On this austere day of stagnation when a cold, dark emptiness fills the air with a certain heaviness that even I cannot delineate, I find my thoughts adrift, wandering, whirling aimlessly around, until I manage to grasp the single thread that connected the entirety of the complex web of my mind, one that leads me back to the question of why—
You.
A curse.
That is what you are, Amy Cahill.
To pointlessly lament for a misfortune that cannot be undone is the mark of a fool. I've always perceived myself as the kind of person of the wise opinion to actually believe that.
And yet, here I am, cloaked in the sable veil of rue as I drink away this sentiment of regret, even if I am very, perfectly aware of the fact that all of my sins cannot be undone and that the punishment for them are for me and me alone to bear. The words exchanged between us have already been irreversibly carved into stone and cannot be possibly erased from memory, for every word, every letter, is marked with pain and all things regrettable.
I write this behind my rosewood desk in the quiet study of my family's manor, right where the cries of the stereotypical London rain are muffled by the burnt sienna Victorian walls, the peals and rumbles of the thundershowers reduced to a muted noise. Even as I stay in here, deprived of your sunlit presence in this ever-swallowing void, I can only think of you, you, of all peasants. Well, that is no wonder, actually, since I am surrounded by books—thick volumes of history line the shelves, with my personal favourites from Niccolo Machiavelli and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sitting beside the Jane Austen and Brontë novels you always claimed to adore. I've never actually picked one of their fiction novels myself, but I made certain to purchase them and place them in here where I can easily give them a glance and be reminded of you, of your effervescent enthusiasm, of your scintillatingly charming spirit whenever you are lost in the mere pages of a yellowed book.
I contradict myself. Ever since I've met you, I've started to contradict myself in every which way like the lost Alice in the mystical wonderland of our forbidden Shakespearean romance. Whenever I remind myself of you, of your euphoriant Irish green eyes, I feel only hatred, rage. I cannot understand it.
I hate you.
I hate you so much I simply cannot help myself but rage.
Because how? How do you do it? How? How do you manage to make me fall for you and crave you, to long for your kiss and hunger for your love, in almost so savage a way I would go to all lengths just to pursue you, a predatory snake upon helpless prey?
Ah. Helpless, isn't it? No, love, please do not scorn me for writing that; the irony is not lost in me. You, admittedly, certainly aren't the helpless one in our little game of cat and mouse.
Because at this point, I know that I am helpless mouse now.
Dear me. Have I truly just written that? I already imagine my future self smiting me for even daring to write this pathetic, self-pitying missive. If only you could see me now, in this miserable state. You would see me, writing with madness, my desperate helplessness, and the carnelian wine beside me, which is but a crucial reminder of my desire to indulge in evanescent sensual delight in order to just completely forget you, blast it.
But the more I try to push you away with each sip of the sweet, burning liquor, the more the urge kept coming back to me. It is the urge to finally spill it all out, to just shatter the black glass covering my heart, to simply disgorge everything else into words, even at the risk of having my innermost self concretely recorded on such a vulnerable piece of paper. This, my ireful lamentation.
After all, in vino veritas. In wine there is truth, so there shall be nothing to read in here but the truth. And that cold, blatant truth is...
I hate you, Amy Cahill.
And I have every reason to. You are the bane of my existence, the dissonance of my appetence. Right after you'd rejected me, you'd immediately decided to go out on a field mission of acquiring three different boyfriends who apparently suit your rather...delicate tastes and unreachably high standards, because I clearly cannot. Outrageous. Tolliver, Rosenbloom, and that other one named Kurt. Hmm, was the latter not the college student you met in South Africa, that imbecile whom you admired for being the...champion of a local chess tournament?
Perhaps I should consider meeting with this champion one day to challenge him into a match he shan't forget. After all, I could have easily checkmated the world's international grandmaster himself in a little less than four moves. So if that...Kurt...really believes he's as good as he boasts, then, excellent, the larger ego I would have to so satisfyingly deflate.
Now. Where was I? Ah, yes. Your prudent search of a perfect fiancé, when you very well know that I have already tired myself of chasing after you in every way you go. Amy, darling, do you think I'm blind? By deliberately going out on a show of what squalid taste you actually have, you insult me. Honestly, three different country boys of lowly status and miserable families? Are you mocking me on purpose?
Oh, my senseless, selfish sweetheart, have the sins I've done been so wrong for you to be so spiteful of me? I've done but a human err, that which I fully admit and am regretful for. And still, still you refuse to forgive me, to look my way, to notice that I have completely decided to bring the shame to my grave and openly love you withal, even at the sake of my mother's rage and my father's legacy—
And still, still you scorn me, hate me, deem me incapable of truly loving you because you've permanently labelled me as that ruthless Lucian who'd be forever cruel and cold-hearted, oh, since, what was that you said? It's in my blood, it is my fate, that even if you manage a smile whenever around me, you could never be truly comfortable because it's in my nature to strike fear upon you, because it's been installed in you that, if I've broken your heart before, then I could so easily go my way and do it again.
You say you are a Madrigal who hold no prejudice against anyone, that you are ready to forgive, ready to leave the past behind; that you are a peacemaker, a Garda Siochána, but oh, no.
You never truly believed that a Lucian such as I could ever change.
You have hurt me, and scathed me, and paid me no mind when all I've ever done was love you for you are the Indian summer in my life of eternal winter. Granted, that may be a fair punishment for my unforgettable error, but love, don't you think you've done enough? The pain you inflict upon me far outweighs that which I reckon have already been healed by time, and I am not merely saying that in an attempt to whitewash my wrongdoings. No, because, because the fact is, I've changed.
I've changed, changed my ways for the sake of you and you only. For years you have been nothing but the centre of my world and I never lose sight of you in each and every ticking minute, for you are always there, like the sun in the sky which never goes even when the night falls. I courted you, am enamoured by you, have granted you everything I have ever had to the point of even changing of who I am, all just for you to see. But you haven't even noticed, have you? You haven't even noticed, have you? All you've ever done was deem my efforts useless, throwing my sacrifices into wastebasket after wastebasket as my futile crusade towards your heart only leads back down into my own hell.
If ever you should accidentally stumble upon this letter, I imagine you already are making me a laughingstock—mocking how you alone had successfully managed to make me, the future presider of the Lucians, assume the role of the pitiable victim in this fickle, childish game we play called love.
Love is so pathetically FLO: For Losers Only. I never realized that my father's advice could ever ring true.
But, mark my words, it won't be long before I will become the victor in this battle for your heart. I won't accept this failure. Never. Because someday, I will emerge triumphant. Someday.
Someday.
How far I've fallen. I never realized that I was ever this desperate for you, you, who are as lovely as a lover's first kiss. Oh, indeed, how far, how far I have fallen; I could never come to know how it happened, how it chanced that I've become that classic, despotic prince of an iron hand falling for the poor plebeian of a golden heart. I confess that I find myself so ill-placed in this ramshackle fiction so reminiscent in every myth and fairytale ever written. We are the characters from that cheesily-written romance novel; the forbidden lovers in that clichéd tragedy, you and I.
I come from the highest ranks of power, I am born not out of love but from lust and corruption, and I am destined to rule a kingdom of vast territories and riches unimaginable. And yet, it is you, you, a measly peasant from a measly town, with barely even a title to accomodate your already measly financial situation—
It is you who had become my acushla, my sweet dulcinea, my Juliet and Evangeline...
My love.
Ha, and speaking of which. It is the...lovely little nickname you despise, eh? You despise it because it makes you blush, it makes your heart flutter, it makes your knees go weak and you hate to see me smirk at the lovely sight of you, powerless under the gaze of a serpent's eyes. Tell me, do you feel your heart racing right now as you imagine me calling you my love once more? Do you feel your face consuming that irritating heat, heat so peculiarly fuzzy that it makes you shiver?
Oh, my silly love, in denial now, aren't we?
But, too often you wouldn't give me the chance. Every time I call you that, you wouldn't give me the chance. Too often you would tear your eyes away from me in that single instant and walk away, never giving me the chance to tell you how your moldavite eyes resemble the rolling hills under the light of the brilliant sun, how your pink blush reminds me of the first rays of the richest dawn. you'd never give me the chance to tell you that the smile on my lips is actually not a smirk of condescension but that of wonder and disbelief, disbelief that such a lovely sight could ever even exist upon Earth. I never got to tell you these, because...
Because you never gave me the chance.
My love, look at me into the eyes, and tell me honestly.
Have you intentionally bewitched me to suffer from the drama of this wretched, unrequited love?
I, after all, have suffered long years of looking at you from far away, locked away as a prisoner of my own desires, for you were a dream too distant for me to ever reach.
I acknowledge that I am starting to sound too much like the suffering victim, the miserable and hapless cull, the unwanted reject who had been cast out and is now drowning himself in his lonely memories like a pitiful martyr. Oh, please. I may have fallen, that much I admit, but I'd never let such mere setbacks be the cause of my complete and utter downfall. Don't make me laugh. I am not the victim of our story. Sufferer? Certainly not. Protagonist? Far from it. Antagonist?
Definitely.
That had always been the role of a Lucian in every Cahill story, my love. Remember that. I may, as of the moment, taking my time gathering my bearings, but do not expect me from completely retreating and giving up on this game of hearts.
Because I tell you, sweetheart, you have picked the wrong gentleman to play this game with in the first place.
I will return, and on my dark reprise I shall inflict upon you every pain I felt, so you and I, the two of us, like a Greek tragedy, would share the same feelings of love born from hatred towards each other. Our love will be dark, and wrong, and true. The path of our romance will be paved with inevitable hell and calamity and kisses of death, but I would do anything for the two of us to make it through, no matter what. Parents will protest, fate will intervene, and your other lovers will surely come in the way of our already prohibited love, but if I have to imprison you in a tower and guard you with a dragon, rob you of your freedom and cause you your tears, I will happily do it, all to keep you a possession of mine.
If I shall have to become the ruthless Lucian I used to be, then so be it. I will throw away the costume and finally end this masquerade. I will pretend no longer to be your knight in a shining armour, and resume the role of the villain that I've always been if it is to protect you from those who wish to steal you from me.
You'll suffer in the shadows of our romance as have I. You will feel the pain and the hurt that I've gone through, and I assure you, that it will all be worth it in the end.
Even I don't know what has gotten into me. Even I don't know why I even want to waste my time going through all these lengths just to be with you. I daresay...perhaps it is love?
Luke help me. I hate you for making me feel this way, Amy Cahill. I hate that you'd make me feel inferior, that you'd make me feel miserably besotted, that you'd make me feel willing to kill a thousand legions just to earn your heart.
I hate you for bedamning me on this curse of love.
And that is the truth. I must say that it is worth remarking that every drop of truth falling from my fountain pen and onto this paper cause me to feel quite cathartic. I've pretended for far too long. Having lived a life full of lies can be very exacting, my dear, so now I am partially glad for wine to have taken its control over me with Dionysus over my shoulder to guide me as I write. I never believed that I'd ever even dare reveal myself naked, but...
I love you, Amy.
I loved you so much that I couldn't help but hate you for it, because, oh Gideon, if only you knew. I am disgusted at this lovesick figure of me as I look at myself from higher eyes, mortified that I would change, pour my heart, and go to such ridiculously foolish lengths all because I've been knocked senseless by the gentilesse only you beheld.
And knocked senseless I were. After having been stabbed countless of times by your words of rejection, now I see that you are not actually that girl of perfect purity I've always admired and dreamed about. Oh, no, do not flatter yourself, because you were not. You were cruel, vindictive, ungrateful and blind. I couldn't imagine how I've ever missed that in the first place, that I've only realized your true nature once I've gotten myself hurt for even daring to touch you: a pure diamond with sharp and unpolished edges.
Now I realize whom the person beneath that mask really is. You, Amy Cahill, as your predecessors have been, are a living lie. Ignorance and shallowness are the true forms of your seeming innocence and naïveté; the beauty I've once admired is only the shell of a cruel character.
You are a misleading star-the symbol of my life's frailty and false hope, vulnerability and illusion. You are the venom that made my finger tremble over the trigger, the force that made me hesitate, the illness that stained my Lucian blood. You are the darling witch that cast this irreversible spell, the spell that fired me the unnatural urge to chase after you until the end of forever—
—until I forcefully make you mine.
And, Amy Cahill, mark my words. I will seize you from the filthy claws of whoever your current lover is, because believe me, you are not meant to be with that new mongrel you've somehow acquired from the jungle. You belong to me. Me. You are mine. On my empire of thorns and vice, riches and felony, crime and sin, I will make you my Queen.
You shall be mine, not by the will of God or the whim of fate, but by my own contrivance and design.
Oh, yes.
Mine.
Whimsy writing borne from 2 am. XD
So...yay? Nay? Let me know...? ~.-..