I didn’t get it… what made people fall in love with another person? Even when their so-called better halves would torment them and twist their emotional insides with corkscrews of insults and physical lashings… It made no sense. I was in no position to give a lecture on or wonder about these things. I always preferred to be on the giving end. The receiving end always suffered the most. Everyone has a tragic flaw that drives them to their end. Aristotle described it as Hamartia in his Poetics. My tragic flaw was lust. I couldn’t help it… my hunger for a woman’s body was overwhelmingly insatiable. When I saw a woman I liked, I just had to have her by any means necessary. The women who saw through my façade despised me. Those who couldn’t became slaves to my lust. I guess that’s how the world was built. The stupid, love-seeking, insecure pieces of shit eventually found their fate underneath someone else’s foot. They were just too easy to trap and even easier to bed. I never bothered approaching those pious, level-headed studious chicks. They just weren’t my type. They’d never drink, smoke or party… always into their books and bibles. I didn’t want to entertain that kind of pseudo-sacrosanct perversion… until… I saw her.
Sometimes we don’t choose the person we fall for. We just fall… and then we break. I have always gotten what I wanted. This would be no exception. We weren’t formally introduced in some college get-together. I bet she already knew me. I had quite a reputation, not a good one might I add. The women knew how I was and yet they willfully succumbed to my lies. She just randomly walked up to me with her face puffed with anger. She unloaded a can of guttural invectives on me. She was pissed off about the fact that I had screwed her friend a week back. I chose not to hear the words coming out of her mouth but rather focused on her pretty exterior. She was nothing like the other women in college that I had devoured.
“What the hell did you do to her, you virulent worm! Are you even human? How could you?”
“Don’t blame me for your friend’s poor choices and low self-esteem. She came onboard too easily, what else was I going to do?”
“That’s not what I am talking about! You told her you loved her and then you hit her! She tried killing herself! She’s in the hospital! Do you even care?”
“She wouldn’t leave… I hate it when these bitches stick around, you know. So maybe I was a little forceful then usual…”
She slapped me. I lost it. I was about to punch her daylights out when her boyfriend intervened and pushed me at the side. I glared at both of them and walked away with a smile. I was going to get them good.
I kept observing her from a distance. I’d cross paths with her in between lectures and we’d both glare at each other. She was the Student Council President, an active member of her church and a top ranker since first year. She was what they called an ‘elite’. She had a keen sense of morality and justice… the kind that I deemed were full of shit. As far as I could see, there was no morality and justice in this world yet she believed in them. I had to prove her wrong. I joined all the clubs she was a part of in an effort to get close to her but I couldn’t. Her boyfriend, an equally excellent student, was always around like her shadow. Taking my dwindling reputation into account, I wasn’t allowed into most of those clubs initially, but gradually, I got in. I tried having conversations with her but she always passed some smart comment and walked away. Sometimes she just ignored me but I wasn’t the one who would give up so easily.
I lurked around her making sure she felt my presence wherever she was. I was hooked on to her like a parasite. I was like a persistent predator stalking its prey before ravaging it. Then I got my chance. She had been moping around for a week. She tried to conceal it but I could whiff out depression when I saw it. It didn’t take me much time to figure out that her boyfriend of 5 years had moved out of town to pursue his studies at a university in a distant city. This was my chance and I took it! Initially, she wouldn’t entertain me but slowly we started having small conversations as I got more involved in the activities at college. I was never a gem at academics but in order to get her, I had to step it up a bit… the things my lascivious intentions made me do…
I pretended like I had changed for the better. For starters, I began going to the same church she was in and ensured that she saw me. Then I went around college apologizing to all the women I had slept with and mistreated. Some accepted my apology and some let me into their bedrooms again. My grades began improving. I started treating my peers with a little respect and improved my mannerisms. This charade was convincing enough for her to go on a date with me. We discussed morality, we discussed justice and we discussed laws. She was for and I was against. By the end of the date, I had made her see that there are two sides to everything and everything has a loophole. I had put the bait and she took it. After a couple of dates we kissed. After a few more kisses I told her I loved her. After a few more I love you-s she let me in and it never stopped.
I had her addicted to my scent, to the sound of my voice, to the way I looked at her, to the way I moved in bed and to the things I told her when we were together. I could slap her and she wouldn’t even utter a word. She was emotionally dependent on me. I made her do the things that her church deemed as a sin. I made her perform things that would disgust even the student council. I made her do all the things her parents told her not to. When I wanted her, she would come. When I said bend she would bend and she would like it! I had her locked in my cage of lust and there was no escape. She was my slave. Some people knew what we were up to but nobody said a word. It went on for a year… then her boyfriend returned.
I was waiting outside her house for our regular night session when I saw him. He still had his bags with him and walked up to her house. He was up there for quite a while and then he came down with a smile on his face and headed home. She had done it with him. I walked up and entered her room. She couldn’t look me in the eye.
“So… what did y’all do?”
“Wh-What did who do? What a-are you talking about?”
I slapped her and pulled her closer by her hair, caught her ears roughly with my fingers.
“Your boyfriend… or should I say, your ex…”
She didn’t say a word. I flung her on the bed and tore her clothes. I engaged her roughly. It was wild. It was intense.
“Who do you like more?”
“I-I don’t know!” She moaned.
“Did he pleasure you the way I do?”
“I-I” she couldn’t speak.
“If he did, we wouldn’t be doing this right now, would we?”
I stopped what I was doing, caught her by her hair and looked into her eyes.
“I-I love you more… please… d-don’t stop” she said with desperation and desire.
Our session went on longer than usual that night. By the end of it, I asked her to tell him off but when the time came, she didn’t. I never liked sharing what I claimed. I manhandled her a little that night and walked out. I had to do something about him. I called on another fuck-buddy of mine and told her to approach him and tell him everything. Moreover, I asked her to show him the videos of me and his precious employing unconventional methods in bed. She did it willfully. I even asked her to even give him a spare key to her room that I had taken. I had invited him to a live show and hoped he would come on time.
When we were amidst our most passionate moment, he barged in, pulled me off her and shoved me against a wall.
“You son of a bitch! What the fuck do you think you’re doing with my girl?”
“Your girl? Are you sure about that? Is she still really yours?” I said while looking at her.
“Keep your filthy hands off her!” he looked at her, “what do you think you’re doing? We were supposed to marry and settle down!”
She stared at the bed and then spoke, “You left me for a year… I didn’t…”
“I left to ensure that I get a better job and earn a good life for both of us! Why did it have to come to this?” he said as tears rolled down his eyes.
I was thriving on the drama. She sat silently covering her naked body.
“If you’re done frowning, why don’t you just leave? We’re a bit busy, you see…” I said with a grin.
He tried to punch me. I caught him and pinned him down. I was obviously stronger than him. I looked straight at him and said,
“Deal with it”
“You’re just fucking around with her, aren’t you?” he said in a crude tone.
“You think she doesn’t know that already?”
He looked at her to confirm the truth to what I just said. She looked away.
“Every human has desire. When humans want something, they will pursue it with vigor. They will not let up until they get what they want. The girl you once loved is gone. She’s mine now. All she desires is me. She is addicted to me. Sex is her drug. All that religious bullshit, her grades and her morals don’t mean shit now. I broke them down… all she wants now is what we were doing earlier and there is nothing you can do about it… it’s fucking hopeless.”
He looked at her. She was sitting on the bed like a helpless infant. Tearing up a little she covered her face.
I leaned over and whispered in his ear, “I told you I’d get y’all back…”
He left, eyes wide open with disbelief. I forced myself on her till I was satisfied. Humans were strange creatures. I insulted her and degraded her before the man she once loved and yet she didn’t have the will and the words to defend her integrity. Her love for me, or at least the notion of it, blinded her to see what I was doing to her. She was no longer the strong woman she once portrayed herself to be. She had turned into a mindless puppet that danced every time I moved my fingers. I tried turning her into a little slut and she let me do it willingly. Her grades dropped, she began skipping the Student Council meetings and she began indulging in vices. She had lost her credibility and her respect. I broke her and when I got bored of her, I tossed her out like a stale piece of bread and pursued someone else. A week later she tried to kill herself. She was all alone and she was on suicide watch. She had given up on life.
It made me think. Why do humans cling to desire to the point that it destroys them? Why do humans only believe in what you show them? Why don’t they try to understand you and your intentions? Why can’t they see through your ulterior motives? Why do people give in to desire so easily without even contemplating the consequences? Why don’t they judge you by your actions rather than your words? I could tell her I loved her while slapping her and she would still believe the words than the actions. I had no feelings for her, I just wanted her body and yet she wasn’t able to see through it because she thought I loved her. She fell for the words I told her. She loved me and in due time, those feelings destroyed her. Her misguided feelings and desires were her tragic flaw. I still got away with mine.
The Void Of Nothingness 