it shames me to admit this, but my angel says be honest—I stopped at the
supermarket on the way home and bought a box of much, much cheaper chocolates and swapped
the contents of the boxes.

“Aha!” I hear you cry. “This is not Forrest Gump. Life is not a box of chocolates,
because with chocolates you do know what you’ll get. There is a card!”

There is indeed, and I took that card from the cheap box, cut off the brand-identifying
bit, and slid it into the fraudulent package of shame.

The one or two fakes that didn’t nestle perfectly into the exquisitely crafted, gold-
foiled cups—I ate. After all, it was only reasonable that even the best of mothers would
consume a couple before passing them around.

As expected, the family fell on the sweets with the appetites of apex predators. The
doctored card received no more than a brief glance. If I’d had a moment’s doubt that my
subterfuge would be detected, it disappeared like the chocolates.

I secreted my genuine treasure trove in a place where the kids would never find it and
indulged in the delicious treat only when I was totally and utterly alone.

If I were really angelic, I’d be wracked with guilt about this. But when my oldest leant
back, sighed with repletion, and said, “There’s nothing like good quality chocolate. That
cheap stuff tastes awful,” my devil and I laughed ourselves silly.

About Alysha Ellis

Alysha Ellis lives in Australia. She has two children and two cats, all capable of being
angels or devils as the mood takes them. None of them appears as the hero or heroine in
her devilishly wicked books, Send Me an Angel and The Devil Made Me Do It.

About SEND ME AN ANGEL

About THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT