Villains and Victims

Prompt: You can choose to be a witch, a vampire, or a demon. Write about your very particular experience as one of these Creatures.

In the afterlife people are surprised by what they find. Instead of the traditional “How good a person were you?” it ends up being “How much anger did you hold inside?” And that is how I became a demon.

It’s working for me. In life I was the type to lie sleeplessly, worrying about that thing I said and did someone take that the wrong way? Even with those who actively harmed me; I would be the one to fret for years over what wrong I had done them to earn their abuse.

I would find some way to make the fault mine. Usually something like “there was that time I said that thing to my mom and saw the hurt in her eyes. Therefore it was karmic that some unrelated person destroyed me.

My anger, by my adult years, had already taken all the room I had inside me. After that point it packed down into sedimentary layers until the entire inside of me was solid as rock. I had to stretch my skin to make room for more.

I knew someday that the mass inside my body would turn cancerous and, finally, it did. Through the end, though, I spent my time apologizing to others. Asking forgiveness, not for the things I said or did to them, but for the things I’d thought.

When I was assigned to be a demon, well, you’d think I would have protested. “But I’m a GOOD person!” I might have even said “I would never hurt ANYONE!” As I took on the cloak of bitterness and ashes I suddenly felt freer than I ever had while alive.

“Go out into the world” they told me. “Till it is gone. There are no instructions on how or who. You will know, instinctually, how to do it. Return full of light, having had your fill of revenge. It’s how it works here.”

And I did go out to haunt the Earth and its inhabitants. “Only the bad people” I told myself. Those living and dead. Those who deserved it.

“A villain is simply a victim whose story hasn’t been told.” - Unknown