Muse

Photo by Sai on Unsplash

The house lights faded first in the vaulted concert hall, so that rows of shadowed faces stretched beyond the reach of the spotlight, even the ceiling arched so high that the dim glow failed to touch its darkened curves, causing a stir in the upper balconies where the sudden hush, like one single exhale, revealed that each seat was full and anticipation running high.

Both the fill and key lights came alive above the majestic stage not long after, followed closely by the backlights catching the polished black lid of the Steinway concert grand. Two footlights along the platform’s edge kept just enough glow for safe footing, the soft colours creating shallow shades along the stage as Francisco approached the centre of the podium.

Hypnotised eyes traced his every move, the way his breath fogged beneath the intense backlights as he took his designated seat at the grand piano. With his slender fingers hovering above the black and white keys, a moment of absolute silence hung in the air. Then, as he flexed his wrists once, in E‑flat minor, he struck the first chord of Samuel Barber’s Sonata.

The action of the hammer danced beneath the enthralling sound, the immediate mechanical click lost beneath the sonata’s brutality, and notes shattered into the air in dissonant clusters that lingered too long, bending back from somewhere high in the deepening shadows where the stage lightning could not reach.

When the Adagio’s slow ostinato began, his fingers pressed softer, sinking deep into the weighted keys, and the haunting melody bent again, before collapsing into the opening of the finale. His hands moved faster now, crossing and twisting in all directions as the grand piano growled and shrieked in four different tones, creating a hauntingly beautiful harmony.

Then… silence. The striking notes came to an end as thousands breathed out as one, gasping, captivated by the melancholy sonata and lost in its remarkable and tender melodies that ended far too soon, far too suddenly.

And the world tilted on its axis.

Francisco lifted his hands off the keys, and the cameras pulled back and tilted the frame so that they captured a distorted version of the concert hall and the thousands of attendees, who secured seats at great expense to witness the craft of his otherworldly artistry as a famed pianist, whose renown stretched far and wide, across the globe. A living legend, a black sheep in the dwindling industry slowly losing its soul, bringing back the golden days of the classics with his talents.

But as the cameras lingered on his inverted form, recording the chiselled features of his face under the dimness and shrewd angle, he carried a secret so great that should the word spread, he might never recover from it, and the ladder be ripped out from under him before he even reached the top.

Greeting the audience, bowing just low enough to make it look like he cared about them, he raised his head and let his eyes settle on the clapping audience clad in elegant costumes made from the finest fabric to ever exist. But it was not those superficial details that caught his attention this very second.

As the sea of bewitched attendees fought to meet his gaze, the stage lights gradually switched on, and his eyes settled on a young woman who wasn’t supposed to be there. Garbed in a black evening dress, she wore a smile on her china face, one that grew wider by the second until it turned into a grotesque rictus – something in between a grin and a scream cut short. Too short, in his opinion.

When he straightened his spine, she was gone, and in place of her remained an empty seat with white lilies on top, and from the petals dripped fresh blood. A smirk tugged at his lips as he saw the crimson liquid, reliving the moment his muse sacrificed her body and soul for him, going so far as to become his – truly his – just to see him grow into his full potential, or rather, die thinking her selfless contribution added something to this mundane world.

But she wasn’t the only one who had these unhealthy ideas, not the only muse he had and would continue to have for as long as his secret remained hidden from plain sight.

People of all sexes and walks of life sought him out, some as genuine fans of what he represented or thought he did, while others were slaves to their sexual desires, hankering for his flesh as if it were the forbidden fruit itself, unable to resist the sweetness. But what was so bad about Eden’s fruit? Wasn’t it the beginning of humanity as it is, or perhaps, the moment humanity’s story began to unravel because it fell apart first?

Without the darkness we each carry deep in the chambers of our blackened hearts, what purpose would light serve? In the end, light was created as a response to this vast darkness and the weight of that morbidity within it, hiding in plain sight but never truly seen, not until it was brought back into our lives one way or the other – sometimes – on purpose, even.

And just as light needed darkness to thrive, a harmless and necessary agreement, so too was the pact Francisco made with his victims. He gave them what they wanted in return for something far greater, turning each one of them into his muses and keeping them alive in his memories and celebrated magnum opuses. Such was indeed the secret he carried, and not a single day passed without him honouring them, as he relived their final sacrifices each night before stepping onto yet another sold-out stage.

With the cheers reaching a disturbing crescendo and the concert hall trembling beneath the weight of the audience’s fervent applause, Francisco slipped away from the podium, and his shrewd, upside-down shadow stretched long and restless into the growing darkness beyond the stage lights.

 

A Promise Kept

Photo by Mohammed Ibrahim on Unsplash
”Please reopen the case! My daughters have been hurting for too long,” Chung Mi-Suk collapsed to her knees and clasped her hands together in a relentless, heart-wrenching plea that twisted the onlookers’ stomachs with guilt. “Please! My daughters are hurting! Please help me put them to rest!”

The milling police station was on pause, watching the tragic spectacle of a mother pleading on behalf of her deceased daughters to the police. But no one could quench the fire burning within the poor woman, for the sexual assault case had long since been written off by the attorney in charge, and two decades had gone by in a heartbeat. There was nothing they could do. Nothing but watch. And as Mi-Suk realised that her prayers would fall on deaf ears today as well, as they had done so for the past decade, she staggered back up on her feet and exited the station.

The rain poured down ruthlessly and drenched everything in ice-cold water. She lifted her shoulders and chafed her arms from the cold yet did not try to flee from the rain or seek shelter somewhere where it couldn’t reach her. Instead, she stood her ground at the steps of the police station and watched the world go by before her in a rapid sequence. In those fleeting moments, while watching the common people go about their routine, she broke down and wept from the helplessness.

The evidence she so carefully collected over the years and put on pen to paper, an entire dossier with files upon files, now lay on the wet ground, the paper crumbling and eventually melting away like the seething fire in her heart consuming her resolve.

She was dying. A whole lifetime had come and gone in the blink of an eye, and before she realised it, she had become a mother, a widow, and now just an old lady whose only purpose was to seek justice for the twin daughters she raised so tenderly, whom she shielded from this cruel world, only to see them melt away just like how these papers now faded to the cadence of the heavy rain.

“Hey, ahjumma, you okay?”

She didn’t answer; instead, she looked on without moving as two young men rummaged through her pockets and ran away with the few coins she had, leaving behind her purse and an old photograph of her family before the tragedy took place and everything fell apart. With shaking hands, she picked up the photograph and smiled, wiping away her tears.

“I won’t leave this world until they’ve all paid. Umma, promised you, remember? Even if I have to keep on living and cheat death, I won’t break my promise to you, so sleep tight, my angels. Umma will soon join you and your appa. I promise.”

Rising back up on her feet, she trudged through the crowd of people from all walks of life as they fled the pouring rain, their movements in the background a blur of motion and their presence almost negligible.

The only thing Mi-Suk could see, the only thing that arrested her, was the large LED display with an award-winning movie director and his up-and-coming press conference and subsequent movie premiere for his newest blockbuster. And when she finally was close enough to it, staring up with hollow and detached eyes, her tears blended in with the salty rain and something in her expression changed – one that gave away nothing yet told a chilling story all at the same time.

Then, like the undead, she dragged her feet through the bustling capital, towards the studio where the press conference would be taking place later that night. She saw or heard nothing but the angelic voices of her beloved daughters, the way they called her umma, and those blissful days back in time when this cruel world did not blacken their purity and fill them with hatred and shame.

One and a half hours; the press conference was only one and a half hours away now.

Her eldest said the director was always the last one to arrive on time, that he would let all the filming crew and staff wait for him on purpose to relish in his ego. Such people never changed, only became worse over time. Their ego was so high, their sense of reality so low, yet they actually dared to believe themselves as nothing more than the filth they were, for they had become so used to tramping on and deriding those unable to fight back that they thought they were invincible, that they could stave off justice by paying those willing to accept the money thrown at them like the barking bitches they were.

And perhaps, they were right to think so, now that she thought it through, from where she lay in wait at the underground parking lot of the studio with a metal pipe tightly in her bony, wrinkled hand. Perhaps they were indeed right to think so….

Half an hour passed. Then, gradually, forty and fifty minutes. No one showed up in the parking lot, not even other people. Eventually, she decided to wait the entire length of the conference, approximately two hours or slightly more than that. She spent those hours just waiting and doing nothing else, counting the seconds, getting lost in thoughts and old memories, then restarting from the beginning on a never-ending loop.

At around 10 pm., things started to shift, and the solitude and harrowing memories gave way to other kinds of thoughts, the kinds that only a grieving mother could tolerate without losing her sanity along the way. She followed each person, tracing their movements, while keeping an eye out for the one she was looking for. But even as the minutes ticked away, the director remained elusive. Had he not come to his own press conference? But then she recalled the LED display she saw earlier tonight and knew that couldn’t be the case. Perhaps this wasn’t the parking lot used by the people who attended the conference?

Feeling the pressure of time, Mi-Suk hid the pipe in her bag, her youngest gifted her with her first pay through sweat, blood, and tears – and as she learnt after her passing – with her body.

She started for the stairwell leading to the lobby.

The entire place was filled to the brim with newspeople, overly zealous fans with no regard for their own or other people’s safety, and the few celebrities who were now standing at the centre of the red carpet posing for the paparazzi. Overwhelmed by the blinding lights and recurrent shutter of the cameras in the background, she noticed a young woman screaming her head off a few feet away and quickly made her way through the crowd, showing each one of them aside, and then grabbed hold of her.

“Director. Where is he?”

The young woman cast her a side-long look, judging and eyeing her down, before replying with a hoarse voice. “Director Kim? He’s still backstage, I guess. Why, are you a fan or something—”

Mi-Suk grabbed both of her hands—“Thank you, thank you!”—and slipped past security unnoticed, perhaps due to her old frame and those seventy years of agony that had hunched her back, turned her hair grey, and made her lose her teeth prematurely. After all, what harm could a seventy-year-old pose to anybody?

Only if they knew… only if they knew the fire burning inside her, the one that flared now and then, and ate through the deepest chamber of her heart, body, and soul like she’d entered the inferno even before shutting her eyes shut to this wicked, corrupted world.

Navigating the backstage was harder than she thought it would be. She passed by an entire corridor lined with doors for the third time by the time she heard what she could only describe as the sound of a muffled scream. Before she knew it, she found herself in front of a door with no label on it and perked her ears. She’d gone deaf once due to a vascular issue in her right ear, way before she lost her daughters so untimely, but had managed to get it back after treatment. She still had issues with that ear, but despite her hearing loss, those screams were so loud that she, for a few seconds, was stunned into silence.

Yet, as she looked around the corridor and the passersby, she noticed that no one even cast her a glance or inquired about the screams coming through all the louder with each passing second. She thus grabbed a crew member talking loudly over the phone, trying to bring his attention to the strange sounds.

“Young man, listen. You must call security!”

The young man tried to shake her off. “Ahjumma, how did you get in here? Huh?”

“Someone asks for help, in there, listen,” she tried, pulling the crew member closer to the unlabelled door. “I’m not lying. Listen! You must hurry and call—”

“Shibal!” The young man pushed her away so hard she hurled towards the walls, hitting her head. Gliding a hand through his sleek hair, staring her down with an annoyed look, he crept closer with a look that gave away that he indeed heard something but pretended not to.

“Hey, ahjumma, I don’t hear a damn thing, so stop the crazy act and leave before I call security. Do you hear me? Hey, I’m asking if you heard me? Shibal! Bitch, I said—”

“Always the same thing. It never stops. It never does. Why? Why doesn’t it ever—”

“Huh? What’d you just say? Never—what? You cursed me or something? Fucking bitch—”

Mi-Suk reached for the metal pipe in her bag. She didn’t hesitate, not even as the young man lay in a pool of his own blood, begging for mercy. Instead, she repeated her words, just as he told her to do moments ago, and kept bludgeoning his face until he stopped begging for his wretched existence and lay motionless on the linoleum floor. She then left his body to bleed and turned her attention to the unlabelled door, the pipe dragging at her side, as she twisted the knob.

A young woman lay naked, drugged, on the lap of the director whose wasted life she’d come to take. The filthy perpetrator stood up as he noticed her at the door, pulling up his trousers. She locked the door before anybody could intervene and save the director’s life.

Then… she took one step at a time. Slow and steady. Seeing nothing but darkness before her, hearing nothing but her angels’ voices in her ears, feeling no other emotion but that of a grieving mother who had gone without getting justice for far too many years.

“You want money? I’ll pay you! I’ll give you my entire fortune! I’ll do anything!”

Mi-Suk couldn’t help the smirk playing on her lips. “Then tell me, Director Kim, can you return my daughters to me? Let me see them one final time so I can ask for forgiveness?”

“…What? Daughters? Hey, ahjumma, you,” he pointed at his head, mocking her sanity, “you’ve lost a screw or something?”

“When I kill you, the world will know, finally, the monster you are… the things you’ve done… those horrible, horrible things you’ve done to such pure souls, who wanted nothing but recognition for their hard work, to repay their parents with their first pay, to give back to the world…”

“Huh? What’s this about? I’ve done nothing! Yah, ahjumma, you think I’m the only one who does things like that?” He paused, his eyes darting from the pipe in her hand and the young woman now getting back her senses. “Besides, you think fame at a young age comes at no cost? We all pay the price, in our ways, and bitches like this with their bodies. What’s so bad about it, huh? Nothing’s for free in this world, shouldn’t someone of your age know that the best?”

“That pay!” she snapped, her eyes turning wild with the anger festering beneath the surface, “has cost two precious lives! Tell me, Director, what kind of price tag requires forty counts of rape, derision, and sexual abuse by several men, of whom the majority are married and have kids of their own!?”

“This is just the way of the world! You think killing me will stop the system?”

“Then I’ll break the system, too, until none of it remains, if doing so I must until the very second I cease to exist! For killing people like you… it is not justice. It’s an obligation.”

The door behind them flung open as security entered. By then, however, the director had already succumbed to his injuries. They found Mi-Suk cradling the young woman, wiping away her tears and lulling her into comfort; her face and clothes covered in crimson, and her eyes wet with tears she didn’t know she still had. When she saw the security guards with their weapons aimed at her, she released the young woman and picked up the metal pipe on the table before her, advancing.

“Stop! Stop moving! Stop moving and put the pipe on the floor. NOW!”

But she didn’t stop, nor did she let the pipe fall. Instead, she let it down to the side, letting it drag on the floor, and then brushed past the security and the crowd of onlookers as she continued down the hallway aimlessly. Several people followed her, capturing her movements with their cameras and livestreaming. But the crowd didn’t stop her, not even as the security tried to step in. Instead, they became her live shields and blocked anybody trying to intervene.

She came to a halt at the centre of the red carpet, now directly facing the shutters, those blinding shutters that kept capturing her every single move and livestreaming. For a while, she just stood there and said nothing, not even as the crowd grew larger and the number of cameras only increased. Then she released her grip on the metal pipe, collapsing on her knees, addressing the nation and the police that failed her.

“I, Chung Mi-Suk, hereby plead guilty to the murder of Director Kim, the perpetrator in my daughters’ sexual assault case that was written off before the investigation could even begin. My daughters… my poor angels, when they heard of this, blamed by the authorities for being raped on several occasions by several men, including Director Kim, killed themselves before justice could be served. My husband died not long after, unable to live with the grief, and I tried decades – decades! – trying to make my voice be heard! Yet no one heard my pleas, bought for and paid with dirty money! So, what else could a mother do but kill her daughters’ abusers herself? To make sure they rested in peace, wherever they were, to finally be able to let go of the past, and say: “I did my best, the only thing I could, and kept my promise to you.” I do not ask for leniency but for my daughters’ case to reopen, as well as other similar cases the prosecutors wrote off in return for bribes and lavish gifts, or perhaps, buried secrets. I, Chung Mi-Suk, thus plead guilty to all charges against me…”

A delayed applause erupted through the crowd of people, of whom some couldn’t keep their tears in, while others, infuriated by the prosecutors’ failure to follow proper protocol and capture people like Director Kim, demanded justice and for all cases related to sexual assaults to reopen despite the statute of limitations.

While Mi-Suk never wanted this to be the case, spilling blood was her last resort, and she did not regret it. Not one single second of it. Even the inmates at the prison she was sent to broke out with cheers as she was escorted to her cell by two female guards, praising her strength as a mother and her unwavering love for the children she lost too soon and in such a short time, one after the other.

She died of old age only a few months short of spending a year in the prison, where she became the light of beacon for the inmates and the nation as a whole, recounting her twin daughters’ merry childhood as well as those harrowing years before the light in their eyes shut forever, bringing the whole court to break down and the prosecution to admit to their negligence and failure to follow proper protocol in front of the public, convicting those who deliberately took bribes and wrote off cases to hide their own skeletons in the cupboard.

But this was far from over. As with everything in this world, behind the scenes, new cases of exploitation and abuse occurred. Director Kim was right. There was no stopping the systematic abuse going on in plain sight; this was indeed the truth. But one thing was certain: every unpaid deed resurfaced and justice served sooner or later. No man was safe, and sometimes, all that was needed for that to happen, was someone like Mi-Suk who stared death in the eye with conviction and forced the world to open its eyes and see the ugliness behind purple-tinted glasses, even on the account of her own livelihood and health, for heroes needed neither fame nor comfort, only the will to force the system to reboot now and then.

Whether this deed was the unjustified murder of children, leaving them to rot from hunger, or the atrocities of barbarians with no empathy towards people other than their own, or the numerous world leaders watching a whole population burn yet choose to turn a blind eye like the cowards they were and would forever be as long as yet another innocent life was taken before it has a change to bloom like the flower they were meant to be – neither a terrorist nor a human animal living in open sewages…

 

 

 

 

 

Dream Girl Evil

Photo by Siobhan Flannery on Unsplash
Sondra Kaufmann – a name so rare it was destined for immortality, one way or another, bound for stardom.

We first crossed paths in middle school, when she had yet to reach her full potential and become the person she was now remembered as. Her auburn curls used to drape over her shoulders, and her crimson lips used to be plump and temptingly kissable.

I liked her. She was an outcast, a miserable spirit just like me. And, being a hot-blooded teenager, I was naturally drawn to her pretty face and sharp mind. She was my dream girl, only darker, more dangerous. My dream girl, evil.

Nothing happened between us, though. I don’t think Sondra was, you know, interested in other people in the same way we normal humans were. She kept a low profile until graduation and remained a mystery – not just in my teenage mind, but in the minds of every other boy in our year.

Everyone was in love; Sondra wasn’t. I don’t think she was capable of feeling those kinds of emotions.

Funny to think about it now, but on the day of our graduation, I actually planned to confess to her. A stupid idea, I know, but it didn’t seem so bad at the time. As I said, she was pretty – petite and classy – and I was into her edginess. I mean, I was a six-foot-tall metalhead. I blame the hormones.

Anyway, the point is, I never confessed, and Sondra, being the eccentric girl she was, didn’t even show up to her own graduation. And like that, ladies and gentlemen, that love story ended right then and there – as it should.

I studied mechanical engineering later in life and sold my baby, my Gibson Les Paul, to focus on my studies. That hurt like hell, honestly. I mourned its loss for weeks.

My girlfriend at the time, Lily, thought I was being overly dramatic for no good reason. But I’m telling you that guitar had been with me forever. It was like a child to me.

I broke things off with Lily after two years of dating, for unrelated reasons, of course, but honestly, I don’t think I ever really forgave her for saying those things back then.

Don’t get me wrong. Lily was a good girl – too good for me – but she could be a little… How do I put it? Borderline obsessive? It wasn’t that she wanted to be in my life; she wanted to be my life. Well, you get the gist of it…

Fast forward to my first real job – a paid internship at one of the largest corporations in the country. I didn’t earn much, but I got by pretty well compared to a lot of my classmates, most of whom were still unemployed.

I ran into Sondra again, purely by chance, at the tube. I never thought I’d see her again, but there she was, standing right in front of me. She looked exactly the same as the last time I saw her.

To say I felt nothing would’ve been a lie. She was beautiful, disturbingly unreal, and I was attracted to her all over again!

Just like a scene from a romantic film, it felt as though we were the only two people in the world, completely lost in the moment. I was the first to speak. I said her name without even realising why. She smiled, and I knew she remembered me.

We spent the night at a nearby motel. The walls echoed with our passionate whispers, creating a memory that would linger in our minds for a very long time. But as dawn broke, we parted ways, and the morning air erased every trace of our intimate encounter.

Two days later, a notification appeared on my phone. It was a friend request from her on Facebook. Do people still use that platform these days? Well, I suppose that’s beside the point.

We started dating.

Sondra moved in with me after just three weeks, and everything seemed perfect. We even adopted a Golden Retriever from a shelter and named her Golden – pun intended.

I had never felt such overwhelming happiness before. I wanted to show her how special she was to me, shower her with passionate love, and make plans for our future together.

That was… until I discovered her secret. Or should I say, ‘secrets’?

Sondra, though an intelligent woman by nature, had dropped out of university shortly after enrolling in medical school. When her patriarchal, narrow-minded parents found out, they cut off her monthly allowance and, in her words, ‘disowned’ her.

I couldn’t understand how any parents could just cut ties with their child like that, but I believed her – I wanted to believe her. But this wasn’t even remotely close to what actually ended our relationship.

Things took a turn for the worse on the evening of my birthday. We had just had sex when she received a message on her phone and abruptly jumped out of bed. That was the first time she had ever done that.

Though I had no reason to suspect she was cheating on me, this incident kept me on edge for a long time. So, when I got the chance to check her phone, I took it and risked everything.

I knew her password – she didn’t bother hiding it from me – but what I found was beyond disturbing: grainy images, taken from what seemed to be some kind of photo album. The images showed people in disturbing positions, some naked, some intoxicated, and others seemingly stiff, like corpses.

All her messages, sent and received, were deleted, and she didn’t have a single phone number saved in her contacts – not even mine.

The nature of the images, especially those I believed depicted real human cadavers, made my blood run cold. Why did she have those images, and who the hell was sending them to her?

What disturbed me most, however, was that all the victims were people of colour.

I confronted her the same night. Although I wasn’t sure how to approach it, since I couldn’t predict her behaviour, not after seeing those pictures, I hesitated for a solid two hours.

Her response – I can still hear it clearly in my fading mind – chilled me to the bone. She said it with such calmness too, in such a nonchalant and detached manner, that I struggled to process whether she was aware of the morbidity of her own words. But, boy, she sure was!

“My slaves,” she said. “They are our slaves, don’t you get it?”

Dumbfounded, I stood there, and it took me a moment to recover before she repeated herself. I couldn’t believe it. She was dead serious.

“W-What?”

“You don’t understand! We’re superior, Elijah! We come from a noble and pure race! We have to preserve it!”

Disgusted by those words I’d never expected to hear from someone this special to me, I instinctively stepped away.

“Are you… are you okay?”

Her features softened as she noticed the confusion in my voice, inched closer and let her finger run down my cheek. Even now, as she said those disturbing things, even as I saw those messed-up images, I couldn’t help but feel attracted to her.

“That’s why I chose you, Elijah…” I let her kiss me, even for a brief second, relishing in her wet kiss before I pushed her away. “Together, we’ll retain our race and make it pure again—”

You’re not well.” I paused, glancing away to gather my thoughts, muttering more to myself than to Sondra. “This… this is madness. You weren’t like this before. Just—what happened to you?”

“I opened my eyes to the truth, Elijah! Don’t you see? Those people don’t work, don’t pay taxes, don’t do anything! They’re rats! Filthy rats living off people like us.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“Rats? They’re people, Sondra, just like you and me. Humans! Humans who deserve to live an honourable life just like anybody else!”

“You call those people our equals? Muslims, Indians, Asians – they’re not like us. They never will be!”

“You’ve lost your goddamn mind, Sondra!”

“Open your eyes and see the truth for what it is! There are mosques everywhere! Mosques, for crying out loud! And those stinking kebab shops on every corner, and-and—"

“What's your problem with people praying, working hard, and trying to make a living in a world where people like us have an advantage? You can’t just label the entire population as bad and others as good. That’s not how this works. There are good and bad people, not good and bad groups or races of people.”

“You call stealing our jobs, taking over neighbourhoods, breeding violence, and polluting our race people working hard? Babe, our vets are homeless and barely scraping by after serving this country, while those-those rats are taking our hard-earned money!”

“Polluting?” I couldn't help but crack up. “You sound like a 60-year-old bigot—or some 20-year-old online incel. What the actual fuck, Sondra? Since when did you start hanging around with people whose only experience of people of colour comes from the news?”

“You don’t get it, do you?”

“No, I fucking don’t! And I think you’re ill. This isn’t you, Sondra. We went to school in the ghetto together! In the bloody ghetto! You know those things you're saying aren't true! We both know.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that those people are threatening our existence!”

“Fine! Let’s pretend you’re right. Even if your twisted theory holds up, what do you actually lose if our ‘race’ becomes a minority? Think about it. Weren’t you going to be a doctor? Explain to me how this makes any sense to you.”

“I’m telling you, our race will disappear—”

“That bloody race talk again? Fuck! Okay. I'll let you believe in that bullshit this one time, but by the time you and I cease to exist, we'll both be long gone, don’t you think? Who knows? Maybe a better race will come out of mixing races? Isn't that what survival of the fittest is all about? The greater the complexity of our genetic makeup, the higher our intelligence and capacity to adapt will be. If we all get stuck trying to preserve an ancient noble race there’s no fucking evidence of, humanity itself will cease to exist!”

“I can't believe I actually considered marrying you! You’re a lost cause, Elijah! And you’re no better than those bloody rats living off of us!”

“And I can’t believe someone so intelligent turned out like this! It’s a pity. Really. I… I really liked you. I wanted this to work and… never mind. It doesn’t even matter now, does it?”

“No, it does, babe! I’ll give you one more chance to do the right thing.” She paused upon seeing the smirk on my face. “Don’t give me that face, babe, ‘cause I’m not fucking smiling right now.”

“One more chance? One more chance for what? You expect us to work out after coming out as a racist?”

“Is this your answer? Elijah, babe, look at me.”

She cradled my face in her hands, those deep-set eyes boring into mine. Her face card was strong – impossibly strong – and her kissable lips hovered just inches from mine.

“Is this really what you want?”

“It’s not about what I want,” I said, stepping back again, fighting to stay grounded, to resist the spell of her voice, her touch, her everything. “I can’t be with someone who sees people this way. I’m sorry. I really am.”

Her expression hardened. Cold. Unreadable. Something in her changed. Those seductive eyes of hers, warm and teasing, went dead. Hollow. Predatory. Then she said it. The line that twisted something inside me:

“I didn’t want to do this. Not to you, Elijah. But you leave me no other choice.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” My throat tightened. “Sondra? What the fuck is that supposed—”

Her eyes flicked past me. Quick. Too quick. Like she’d spotted something in the shadows. And then… she smiled. Not a grin. Not a smirk. A smile that made my skin crawl.

I whipped around.

Click.

A camera shutter. And just like that, with a single click, I was gone. Just another soul in that cursed roll of film.

My final memory? A saw. A clean cut. My head leaving my body.

Then – darkness.

Just... darkness. And nothing else.

No God.

No angels.

No demons.

Just the endless click of the shutter. Out of reach, just beyond the veil. There and not there. Real one second, smoke and mirrors the next.

The footage never stopped.

The saw never dulled.

My severed head never stopped rolling – thumping across the floorboards, trailing crimson like a signature.

And I watched her. I watched her keep going. Collecting more. Luring them in. Always the same setup. Same smile. Same bed. And those lips—

Still kissable.

Still killing.

Skin Deep

Photo by Camila Quintero Franco on Unsplash

Rule number one: never act on your feelings. Rule number two: always follow rule number one. Rule number three: breaking either rule means defeat.

During my nursing studies, I interned at the largest hospital in town, and two things happened: the student who was supposed to be supervised together with me dropped out of nursing school, and I was relocated from floor two to floor three in the infection ward after several nurses fell ill during a tuberculosis outbreak.

The dean of our faculty thus had to relocate everyone who was supposed to work on floor two; some were transferred to other wards but three of us were just sent a floor up. While the two nurses-in-training – my future colleagues – were supervised by the same mentor, I was, given the urgency of the situation, put in the care of one of the senior nurses who was supposed to retire the same year the epidemic broke out.

Needless to say, the old woman despised me and everything I represented. She was callous and bitter, and she took every opportunity she could to humiliate me in front of as many people as possible for the tiniest mistakes I made.

It was during this time of my life that I almost broke rule number one. It was pure coincidence that I was relocated one floor up and met the person I wasn’t supposed to meet. Like running into an old friend after many years, I knew I had to keep my distance to follow the rules I set for myself.

But the attraction between us was visible even from miles away, despite how distant and cold we appeared outwardly, and my supervisor wasn’t about to ignore it. The more she humiliated me, the closer the link between us became, like a deflated balloon that stretched endlessly and was difficult to rip with your bare hands.

I remember when she asked me to choose two or three patients to take care of for the day, and I picked one regular patient and one who wasn’t an ‘infection patient’ but was brought to our ward due to the epidemic. For her, this choice was yet another opportunity to mock me. As I was giving a brief of our regular patient’s well-being to the assistant doctor, he gave instructions on the kinds of medicine he was going to prescribe before I could give a brief of the other patient I chose.

When he was done and I had taken my notes, my supervisor stopped him and asked: “What about the other patient?” He looked at me, who was still clueless as to why he had skipped that particular patient in question and replied: “That’s not our patient. His own doctor will arrive later this evening.” I think he knew what my supervisor tried to do. And I think that was when it… when it became difficult to follow my rules.

The entire internship continued like this for a while and I was nearing the end of it. Despite strict regulations prohibiting it, my supervisor had already contacted my clinical supervisor at my nursing school and told her about how incompetent of a nurse I was. It was kind of comical when my clinical supervisor told me this, though. The patients, the other nurses and the orderlies all praised my knowledge and skills, yet there I was – a mere student whose words went against that of a senior nurse. I was bound to lose the battle.

Her demeaning behaviour affected me in ways no words could truly capture. When I learnt I failed my internship a week before my last day on the ward, I quit and dropped out of school. That woman broke me. She truly did. But it wasn’t just her – it was him too.

I hated the way I felt about him. We hardly spoke yet my walls seemed to have given in to him already. The day I quit, I went back home and decided to leave everything behind and survive this wicked world, no matter what. That was how my writing career started.

With the passing years, not only did I manage to close off my heart again, but also my mind to other people. Like a hermit living in the jagged mountains, I lived a life of enclosure and solitude. Living like this had its setbacks, of course.

There was increased pressure on my shoulders from all around, urging me to step into the spotlight and narrate my stories, my inspirations, and my aspirations in my own voice. I never accepted an award show invitation in my youth, never showed my face, and never took advantage of my position as a best-selling author, either.

That is, until I turned 54 and received an email from one of the leading magazines in the Western Hemisphere. I recognised the name of the sender, or rather, the surname I thought I had forgotten. How could I ever?

A photo of a young woman in her mid-twenties appeared in the search results as I typed her name. Goodwin. Lara Goodwin. An LGBTQ+ journalist who graduated from Harvard University with a law degree. Although the surname itself wasn’t uncommon, something in her face warmed my heart. Was it her emerald eyes, her rosy lips, or her straight, light brown hair? Or was it the shape of her face, the way her intelligent eyes seemed to seal all the secrets of the world or the way she talked?

Yet… deep down, I knew why.

Perhaps this insight, this resemblance, was what tore me apart as I noticed that she was raised by two men – her fathers. At that moment, when I realised the gravity of my belated discovery, a flood of memories washed over me.

How was this possible? As I sifted through distant memories, trying to make sense of my past and my present, all I could remember was a man in love with a woman. I knew this was the case even if I lacked the words to describe it. So how…? Had I been deceived, could my memories have been betraying me all this time—no, that couldn’t be the case!

But if that were truly the case, then how could I explain this newfound insight about the man I thought loved me? The answer came to me two years later one wintry evening when I least expected it.

The man who had almost broken me had transitioned. But it wasn’t just his body that changed – his face did too. It was like looking at a distorted mirror of my past self – of my youth – at a time when I was the most beautiful.

Then it dawned on me.

I wasn’t the one she was in love with. She was in love with my face, this feminine visage that was everything she ever wanted to see on her former face.

This happened during the 80s, mind you, when transitioning wasn’t as readily accepted at that age and time. I couldn’t help but wonder: had I given in to my feelings back then, would she have ripped my skin and put it on her own? Perhaps I knew this was the case, this was why I kept my distance all along. After all, I was so in love, so madly in love, that I’d offer not only my hollow heart but also my face to her.

Compassion

Photo by Casey Allen on Unsplash

A single-lane road stretches far into the depths of the mountain pass. The headlights swivel in the suffocating darkness, piercing the road ahead as the engine roars and a loud hum vibrates through the barren highlands.

In the picturesque scene emerges a deadly scenario.

The car speeds up, and its movements turn erratic and out of control.

In a blur of motion, the car flips and smashes into the iron barracks that separate the abyss from the narrow road winding uphill in a circular motion. As the barrack buckles, the overturned car plummets down the cliff and into the void.

What’s intact of the wrecked car is the ominous headlights still switched on, like a token of what has transpired in the witching hour. But it too soon dims and plunges everything into darkness.

The driver’s seat unlocks and swings open seconds later. A severed hand tumbles out from the gap and lands on the ground – neatly cut, perfectly flat to be the craftsmanship of the crash. Following it is the swollen head of a person with grimy hair shrouding the unrecognisable face full of shredded, cooked flesh.

A ring with the initials ‘F.H.’ is stuck on the ring finger, teetering between the tip of the finger and the damp ground threatening to swallow it.

Somewhere in the distance, at the mountain peaks, a griffon vulture croaks and unfurls its majestic wings towards the carcass. It descends near the crash site and observes the low moans of another passenger pleading for help.

It approaches the severed hand and prods it with its beak, testing its edibility before ripping it apart piece by piece in a haunting tune, consuming each shred after months of enduring starvation in the mountain ridges.

The moans weaken before ceasing altogether.

The vulture grabs the ulna, now stripped of flesh, and hurls it further down the cliff, before approaching the cooked head, ready to devour it, when it retreats as the grimy hair mixed with blood obstructs its effort.

It seizes the radius with the hand still attached and soars to the heavens.

The flesh on the radius and hand sustains its chicks, which stretch their beaks wide upon seeing the vulture return to the nest perched at the top of the mountain. The happy occasion soon draws other vultures in the area, and they descend towards the crash site to satiate their hunger.

One of the chicks, happily gnawing at the ring finger now stripped of flesh too, then snatches the ring. The vulture growls a warning as the chick’s about to swallow it, and the ring settles to the bottom of the crowded nest.

In the distance, a sudden din pierces the air and swells with each passing second.

The vulture hops to the edge of the nest and peers down at the crash site as the other vultures squawk and scatter to the cadence of an approaching engine.

It hushes its chicks and dives into the night sky, hovering above the mountain road and the broken iron barracks as a vehicle skids to a stop just inches from it.

As the headlights dim, a neatly dressed figure in a suit steps out of the car. He adjusts his tie and crouches in front of the broken barracks, peering down into the crash site.

The vulture tracks the stranger as he descends the cliff until he reaches the overturned car and yanks open the driver’s seat door. Another head rolls out on top of the cooked head, but this one is attached to the rest of its body, still restrained by a seatbelt.

The man hoists the head, studying the woman still alive despite the force of the crash. He then shoves her back onto the driver’s seat and flicks the engine on and off until a loud bang erupts.

Both the man and the woman ignite.

Watching this unfold, the vulture is blasted several feet into the air by the force of the explosion and barely recovers control.

The dancing flames consume everything in their path and reduce it to ash before they vanish as abruptly as they appear. The vulture returns to the crash site as the last flames smoulder out and creep closer.

The overturned car is burned down to nothing, but the strange man remains, unscathed by the crackling flames or the explosion of the engine. He unfastens the lifeless, badly scorched woman and cradles her in his arms. As he does so, he locks eyes with the shaken but curious vulture.

He kneels with the woman in his arms and motions for it to come closer. The vulture doesn’t budge, too afraid and on high alert to heed a creature it has no recollection of ever seeing before. Seeing this, the man rises again and passes by it.

The lifeless woman’s white dress billows in the whistling wind, like it has a life of its own. It’s at this point the vulture notices the man’s hand, adorned with the familiar ring on his ring finger. But before it can react, the bride and her groom dissolve into dust.

A newspaper clipping plummets between its legs then, carried by the troubling wind surging and howling with unprecedented speed. On the headline, these words emerge, but the vulture deciphers nothing except the happy smiles of the newlywed couple:

News of the abduction and subsequent murder of the young couple has shaken an entire nation. The bride’s stepfather, Henry Woods, is accused of child abuse, rape of a minor, and the abduction of the newlywed couple in his absence.

The police are searching for the motive behind this horrific case that has tragically claimed the life of… Any tip on the suspect’s whereabouts and the location of Hanna Woods' remains are important for the ongoing investigation.

Chief officer, Jensen McCarthy, implores the public to help them lay the young couple to rest and provide solace to the remaining family members. Authorities are now searching a seven-mile radius around the stepfather's last known phone signal…

Remains of human flesh and body parts are also confirmed as one of the findings in the stepfather’s apartment, along with the missing Ford 2014 Mustang… For more information, turn to page 4.

The vulture snatches the newspaper clipping and carries it back to its nest. It wraps the ring with the newspaper and lifts off from the jagged mountains, heading towards the nearest town. It doesn’t grasp what emotions drive it, but it can’t shake the feeling that it must deliver the ring.

As it glides over the city square, it spots a milling crowd of people protesting. It perches on a nearby truck and studies the people marching, holding up placards with something written on them. It doesn’t comprehend what the humans are saying, but it senses the urgency and the need for closure.

Amidst the crowd of people, it then locks eyes with a young girl. She points at it, desperately tugging at her mother’s clothes to get her attention. The vulture releases the wrapped ring and ascends back to the welkin, but it doesn’t depart.

The girl retrieves the ring and newspaper clipping and then shows it to her mother. The woman pauses her shrieking and asks the girl something. The girl gestures to the vulture again – this time, the woman spots it too, and her eyes widen.

The vulture croaks eagerly, striving to make its voice heard through the crowd of people. The woman entrusts her daughter to another woman nearby and then climbs into her car down the road on the other side of the city square.

She follows the vulture to the site of the crash.

As the vulture ascends back to the mountain peak and joins its chicks, it collects the bones stripped of flesh scattered around the nest and brings them down to the woman, who has collapsed near what remains of the car and the scorched body of the missing bride in her white dress – crying.

The two mothers then share a knowing smile, and the vulture rises to never return.