The Dangers of Pitying the Devil Cover
Issue #72 May 25, 2023

The Dangers of Pitying the Devil

By Saskia de Leeuw Kyle
Edited By Patrick Ryan
$2.50

Excerpt

I haven’t spoken to Caspian Green in three years. I’ve tried not to even look at him since the last day of middle school. Occasionally, I find myself glancing at him out of the corner of my eye, sneaking a look and mapping the features of the face I used to know so well. But he’s changed so much in the three years we’ve been apart that I barely recognize him.

He has the faintest stubble gracing his jawline now, and his shoulders are wider. He’s always wearing that stupid letterman jacket, as if the rest of us will forget the place he holds on the social hierarchy. However, there are things about him that haven’t changed. His dark green eyes still brighten in the sun, his golden blond hair still falls in his face when he’s looking down at his desk. He still pays full attention in maths class even though the rest of his teammates and clique barely even look at the teacher.

Where I was the guy who focused in English, he was the maths whiz out of the two of us, so it’s nice to know that’s still remained the same.

Saskia de Leeuw Kyle

Saskia de Leeuw Kyle (she/her) is a writer and aspiring journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. She loves to write and read fiction (especially YA romcoms and fantasy). You can find her work on the website rosierespect.org.au. Saskia loves film, literature, languages, and travel and she aspires to be a teen author. When she’s not writing, you can find her listening to Taylor Swift or Lana Del Ray or binge watching rom-coms.

Patrick Ryan on “The Dangers of Pitying the Devil”

Ending a friendship midway through high school is a little like one fish having a falling out with another in a fish tank. They might not be on speaking terms, but they’re going to pass each other over and over again.

So it is with Asher and Caspian in “The Dangers of Pitying the Devil.” They were beyond besties once; then they stopped speaking. Now they’ve suddenly been assigned to work together for a school project, and Asher, the story’s narrator, is none too happy about it. But it turns out the reason for their rift was never clear to either one of them. Forced to interact once again, they find themselves confronting a past that hasn’t gone away—for a reason.

“The Dangers of Pitying the Devil,” written by Australian writer Saskia de Leeuw Kyle, is one of the winners of this year’s Teen Writing Contest. It’s a story of friendship and vulnerability, ego and insecurity. Most of all, as the author states in our Q&A, it’s a story about belonging. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

Q&A by Patrick Ryan

PR: Where did you get the idea for “The Dangers of Pitying the Devil”?
SdLK: I’ve always been a fan of romantic comedies and stories with happy endings, though realistically there will always be so many more complications along the way. You can’t have a happily-ever-after without a magnitude of difficulties, and Asher and Caspian have such a long and frustratingly complex history together. I started thinking about writing something with two childhood best friends and two characters fighting to have their fairytale ending and somehow everything else just fell into place.
PR: What was the most challenging part of the story to write?
SdLK: The ending! This is usually the case when I’m working on projects because I’ve spent so long writing and I’ve gotten so attached to the characters that I want to give them the ending that they deserve. In this case, I knew that Asher and Caspian had a lot to work out and a lot of loose ends to follow up on. The ending was difficult for me to write because I wanted it to all fit together perfectly and leave nothing unanswered. Most importantly, I wanted both characters to be happy.
PR: How long did the story take you to write?
SdLK: I’m the sort of procrastinating writer where writing a short story can either take me an afternoon or three months (it’s usually the latter). I was lucky with “The Dangers of Pitying the Devil” because once I had decided on the themes that my story was going to focus on, it only took me an afternoon to write. It was one of those moments where everything in the story fell into place so easily. This is extremely rare for me, because usually it takes forever for me to finish a project. In this case, I related enough to the narrative voices and the characters that it was a breeze.
PR: What was the most challenging part of the story to write?
SdLK: The ending! This is usually the case when I’m working on projects because I’ve spent so long writing and I’ve gotten so attached to the characters that I want to give them the ending that they deserve. In this case, I knew that Asher and Caspian had a lot to work out and a lot of loose ends to follow up on. The ending was difficult for me to write because I wanted it to all fit together perfectly and leave nothing unanswered. Most importantly, I wanted both characters to be happy.
PR: Why did you choose to have Asher narrate the story, as opposed to Caspian? Or both of them?
SdLK: I chose Asher to narrate because I felt as though all the anger and frustration that he felt about Caspian would build together to make a great internal monologue. For much of the story, he is furious at Caspian, and so as the story progresses it’s important to slowly unravel that anger and soften it into other emotions. Asher is such an interesting protagonist because he’s so biased by his emotions that it makes him quite an unreliable narrator— which is extremely fun to write!
PR: Did anything surprise you as you wrote the story? Did you make any discoveries?
SdLK: As well as being a writer who procrastinates writing, I also like to leave a few loose threads in my planning so that as I’m writing I can iron them out and choose whether I want to follow up on them. When I was starting to write this story, I wasn’t sure what Caspian’s justification for his actions was, but I kept a reminder in the back of my mind to decide on that once I knew more about what sort of character he was. By the time I was at the climactic scene where all is revealed, I knew that he was sweet and sensitive and protective. Therefore, his justification would make a lot of sense in his mind. Discovering that was super fun because it was a moment where my characters felt so extremely real to me.
PR: If you had to finish this sentence in one word, what would that word be?  “‘The Dangers of Pitying the Devil’ is about __________.”
SdLK: Belonging! One of the main themes of the story is home and how home can be a person. Asher and Caspian were each other’s homes and they really belonged with one another. “The Dangers of Pitying the Devil” is about finding that person that makes you feel at home and makes you feel like you belong.
PR: What did you do when you found out you were one of our Teen Writing Contest Winners?
SdLK: When I got the email, I was at home watching Gilmore Girls and (once again) procrastinating working on my current writing projects. I remember majorly freaking out, running downstairs (nearly tripping down the stairs in the process) and going to tell my brother. He wasn’t as excited as me, I think he just said, “Cool,” but seeing his younger sister hyperventilating and jumping around the living room must have been very weird. What I remember the most about that moment, though, was feeling completely and utterly over the moon with joy and excitement.
PR: What are you working on now?
SdLK: At the moment I’m working on my third novel, called All of The Stars. It’s about a group of five friends and all of their individual lives, careers, relationships, and families and how they all interlock with one another. They all come with their own baggage and at the heart of the story it’s about how they all band together to become each other’s family. As well as working on that, I’m currently editing my second novel, called Forget Me Nots in May. That one is about a queer couple and follows the question, are we all worthy of love—even if we don’t think we are? I’m really proud of both of them and I hope to see them in print one day!
PR: What’s the best piece of advice about writing you’ve ever heard?
SdLK: The best piece of writing advice that I ever received was at this workshop I went to for emerging writers in Melbourne. This amazing Melbourne-based writer named Simmone Howell talked to us and give us advice about putting ourselves out there in the writing community. The advice that she gave me, and I’m sure I’ll never forget this, was to make sure you get 100 writing-related rejections every year. Because if you get 100 rejections, you have to get some wins along the way as well. One Teen Story was one of my most exciting wins and I’m so, so grateful for it!