It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
The over-used start to every story. Something goes wrong, the world is going to end, and your hero had to fix it.
And if they don’t say it, they’ve definitely thought it.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Some kind of nuclear disaster. A failing of government and consequential descent into anarchy. A bioterrorist attack threatening the entirety of the human race. Zombies, Nazis, ancient gods, new age gods, supervillains with god complexes. The list goes on.
That should have been my story.
We were born to be enemies.
I was always the good-two shoes. A habitual rule-follower with a penchant towards teacher’s pet.
He was rebellious. Always following a set of rules that no one else knew.
Have you ever seen someone you admire so much fail? You respect them to such an intensity it almost hurts and they completely and utterly… fail. Try so hard and word so long only to trip and break an ankle twenty feet from the finish line.
You could even say I loved him.
No, not in the gooey, hormonal, star-crossed young adult novel way.
I loved him the way I love air or water or my mother. Like an eighteen-year-old looking back at their life before they take their first steps out into the world and realizing how terribly, terribly dependent they’ve been on other human beings for their entire life.
I loved him because I needed him as much as a sunny day needs a cold and lonely night by dictates of celestial law.
I’m not one to believe in fate.
He was always the emotional, superstitious one.
But there was something destined between us.
We truly were predestined to be the most glorious of rivals.
He was always the emotional one.
Always acting on anger and wrath and self-righteous animosity toward those who didn’t follow his particular rules.
Perhaps that’s why he was so good at what he did. Constantly thwarting me and getting in the way of my missions.
The storm to my proverbial calm. Always mucking things up and leaving a trail of ruined building, crumbled statues, and various forms of rubble.
I was the calm one. I always considered my options. I waited for retribution and always let any anger I felt lower and lessen before acting.
I was judicial. I was calm. I was steadfast and continually mindful of others.
And I wasn’t good enough.
No matter how well I played my part, he always knew.
He couldn’t prove it—had absolutely no evidence—but he always knew.
And it was, admittedly, infuriating.
But I never lost my calm.
I was perfect. Always in line, always punctual, always on top of my academics, always polite and kind without being too familiar.
I know some people called me cold, but I wasn’t cold.
He… he was the opposite. He was a raging fire that flared and consumed and whirled through any space he touched. He flamed and raged and swirled and shone like the brightest fire.
He saw the wrongs against himself.
I saw the wrongs against the world.
I don’t think anyone thought we would turn out his way.
Perhaps they thought I would become a scientist—world-renowned for my contributions toward the human race and the greater good. Or a first-class lawyer, prosecuting the criminal element of the world and bringing justice.
Perhaps they thought he would become a soldier; a general. A man of action with the ability to enact his need for vengeance. A vent for his brutal temper. Perhaps an FBI agent of the leader of a country.
They all knew we were both destined for some kind of greatness.
Life has an interesting habit of proving people right in the most brutal, painful, and unexpected of ways.
I don’t think anyone could have predicted this, how horribly right they would be.
I certainly wouldn’t have been one to choose this future.
I have no idea what brought him to the path he found.
We lost touch after high school.
For many years, I simply lived my life in a drifting manner. I plodded forward and continued in my streak of perpetual rule-following. He had floated from my life like smoke. His fire was as distant as a dream and I forgot what it felt like to burn.
If I had to pinpoint a reason for myself, it would be the pain.
I sequester my emotions. I cage them in a small, fiberglass box without a key. Then I pretend this box doesn’t exist.
It’s not a terribly complex concept.
I may pretend not to have emotions, but I feel so much of the world and the people and all of the pain involved.
And it does affect me—in a slow, measured, lonely kind of way. Like the movement of a glacier in an arctic valley. Or the movement of the universe, vast and silent and expanding throughout the recesses of my soul to cling to all of the little bits that feel.
But in a more immediate sense, I don’t feel emotions as intently as others.
I watched over the pain I felt and was always careful to be methodic in dealing with it.
I couldn’t stop it though.
It ate at me through the lonely nights without another human’s touch. It ate at me as I made my way through university classes and never once made a friend, but saw the pains of each person around me. It ate at me as a lay on a couch after work, contemplating the universe and the pain and feeling the weight of a thousand miles and a thousand nights of wounds and a thousand thousand people suffering through the end of eternity.
Finally, I had had enough.
I was breaking rules all the time. My pain was leaking through the perfect façade. My control was slipping and my righteous path was fading.
However, I finally found a course of peace and assurance. I found a path and I found a place that was right for me. I settled into this course of action.
And he blindsided me with his storm.
I knew exactly what I was doing. I had full awareness of my actions and their repercussions. They were necessary. Not always pleasant, but necessary.
But of all the people! Of all the people who could have interrupted my mission, it had to be him!
The one person who never truly believed in my perfection. He was the one who tried to stop the most important thing either of us had ever done.
He showed his true nature.
I showed my true brilliance.
He became a voracious wildfire. His house fire became a raging, explosive volcanic eruption.
My docile starlight became a radiant supernova.
He left and my air was gone.
My supernova petered out and I was left in the inky dark of the universe without a wildfire to keep me warm.
It took me months to track him down.
A shell. A hollowed out piece of skin on bones that supported nothing.
His fire was gone and he was cold.
He was drained and doused and desolate.
The absence of his wildfire had left a wasteland, charred, empty, and full of smoking ruined shells of what used to be a person.
I didn’t expect it to hurt.
I hadn’t realized that I loved him.
I hadn’t realized how necessary he was.
It hit me harder than his fire.
I am not emotional (I might have mentioned this earlier).
Why are there tears running down my face? Why are my knees weak? Why does my heart feel like the absence of a fire? Why can’t I control the emotions that I don’t have?
Why can’t I see the anemones I lay on this cold, hard slab through the emotion swarming in my eyes?
Why can’t I get up from the lonely granite that bears a name the world never knew?
Why is my pain staining the stone and freezing against my cheek as I curse and sob and insult a god I didn’t know I believed in?
Why am I crying at the grave of a name the world will never mourn, but always unwittingly adored?
Now I’m the moon without my sun.
The villain without my hero.
2087
kianamaiart
turnnoffyourmind
germansingergirl
yousharknotpass
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
ellievsbear
prguitarman
discoholicmusic
