"I was the most elegant loneliness,
the most exquisite creature among all of the unloved."
- Caitlyn Siehl, Quite Death
Hubris (noun): excessive pride or self-confidence; arrogance.
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NIMA YOUNG WAS NOT HAVING A GOOD DAY.
To be fair, she rarely seemed to have them these days. Her husband had been parading her from one party to the next to secure alliances before the big election, and although Nima had a special gift for entertaining the wealthy, she had to admit that she was growing tired of the endless charades. Just this morning her pathetic, squinty-eyed spouse had announced that they were going to make an appearance at some billionaire's pool party.
She needed a break from the politics, from the web of lies she so carefully constructed around her. She wanted simple; to do something that was full of reckless abandon. She wanted to feel. And the only times Nima Young felt anything was when she was causing pain (it was the only thing she knew that was real).
Thankfully, the cowering man before her promised her a well-earned reprise.
They were tucked away in an abandoned parking lot, laying unused and forgotten deep in the heart of the city. It was an ideal place to kill someone; their screams wouldn't be heard, and the murder would be seen as the result of some unfortunate scuffle caused by careless inebriation. She found that people were always eager to accept whatever was given to them, and the smashed vodka bottles and a passed out homeless man nearby would help feed this fabricated story to whoever discovered the body first.
"Why are you doing this?" The man whimpered, quivering like a leaf in the wind. Blood coated his kneecaps, his face a canvas of blues and purples. This, she thought as she grabbed his face and examined it from cheek to cheek, is truly one of my masterpieces.
His question was one that she heard a thousand times before, from all different kinds of men in her twenty five years of life. They, of course, just asked it in different variations and tones. Why did you sleep with him? What do you want from me? What in the blazes are you doing with that gun? Frankly, she had grown quite tired of those kinds of questions. Besides, they always ended with the same answer. She decided to tell this glassy-eyed man the same thing she told all the men she killed.
"Oh, honey," she said, very simply, as if she were talking about the weather outside, "this has nothing to do with you. This is what I've always hated about men; they always think that the world revolves around them. I mean, for goodness sakes', you haven't even asked for my name! How do you expect to know what I want from you if you don't even try to get to know me?"
By now, the poor man's eyes were practically popping out of their sockets. She thought him quite handsome. His five o'clock shadow was very masculine and all that. She expressed this thought aloud, but the man just continued to whimper. "What's wrong, darling?" She drawled, taking a pack of cigarettes out of her clutch. "Don't you know how to take a compliment?"
The expression on the man's face reminded Nima of her first husband: spineless, but endearingly handsome. An unwelcome image of Nima's first love (if you could call him that) flashed in her mind. It irked her that he always looked beautiful, even in her memory. Blonde hair, blue eyes, a delicious build-- yes, Nima's first husband was a Grecian god. Too bad he was utterly insipid, not to mention a fool.
