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When Cupid's arrow pierces 1x1x1x1's body, what will they become aware of first?
The pain that brings them pleasure, and then the scent of blood. The smell of love flowing from your body. Warm, viscous, binding your bodies together. When your bodies are pierced through, could it nourish them as the umbilical cord once connected you to your mother? Could it let them taste the sweetness of love as well? They want the warmth that once enveloped everything within the womb. They have never experienced such warmth. Their body has been cold since the moment of their creation.
Why? Why can something like this exist so effortlessly within your blood?
They hate that you cannot understand the thirst buried within the depths of their soul. They hate themselves even more for yearning for such a fragile, ridiculous mortal emotion. Most of all, they hate this love that comes from you, something they can never possess.
But then, what exactly is love?
Is it the kind of obsession they feel toward Shedletsky? The desire to tear out his still-beating heart, to pierce through his body, to let the blood splattered across their face nourish their withered body. Is the satisfaction that comes from such an act simply another form of love?
Even so, how could they possibly feel even the slightest bit of pity for you, struggling desperately for survival like an animal? How utterly laughable. How could a hunter standing high above his prey ever pity the creature destined to be skinned and torn apart?
No. That is not right.
They love you.
They love the twisted expression on your face when you are in pain. They love your refusal to submit, your resistance, and the way you viciously curse them again and again while teetering on the edge of death.
They want to kill you, to turn you into an undead creature they can enchant and command at will. They would praise your obedience and admire your violence. No matter what, you would never betray them.
What a beautiful thought.
It is the closest thing to eternal love that they can imagine.
But the dead are just as incapable of possessing love as they are.
They still prefer you alive. Your blood is still warm then.
Yet they envy those who can hear the softness in your voice, those who receive it without having to pay any price at all.
Why?
Why do they get to have it?
They can only search for it themselves.
Is it hidden within your voice? Or perhaps within your soft gaze? They have never felt it. Then it must be buried somewhere deeper.
Tear open the skin. Split apart the chest.
If they take you apart thoroughly enough, they will find the thing they have never possessed since the moment of their creation.
But what if even your heart cannot give them the answer?
Then they will eat it.
They long to taste you, to discover exactly what you, cherished and cared for by love, truly taste like.
Your flesh fascinates them.
Your blood, your memories, your fear, everything you have ever loved and everything you have ever hated. They want to swallow all of it and make it part of themselves.
If they possess everything that belongs to you, then surely they will be able to understand you.
They believe this with absolute certainty.
Let your blood flow through their cold bones, let every last trace of you be digested by their body. Let them absorb everything you could never bring yourself to say.
Then, perhaps, they will finally understand what this thing called love tastes like.
But why can they still not understand any of it?
Is it not enough?
At last, the monster has finished devouring all of its food, yet it still cannot feel full.