Evil

Felt Like a Grinch

You understand now, don't you? I opened the box. The blessing was that my son would be forever young and could be saved. The curse was that he had to meet his soulmate, who would save him. As much as I would like to have dismissed this as merely a joke from one of those stories of powerful magisters saving their damsel in distress, I cannot.

Thump! Thump! Thump!

I could hear my heart beating oh so loudly in my ears, deafening almost.

The words I'd spoken to Tom, his silent glossing over of them—I realised what I'd said.

'Rest assured, I'll fall in love with another human when I see pigs fly.'

"Oh fucking hell," My voice was light, faint as I felt like slapping myself for that idiotic loophole I had never even realised,"What kind of idiotic self-foreshadowing is this?"

I had told myself. Steeled myself for the day I met this 'soulmate' of mine. I would kill him.

Yet, he was already dead.

But if I took a step forward now, I would revive him. Allowing me to kill him for good. But his story—It was hauntingly familiar. It resonated with me on a personal level I never thought someone could.

I am cruel at times. I am heartless at times. I am a monster at times. But, just like everyone else, I had my limits. My bottom lines. My secrets, emotions, feelings, thoughts. I was most definitely a sadist, yes. But I was most definitely not a psychopath. Not by a long shot. I could connect and sympathise with people, this much I knew. I simply chose not to.

There was a reason why.

I loathed feeling vulnerable.

Helpless.

I liked it when everything in the palm of my hands. When I was the chess master moving the pieces around. I liked control.

When I lost that control, I would despise that feeling of overwhelming powerlessness that came with it.

Now, here I was, played like a fiddle by the fate. Feeling as powerless as ever.

My rationality screamed at me with fervent anger, yelling, screaming, shrieking to step back. To leave this place and to never talk, remember or even think about ever again. To pretend this never happened and to find another way out. This was my cold, calculating, lonely cynical side. This was what I would ordinarily do.

But my eyes were glued to that blue heart. My legs rooted to the ground, refusing to move despite my damndest efforts. My hands clenched into fists as if they forced me to make the choice.

No—This wasn't a choice. This was a fight. A cruel internal conflict between my rationality and irrationality.

I remembered his words.

'There was that saying, wasn't there? Love is a sixth sense which overpowers all other senses, forcing a person to believe in a seventh sense—Nonsense. Love is quite the irrational thing, Artemis. From the pederasty in the past to romances between a human and an inanimate object, anything is possible. Careful that you don't fall down the rabbit hole lest you regret it.'

I gasped internally. That prick had already seen this coming with his rabbit hole comment. Indeed, this irrationality, this vague concept completely obliterated my rationality. Like an elephant bullying an ant. Utterly crushed.

With a shaky breath, I stepped forward.

Thank you.

Those two words, while short, held the most unfathomable, most ineffable feeling I had ever perceived.