He was a man. His body had arms, legs, hands, and feet. His face was handsome and alluring, his actions were performed without error, a consummate art. And the mind controlling them had a kind of power hungry discernment, a dangerous but perspicacious machine. The gears and teeth meshed in harmony. Nothing caught him by surprise. Everyone else adored him. When they passed by him, their eyes would find sudden interest in their feet, as if inferior to his temerity. This was the same as admitting defeat to a pointless cause. But still, he was silently regarded as the ruler in his widely accepted totalitarian world.

He had everyone within his grasp before there was bloodshed. Yet, the people remained blind and inert like timorous chickens raised in captivity, waiting to be slaughtered. They unconsciously knelt before him, as he manipulated minds and bent them to his will. Still, he was a man. Men have ignorance. He still had his blind spot, a pinprick in a layer of cloth. He could still trust.

She had told him many times to slow down, to wait, to be patient. He dumbly obliged. She knew hum beyond skin deep, into his blackened heart. She held her place in there firmly, keeping the blood pumping red like rivers of lava. She didn’t dare let them turn molten ash. Her role was a brave one. The risks she took were necessary and valuable. Yet, her heart human as ever, contained too many unshielded targets. The arrow happened to pierce the right one. She denied that she fell to him like the others. But she did, beyond what any mind could conceive. She didn’t idolize him or fear him. She loved him. Her own heart closed off its soul to the right and wrong. It languished after him, and screamed a deafening cry to her ears. The interminable echoes of need and doubt haunted her. She fell, not because she made the wrong choice, but because she was too late to be his savior.

He was a man, but is no longer one. His eyes grow enervated of warmth. He speaks in the same language but it sends an esoteric shiver down everyone’s backs. In a large room with a crystal chandelier, he sits in a silken couch. A snake coils itself around his feet, almost lovingly, like she had once touched him. Its green body had no shine. All light seems to be absorbed. From its tongue, caustic poison coated it every hiss. He is about to send it forward to the pale corpse in front of him. The snake eyes it next meal voraciously. Hunger. They are both hungry; for food, for power. Just as he lifts his hand in commandment he stops.

A blockade of subtle traces of humanness stands stubbornly in his mind. At first, his hear fills with panic, but it slows its beat again. There is no “human” in him. It is simply a glitch, a small, insignificant jolt. Just like her, he thinks, staring down at the woman.
Standing up from the couch and crouching low near the red stained carpet, he kisses her forehead and closes her eyelids so they wouldn’t stare back at him like he is a stranger instead of a lover, like he is a monster instead of a man.