Hate

Fire and brimstone erupt all around. A thick miasma of sulpher and blood fills the air. And there, in the ruins of a school, stands the last living thing on this planet besides me. Hope crushed, she's on her knees, a steady stream of tears flowing down her cheeks.

How wonderful it is that she be the last life left on the planet to snuff out.

I smile. Without restraints to hold me back, I can smile at this. No more morals, no more ethics. Certainly no more heroes. There will be no happy ending. No Deus ex Machina solution can fix what I've done to this planet.

And I don't regret what I've done. When I let go of any shred of optimism, I realized they all deserved it. The suffering, the madness, the despair, each and every single worthless life deserved it. Humanity is, was, nothing more than a collection of fools, and traitors, and half-wits, and cowards, and creatures even more despicable than me. But at least I serve a purpose. I punish the wicked. And in a world saturated with sin, it's only fitting that the Devil brings an end to it, once and for all.

Why did I never see this before? I was never doing any good. I was never helping anyone. I was only a tool that made their lives easier. I was only making people more pompous, more spoiled, more greedy and selfish. What we do we do of our own free will, and so many chose to waste their lives on the most petty, self-destructive things.

Like you, little girl. We gave you a home, we gave you our friendship...we gave our trust...

I gave you my trust...

You little bitch! I trusted you! I actually put my trust in you, and you stab me in the back! And for what?! How could possibly justify it?! What pathetic excuse do you have?! Did someone make you do it?! Is that what you would say?! That's a lie! It was your choice!

It was your choice, Terra!

It wasn't easy letting you close. Looking back...a very small part of me, nothing more than a faint memory...I lived in such a small world. Maybe if things had turned out better...I would have grown into something better...

I could have been something better, Terra, but you made your choice. Because of you, I stayed in my small world, and...just look around you. It's absurd that something so small caused all this, but it's not the big things that break a person. It's the little things that ultimately drive us on into our own apocolypses. Sometimes it's the privacy of a noose, sometimes it's as public as a random shooting, but it's never anything so monumental as to so obviously foreshadow anything. It's that one loose pebble that sets off an unstoppable rockslide.

I clench her throat with both hands, my hands an executioner's noose that will tighten in time. But not too quickly. If at all possible, I want to her feel even more helpless. I want her to slowly suffocate. I want her to fight and struggle for breath, just like I did. And just like I did, I want her to realize she's going to die and give up. And just like me, she's going to find herself alive, because fate isn't going to be kind to her, either.

It's shouldn't be. It's not fair. I had to meditate every day, and you...you get to flaunt whatever you feel? No. No, that isn't right. That...cannot be right...

No...I won't let you...

As her legs kick about, as tears stream down her face, I can feel a profound sense of gratification I've never know. In my past life, it would have been wrong to feel this. I wasn't supposed to enjoy making someone suffer. But now...

Hehe...

Yes. I smile. And I laugh. And I feel joy.

She chokes and gasps, desperate for a breath. I relax my grip, ever so slightly. She whimpers, she stops struggling. She must think I've had a change of heart. Oh, but what a wonderfully terrible surprise she is in...

She stops struggling. She stops fighting. She stops crying. And...she says...

NO! This wasn't how it was supposed to be! How dare you do this!

You can't be sorry...

How dare you say you're sorry...

You...

My grip loosens. She falls to the ground.

And I follow.

I shouldn't be crying. I have nothing to feel guilty over. Everyone deserved what they received.

Or at least that's what I try to tell myself as Terra holds the sobbing, hurting wreckage that is me. Not the old me or the new me.

The real me.

The real me, and the real Terra. We're both stripped of all our defenses. We're both too hurt and too vulnerable to hurt each other any more. Even after everything we've said and done, I don't hate the real her, and she doesn't hate the real me.

But I'm not really thinking about such things right now. As Terra strokes my hair and wipes my tears, telling me everything will be okay when it quite obviously isn't...

"I'm so sorry..."

"It's okay. I know."