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There were few times when Black Hat had decided to recall his own past.
Some things, he believed, were better off forgotten. Things that mattered little, things upon which he would rather not dwell, things that instilled fear within the very fibers of his own being.
Black Hat had lived as a villain for years now, but even as those years collected into decades upon centuries, the word seemed so foreign to him, like it was something he could never understand because it wasn’t something he could ever be. He wasn’t villain, not in the slightest. A villain was too earthly of a word, too simple and confining to what he truly was. It was beyond a label, what he resembled, but what he could best translate himself to be in the human language an embodiment of chaos.
Villains had motives. Whether it be vengeance, self-pleasure, or greed, an earthly villain abided by some aspect that felt important enough to them they pledged their own life to it. Of course, Black Hat knew all of this, that villains were very simple and needed something to their name if they ever hoped or dreamed of looking to a starry future of utter destruction, where their dreams lay asleep and at peace. However, knowing and understanding were two so very different things.
Black Hat lived for chaos: it was what he embodied. He had traveled between dimensions, through the very ripped and delicate seams of time, inhabited the empty folds at the ends of the universe where time itself seemed to cease its movement and darkness lived alone. Yet, it was merely what he lived for; there was no motive driving him.
He rarely dwelled upon this truth of himself. He didn’t like to think about who, or what he was, because the entity he incarnated was an all-seeing eye of the universe, and his mind could know and understand everything he had ever witnessed and the very notion of possessing such a power frightened him. There was so much to know, too much to know. It was mortifying to know that so very little of anything truly mattered, that things built upon other things to create a tiny shard of the omnipotent universe and existed solely to exist. And, that each thing only had such a long time to live.
Time was such a strange, new concept to him; it was foreign. The way it rolled off his tongue gave him a rather sour aftertaste, as if it didn’t deserve to belong in any place on earth. It was no matter, however, since it was hardly applicable to anything. He supposed it could only ever move forward, but even so, he still was able to traverse through dimensions omnipresent within each other, all of which were either a second or a minute ahead or behind, and all lived about themselves accordingly with no interference between each other. And, when he felt obligated, he was free to fold the universe in its infinite entirety into a sphere and squeeze past the membrane embracing the empty space it held and watch as everything happening all at once while happening all non-synchronously.
When he did this, he was alone, with all the thoughts in the world to himself. His conscience was the only voice he could hear before he found Earth; it flowed throughout his very being and spoke to him and led him through the dark, emptiness of glittering, fiery masses and incomprehensible beings such as him. He could never pinpoint when he was created. He simply had become to be at some point within the universe, but time was merely a man-made concept, so what did it matter?
He did find humans odd, however. They were so strangely fascinated with numbers: they liked knowing what day it was, the time, someone or something’s age, how much something amounted to in value, how many things there were in a single group, numbers were everything to them. But, numbers were still too simple to provide any real answer because humans could only do so much to understand, for they, unlike Black Hat, did not serve the universe to understand. They instead were gifted with emotion, a substance of eternity with a perishable life. Humans took up as much of it as they ever could this emotion, as did other creatures Black Hat had come to know anywhere else. It seemed to be an entity of life, and Earth teemed with so much of it. He remembered when he first found himself on some barren land in the planet; it was very bright and there wasn’t any space that provided emptiness which was a difficult change he had to endure. There were so many beautiful colors everywhere all at once while everything surrounding him breathed in the air intoxicating him and not one moment spared a single second of stillness for him. He figured, for such a bustling area, chaos would best fester here, like an open wound slowly cracking open, spreading blood everywhere and becoming infected with time because everything here was too corrupt to fix it. It was so loud and bustling with life, that he would never feel alone for a long while, either. Not that he would ever dare to admit he preferred the company of mortals and despised the placidity of loneliness, because then he would not be alone with his own thoughts. Yes, Earth was utterly perfect for him.
And, as centuries had come and gone, Black Hat had begun to realize he had forgotten a bit of himself somewhere in the past. He was deemed a villain, lived as a villain, but knew deep down that the word was next to nothing in his eyes—but he still lived it. He made money off of being a villain, even. Many marveled at him for being a villain, many admired him for being the best villain, but he wasn’t a villain. The word felt all the same to him as it had a millennium ago, when he had first learned of it.
Yes, a villain, he was. A remorseless, unfeeling, lawful, repulsive, uncaring, and indifferent villain. A villain which all villains dreamed of ever being: an emotionless one. Because indifference was so unnatural to humans—they were much too emotional to understand it—and being indifferent meant rousing fear among all and having the power as one pleased because nothing could ever stop them. A villain without feeling was a villain without limits.
Black Hat could only shake his head at this; they didn’t know better. They couldn’t possibly know better. Humans couldn’t ever simply be without emotion; they cared for something, at the end of it all. Even if they cared little for anything, or nothing at all, they still found themselves caring for something else. Black Hat wasn’t a villain. He was not of this world. He did not think this in a self-patronizing way, as he would put himself out to be. He wished to be a villain, because being one meant being simple and too stupid to understand much of anything that existed within the terrifying realms of the universe. It meant he had no power, no obligation, that he only, solely existed to exist.
What Black Hat was terrorized him. The thought alone haunted him. The only way he could ever attempt to hide from it was to stifle it. He could pretend to be a villain, and live by the mass’ word who believed entirely he was one. He could settle for that. But, he also knew forgetting what he was was the worst thing of all to ever do to himself, such as this very moment…
Black Hat’s being was strewn everywhere about his office. Sizzling tar dangling from the ceiling and scattering over antique decorations resembled some part of him; bubbling, scalding flesh spitting out crackling sparks and melting eyes and gnawing teeth everywhere. It hurt, everything that made up every fiber of his being hurt. A thousand needles piercing into his core, a hand wrenching itself into his splayed body pooling into every empty space it could find and grabbing some mass of flesh and twisting it into mangled nothingness. Everything within him burned, like an itch he couldn’t reach and it manifested itself into spreading everywhere and ignited every nerve in his body and lit them afire. His form had lost its humanoid shape hours ago, on its own accord. He did not know what to do. His body had taken his mind and toyed with it until it discovered how to depose his conscious control.
Something within him stung in the midst of all this. It would have been a stabbing throb of his heart against his chest, had he not been draped across the elegant walls and carpet as his searing flesh bubbled like hot mush and stunk of rot. He was completely helpless. He had lost his wit to his own body.
Black Hat did not like the idea of being weak. It was such a compromising position, where one was at the mercy of the other no matter how loudly and how much they begged and pleaded and wailed for remorse, because the situation was so unfair even if the question of defeat or victory was not about being fair. All he could do for now was wait patiently and passively because nothing else could fix this; only his body could decide that.
The heat curled into the remains of his crystallized bones and melted organs, it dug its rugged claws into the sticky slush of his skin. Some minutes flashed by slowly and that was when he realized it was better in the meantime to just focus on that heat, how it bit through every inner fiber of him and focus it reverberate painfully within him at such excruciating slowness. He could not simply die, and now he felt compelled to curse his immortality: it was never an advantage of any kind to him, anyhow.
A wave of aching emptiness rolled throughout his being, forcing out hot air from every gaping pore it could find and he could feel his body spit out more of his innards and choke on hot fluids and bubbles of skin.
He was no villain. Black Hat could not begin to live up to the word. He could only wish to be one, pretend to live a title he along with many others dreamed to achieve. Villains were without weaknesses; they were the one enemy they could lose to. They had emotions which gave them a purpose for their cause, and they existed for the privilege of living. Black Hat was none of these things: he never would be.
The hours were agonizing. It seemed as if they stopped to watch in utter awe Black Hat suffer so dearly for what many believed he deserved. His body convulsed and collapsed in itself, sucking in the heat that could not be contained. It burst within him, the explosion made the puddle of his flesh retract outwards and splatter the room and he could only scream out helplessly.
So, he thought about the pain, the way it invaded his very core, stabbed through every square inch of himself, and stormed insatiably to consume the entirety of his being. Then, his mud-like skin cooled, and his innards slowly reformed, and his body began to stitch itself back into place as his conscience stood in silence somewhere in the room outside of his body. He did not feel himself fix anything. He did not like being reminded that his body was not always his own entirely.
He sat on his carpet for a moment. He looked as beautifully regal and meticulously immaculate as ever. The room showed not a single trace of anything unusual present. Nobody had any business of knowing. Not a single living person.
He would rather keep it that way. He did not like hiding himself, but a villain such as him could not afford to be vulnerable, because as a supposedly ideal villain, he did not share emotion.
But, he did not ask to serve the universe. He did not ask to embody the ugliest of chaos.
The office was quiet. The antique grandfather clock quietly ticked and the soft noise echoed in the back of his mind. A faint buzzing noise occupied his thoughts.
Nobody could ever know of this. Nobody needs to ever know of this.
Black Hat took a deep inhale in, ignoring the pull of air pressing against some inner ache in his chest, and slowly released it. He closed his eye, welcoming the lingering hum of the stillness.
In all the years he had existed, he had never felt so alone.