He was stubborn and imperfect. This he had always known; in fact, in times when he was feeling stubborn and imperfect, his flaws would be his pride, and would help puff out his chest as he beat it with his tight fists. In short, his flaws protected him, shielded him from people who would try to get inside him, to know him, to understand him. He was the great misunderstood-- to him, the greatest threat to his autonomy, to his self-identity, was the concept of someone getting in.

The same game played out. He cursed himself, he cursed the way he had ingrained his sense of necessity and importance. He cursed himself until his tongue turned black from the curses, until his eyes burst and his veins sprayed his blood all over the land. Or, at least, until he felt that he had sufficiently lashed himself with self-hate and shame. The sick part of it all is that he did not truly understand exactly why he was the way that he was. It hurt the ones closest to him, it pushed them away, but damned if he knew exactly what it was.

The blunt hands of logic were beat into his brain so deeply that any threat to them he saw as a threat to his own inner being. "2 + 2 does not equal 5", he found himself reciting to himself, as if it meant anything now that the world had gone to hell. What was this game now that he had no one to play with him? He had complained that the world had become corrupted and impure, that there were no longer any kings among men; he used the fact that the term "patriarch" had become a derogatory comment, not without the help of feminism. He was a cynic and, he at least thought at times, a paranoid schizophrenic, but there was always the game to play, and others to play it with, no matter what the side they played.

Tattered and torn, there were at least some refuges of his past life that had survived. His wallet, filled with useless relics that he could not have previously lived without, had among them a picture of her. As he sat down after a meal of makeshift food, salvages from the garbage can that Earth had become, he looked at it and began to cry.

"It's not fair," he cursed, not knowing to whom he was talking. "It is not fucking fair."

He kissed the picture, trying to remember. Her face was a blur when he closed his eyes, each detail escaping his frail and limited memory capacity. But there were things that lingered, things that could not escape from his memory. Things like the way she danced when she was happy, a mixture of revolutionary freedom and simple glee that always had him at once fearing her independence-- what if she ran away, sick and tired of being 'tied down' in a relationship? She was a beautiful animal, one he could not understand nor control. It was at once a fearsome prospect for someone who was mathematical in his logic and desperate in his understanding. He wanted to know everything, he always had-- the secrets of the universe had always intrigued him-- but he wanted to specifically know everything about her. But he never could, and it always frustrated him. She surprised him, and he was always pleasantly surprised, but a part of him knew that she could run away as easily as she once did...

He sighed. There were many things he never could know, and at least now he knew that it was his own fault, that he was the cause of his own suffering. Somehow, this was what made the pain cut through that much sharper. At least if his pain was caused by someone else, then he could pass on the blame, he could know that it was not his fault. But it was not the case. He had been the one to walk this time. He thought that he could not take it anymore, the running, the blaming, the fighting. It had been a blaze of anger and control-- each blaming the other for ruining or running the life of the other. And yet, he would take the most uncomfortable moment, together again and in tears, his anger flaring and frightening her, running away from each other and yelling and biting with curses and damnation-- he would trade it for a million lonely nights. She blamed his anger for her fear... if she could only could understand that it was passion at its purest, that every disagreement was the most desperate of problems to him even if it was simply a difference of opinion. She was his soul mate, and he wanted to be her, and her to be him. He wanted to kiss her so tightly that she would melt into him; he understood the old Greek myth of Hermaphrodite. It was love at its purest, at its most desperate. But like all myths, it was not quite as perfect in reality. Life had its own surprises that kept any two souls just that small bit apart, kept each other from truly joining and never separating. And the mother of all pains was the knowledge that sometimes that small bit was not necessary at all.

He looked at the darkened sky. He had always found beauty in darkness, but this sky was devoid of beauty. Everything was just pleasing or not pleasing to the eye-- incidental curves and colors that appealed to his biology, his inner sense of safety and security, but not much else. He was running on complete automatic; he was not alive.

"I don't want to fight," she said, crying. She looked at him with pleading eyes, and he was insulted. She had chosen to fight in the first place, she had started it all, and she could choose to end it simply by refusing to blame him. Or so were the thoughts that ran through his head, thoughts that were caused by his constant need to be the sufferer rather than the abuser, his need to be the good person even if he had to lie to himself in order to believe it. "I can't take it when we fight." She looked at him with those eyes... those eyes that made him want to surrender, but he knew what surrender meant. He had associations...

"You always do this," he told her, truly angry. "You always try to make me feel like the bad guy." He remembered saying those words a lot and hearing them thrown back at him. You Always.... What did it mean, that the other person always did something that caused annoyance? Was it not just a misunderstanding, especially when each tear told him how much she loved him? He remembered rushing out to pack his backs. Each time he threw a bit of clothes into his backpack, he had spat a curse at her. He silently wondered to himself why he had done that. He knew that she loved him, that each fight was nothing but a mild annoyance, a missed opportunity, a secret emotional reaction that had been kept secret from the both of them, a failed promise held deep inside and bottled up until it boiled over, rotten and fermented.

He took a swig of a mysterious liquor that he had found. The label had been torn off, and he could not even be certain that it was ever meant to be an alcohol, but whatever it was tasted warm and felt like it was burning his insides. That was good, he thought to himself. It feels so good to destroy myself now. It had always been his solution when he hated himself, when he did something that he knew was stupid and self-destructive. It was a nasty habit, but it was one that, like much of his character, was so deeply hard-wired that he knew no way to avoid it. When he hated himself, he hurt himself. Each cut nerve screamed out to him that he was one step closer to knowing what it was like to be beyond flesh, to be above his own mistakes, to be complete and pure in his spirit, to know all things.

They had come in the night, those great dark gods. They had swarmed over everything like a black cloud, and he knew that they were still around. They were the only company that he had. He had little idea of what they were, and he somehow knew that he would never fully understand what had happened. Perhaps they were for the sins of the nation, the hedonism and lack of self-control that had become the new religion. Insulted demons, perhaps, that were sick of being powerless to punish the sinners that infested the world. Perhaps they were a human creation, a biological weapon of war that had been massively produced to the point of true infestation, a beast that preyed on human flesh and whose hunger could never be satiated. He did not understand the beasts, but he understood two things: they had killed her, and they could kill him at any moment.

They had been fighting-- what was new? Over what, he could not remember. There was passion, yes-- he was filled to the brim with it. His heart was beating too fast, his words came out thoughtlessly and automatic. She had passed the line, or so he thought. She had insulted everything that he believed in. The details were lost, but he knew that it was metaphysical bullshit: things that could never be proven true nor false. But it was important to him, for reasons he had lost.

"I don't know if I can take this any more," he told her truthfully. He was crying as much as she was, though he was ashamed of his tears and cursed his own vulnerability. "I... I need some space." What he said meant little more than air, fresh air outside of their apartment, but she had misunderstood, and it had marked their end.

She looked at him, tears streaming down her face. He wanted to hurt himself already, for the pain he was causing her. But he had never been able to hurt himself when she was looking, no matter how much he wanted to. "Then go," she said simply, and the both of them knew what she meant. He had heard it before. And his heart had broke the first time, and his wounds never healed. None of his emotional wounds ever healed, but had stayed in the form of scars all over his soul, what some would have called "character" but what she called "emotional luggage." This repeat hearing was all he could take. A part of him broke, like a piano string, snapping violently, cutting him so deeply that it would never heal, not even enough to scar.

"If I go, I'm not coming back." He did not want to say this; it was automatic insult, it was ammunition that he used to defend himself. He had said it before and not meant it. But somehow, everything had escalated.

He only saw her alive one more time. He had never moved on. Mutual friends had told him that she had begun dating another man. It burned him to hear it, but he choked it back, tried not to show his fear and betrayal. You have no right to feel betrayed, he told himself. You left her. Still, there was an undeniable jab of pain.

Then, when he thought she could be taken no further away from him, she had started to enjoy herself. His self-esteem began to taunt him with visions of how much better a man he was, how much better he treated her, how much smarter and stronger he was. He began to envision the other man in his mind, and delight in imagining tearing him limb from limb for the pleasure of it. But in the end, this game of hate was not sufficient to take away the pain.

He wanted to go to her and tell her that he still loved her. It was deep in him, almost hidden and subconscious, but it was most definitely there. He wanted to bow down before her and worship her like he always had, like he still did. He knew what he had felt was love, that elusive and perfect emotion, and he knew that anything else would be a pathetic impression of a pure Essence. But he tried, nevertheless. In his mind, he was still automatic. It was ammunition, and it always had been. What she caused him to endure, a part of him always wanted her to endure, not out of hate but out of its exact opposite, love. If she endured the same things that he had, he reasoned, then she would understand him. And indeed, she knew him like no one ever could-- predicting his actions before he even knew what he was up to. She was in his head as much as she was in his heart.

But even though the figure of Cupid shares his love with arrows, ammunition and relationships are never good bedmates. She reacted the way anyone would-- cursing him and moving as far away from him as she could. Now they had both "moved on", even though he was only automatic. Sure, he liked the girl he was with, and he enjoyed her company, but she wasn't his love and he knew it. He loved her, but in the same way friends love, the same way care always overwhelms anyone who is close and agreeable.

When he saw her again, it had already started. She was staring at a dead body, or what was left of it. She looked up at him, and began to cry. Before she could say what was on her mind, say whether she was crying for the dead body or the return of her love, they had swiped her away from him. Even though they could not be killed, he had lept to her aid, and had hurt the creatures enough so they actually feared him and flew away. But the woman he had saved was not in his arms, though her flesh was certainly there. Her eyes stared back at him, empty and vacant. He shook her, tried everything he knew to resurrect her. But the blank stare in her eyes, that glassy look of the dead, was unquestionable. There was no doubt except a pitiable and stubborn hope that this could not be happening, that the flame of love could not go out this easily. He felt two flames at once, the flame of passion that made him kiss dead lips, and the passion of hatred and anger.

Each day had been harder. It brought questions-- so many questions! Did she love him? he wondered. Or had she finally moved on, did she actually feel love for that lump of flesh? Was his chance stolen from him? Or was that final look the final tie that would eternally bring them together?

After burying her body, he began hunting the creatures. It was not about saving anyone-- he cared little for the lives of others and had even watched the creatures take a life he might had been able to save. He cared about making them suffer for their sin against her, their insult against the woman he worshipped as his queen. He wanted them to be torn limb from limb, just as he had wished upon her boyfriend.

He knew they could not be killed. And so he wanted to be surrounded by them. His suffering would be legendary as he angered them more and more, but so would their fear. He had seen that look from the glassy eye of those dead beasts, those predators of pain and suffering. They stared at him in confusion, because he had stood up in a way that very few if any had ever stood up to them, their visage at once terrifying and impenetrable.

He had complained that there were no kings among men anymore, that nobility and purity had been a concept that had died off with the rise of capitalist business and political correctness. His last wish for himself, or upon himself, was to be the last king of the human race, and he wanted to be king over those hateful beasts.

He marched up to their lair with full confidence that he could not lose. If he managed to hurt those creatures, then his suffering would be worth it. At the very least, the more pain he felt, the more those claws slowly ripped him to shreds, the slower their digestion ate away at his flesh, the more he would feel like he was sufficiently punished for letting love slip by from his grasp. In a world of decay and loneliness, even though it could never be returned to him, love was the only thing that he felt was worth fighting for.

He stared at the dark castle of blood and gore. His eyes closed and tears began to stream down his face uncontrollably. It was not automatic, he wanted them to flow. He hoped that she was watching, not so that she would feel he was brave, not so that she would be punished by watching his pain, but so that she could see him fighting for her, as he always had. He understood now that he had always been fighting for her to be closer to him-- he had just seen her as an obstacle at the same time. She pushed him away in that little bit that always kept mortal lovers apart, but now was his chance to be immortal, to return to her and show her that he could join with her, be one with her, so close that the hands on his chest were her hands. "I miss you," he whispered to her, and a bit of wind blew against his ear. He could have sworn he smelled her scent, could hear her voice whispering into his ear.

"I love you."

He chose not to doubt it. It could have been wind, it could have been his imagination, he did not care. It was her, damn it all to hell, it was her and he knew it because it had to be her. If it was not her, if she was not there to see him, to return to, then even the pain he was about to suffer would never be sufficient punishment for letting her go.

"I will hurt them as they hurt you. Worse if I can. And when they tear me down, I will find you. I will find you no matter where you are, no matter whether you want to be found or you hide from me. I will find you and I will love you like I always should have."

He marched up to them; their vision was not terribly great if he moved slowly, this he knew, but at the same time, the more they thought of him as a threat, the more they avoided him. It was a natural reaction, whether they be gods, monsters, or something else, and it made sense. All things avoid threats to their well-being. Even God in Heaven banished Satan to Hell, so that he might not be a threat anymore.

They swarmed him. His pain and theirs were indivisible. Flesh was torn quickly and bluntly, and his blood mixed with theirs. He screamed in pain and as a war cry. He grabbed anything he could, to tear, twist, bite, pull. Everything was a mix of blood and sorrow, curses thrown around like currency.

He stood up to them. He even managed to live for a moment, much more time than anyone as swarmed as he was ever had before. They slightly backed away when his teeth bit down into their flesh, looking at him in worship: creatures of hatred admiring another creature of hatred and desperation.

They had no reason to fight, however. He did. And even though he would never be king, he was the only human being to ever destroy not only one, but three of the beasts, and they would remember him as long as the ones who witnessed the battle would survive. After that... well, after that things become metaphysical, and can neither be proven true nor false.