A Love Story? (open piece)

Preface 

I warn you, if you've never cried for a villain, close this page book now and put it back on the shelf. There is no riding off into the sunset.  Your sighs will quickly turn to anger. The monster is a ghost changing faces and possessing even the damsel in distress. The heart broken will lose their right to pity, and sorrow is only an ingredient in the pie of confusion you'll be licking your fingers to.  

I was taught poison as love and given a broken lens to see the world. I thought its cracks were art. She possessed me with the only way I could ever love others.  As I loved, I infected.  I drained their hearts like a vampire, but the poison wasn't about being fed. It was like a drug, the more I had, the more I wanted.  My cursed insatiability was hidden under the pursuit of true love.  As I searched, I killed, as I killed, I wanted more, and the more I felt I would never find her, again, driving my search even more, doubling, even tripling my efforts. I made Bram Stoker's stomach turn and I made the devil raise his eye  brow.

But how did I get here? Bloodied hands, my lips red and tender from kissing death into my victims and ripping their hearts our as they dreamt of me. How did false love turn me into the reincarnation of Vlad the Impaler. Yet,  now, how do I sit here, not realizing my cape of darkness had the weight of a mountain all this time? Each day as I awaken to the trail of blood and darkness in my wake, the cape gets heavier and heavier, revealing it's true nature.  I wore this cape and every time I cut someone, the cape cut me and fused into my skin.  Eventually, cuts, thousands, and the cape replaced my skin.  I became pain and pain became me.  How do I rip it off.  Can you peel your skin off?  Can you dig your fingers in and use all your strength to peel it back?  Can you ignore your pain receptors while you rip your own flesh.  In my case the pain is memories, the pain is their broken hearts screaming in my head, maddening me to eternity.  It seems pain of death is my revival.  But do I deserve it? How do I get it?  What really is the penance of someone who became friends with darkness and a bloodhound lap dog of evil. Maybe we can understand this story, and maybe it will be a story of love.  Maybe there will be a sunset to ride off into.  Maybe the good guy can still win...maybe.

Quebec

(tba)