Twisted Love

She walked dreamily along the streets at four in the morning, searching for meaning in the life she’s found herself enmeshed in. The events happened so quickly, she couldn’t piece together the moments that led to the many riddles in this divine comedy we call life. Only a few years ago, she was euthymic, top of her field, without any financial pressures plaguing her. Today, her bank account was zero, and none of the usual characters that moved her life to love or laughter were anywhere in sight. Like his presence, they were gone as if he were a monsoon that swept in and cleared her life of debris and joy. So tonight she walks.

In this anhedonic activity, these six-hour-midnight walks, she imagined herself a Queen of The Underworld, where there is no one under her rule except the trail of her treacherous thoughts. 

She was never once a very dark soul. But something changed within her. It started with him. A nice man, with good hair, who seemed to know everything. And every time they spent Saturdays in the cafe debating and making meanings of Arendt or Heidegger, they both came to one conclusion. That both were decidedly dark in their own right, and perhaps the discussions of Picasso and Gaudi’s rivalry were better suited with the merry songs of the birds that fluttered all about her flowerbed of morning glory and baby’s breath. 

She doted on him, almost reflexively. The world spun on his axis, and not another man can ever dream of being as important to her as Michael was. In her dreams, she saw him, in her waking moments, she observed him. Through sickness, she nursed him, and she never questioned his love for her. And yet one day it all came crashing down, this whirlwind romance, fit for novels of ancient times when hunky men with no toothpaste basted the napes of women’s neck with adoration, in both the nervous anticipation of, and the aftermath of war. She loved him with a fervor she never recognized was capable of brewing in the guts of her soul. She was enticed and fascinated by him, fully engulfed by him. 

So when the day came that he said it was through, she denied it. Tried to hide it. Mumbled it away a few times more. She coddled him with the hope that what he said yesterday must not be true, “Maybe he is just afraid of how much he loves me,” she thought with the delusion of an entitled child who was slowly only learning the rocks and rhythms of love. 

“No matter how intelligent you get, all of you women are quite the same in your core,” he tapped on his cigar a few times. “You choose to live in a romanticized version of the world, and never really truly dance with the devils of lived realities. You scream feminism, but you love domination. Almost a true desire to be dominated and held in bondage. It’s a fascination of mine I can’t ever seem to decode,” he laughs softly, then a bit more hysterically. He touches her face, and pinches it gently, “it is so adorable how confused you creatures are about your worth.”

“I was under the impression you were aware it would not last forever Estefania, I told you, I think, let’s see… multiple times.” He glowered his green eyes in her direction, and she drank him in. Always in awe of the moody ways he silenced her, the impassioned ways he slapped her out of love, and the many times he would convince her this time was most certainly the last. 

She believed him except for the forever thing. It was too sacred.

“It seemed to me a bit flexible,” her hazel eyes searching for love in his. “We make love with so much passion —”

“And that is all it ever will be,” he retorted without an ounce of patience. “Men know who they want to marry within the first thirty seconds of meeting the one, you will never be enough,” he reasoned, searching for understanding along her fingers, caressing her hand as he delivered boulders of rejection. 

She smiled to herself. Coyly.

“For you, I’d be anything. Just teach me. Teach me how you want me to love you. Show me what it would be like to make you happy, where do you want me to go, and what do you want me to be— JUST SHOW ME GOD DAMMIT, SHOW ME!” She raised her hands to the air in a fit of passionate anguish. 

He grabs her wrist. An amused reaction blooms in his face. “Don’t ever confuse my soft demeanor for weakness, Estefania. It is only I who would ever make you squirm for more. It is only I who makes you tremble with the feelings of love that I’ve inserted in you. You will never be intelligent enough to comprehend that, and this is why this is not a partnership. It’s exploitation. Women of lesser faculties are naturally exploited.” He ends his reasoned lecture, with his hands grabbing the hefty curve of her thigh. Her eyes whirl, and she slaps him across the face. 

“You unhinged bastard.” She begins to heave, then suddenly hysterical. He starts to smirk, a sly smile like a fox full of pride from stealing her dignity. Not just anyone’s dignity. It must be Estefania’s

For how long he watched her. 

For how long he waited for her. 

Eight years. 

He seduces her into a tight embrace, “There’s no need to worry now,” he says, “You’re gonna be okay.” 

And Estefania sobbed some more. As her face grew red with tears, he gently rubbed the nape of her neck. As if soothing a dog. She purrs. 

“You know,” Michael licks his lips between words, “there are more men who have patience for these antics, I suggest you find them,” he rests his head on hers, and she pulls away. He beams at her, folding her hair behind her ears. “You’re going to be okay, I promise.”

She starts to chuckle and the butter knife slid into the crevices of his ribs. Once, a few times more, she watched him gargle blood and felt nothing but peace. 

She held him for hours, rocking him like a limp rag doll splattered in a mosaic of red blood and coffee stains. The same last words rolled on her tongue for a few hours more…

It’s gonna be okay ….it's gonna be okay….it's gonna be okay…It’s gonna be okay ….it's gonna be okay….it's gonna be okay

And still, she couldn’t stop loving him.