Because You Love To Hate Me

by Ameriie

  You pop out for a moment, wasting another bullet from the brute, who’s not only a tacky dresser but also a terrible shot, and you dive out from the other end of the dumpster, rolling onto your back and taking cover inside a high stack of construction beams. You crawl your way around the beams, a lot like the days of high school when you would flee underneath the bleachers to hide from your bullies. Except now those who are out to get you aren’t teasing you for the scars on your face. The three of them are wondering if they stand a fighting chance against you.

  You slide out the mini blowgun from your boot and insert two more Trance seeds.

  This is your favorite part.

  You take aim as they all group together.

  You blow into the steel pipe three times, each seed finding its home in the neck of your enemies. You crawl out from underneath the beams, like a sniper bold enough for a fistfight, as the three of them wince in pain and realize what’s about to happen to them. The brute points his gun at you, and you point your finger at him.

  “You don’t want to pull that trigger,” you say, and he doesn’t. “Go back to base or wherever the hell you came from and kill everyone in their sleep. When you’re done, tie concrete blocks around your ankles and go for a swim in the ocean.”

  “Don’t do it!” the girl shouts, holding the brute back. But he knocks her to the ground with a simple push, sending her rolling twice, and walks off.

  The wannabe scientist stands there, helpless. He knows if he runs, you’ll tell him to stop. Maybe the stories have trickled down to him, too, that you made others cut their legs off for challenging you to a fight and then running away.

  Trying to run away, at least.

  “Brute, wait!”

  The brute stops.

  “Give me your wallet.”

  The brute tosses you his wallet. There’s nothing inside. You knew it.

  “Carry on.”

  The brute walks off to go kill anyone looking for their poor leader who should’ve never gotten in your way.

  “Please.” The wannabe scientist cautiously approaches you. “I just wanted to find my friend. Have mercy.”

  Mercy.

  The client called you an angel.

  All these people after you, confusing you for the devil herself, and he saw the good in you. A little mercy can’t hurt.

  “Fine. You hate each other,” you say, reprogramming any alliance they previously held. “You want to beat each other to death.”

  You watch the switch in their eyes—once fearful of you, now monsters to each other. You sit on a barrel, legs dangling, watching the fight. The girl finds a pipe, and, well, it turns out a little mercy can hurt. A lot. The wannabe scientist is dead within minutes. The girl looks at you, bloodied from the few punches her victim managed to land on her, and awaits instruction from you.

  “Finish what he was too weak to do.”

  The girl loses the fight against her own pipe in less than a minute.

  That was fun.

  You finally collect your bag of money, which is unquestionably heavy, but it’s nothing you can’t handle considering you’ve thrown around heavier things—and people. You make your way to Karl, looking around to be certain you’re not being followed, and you stop in your tracks when you see a familiar face—your old assistant. His shoes are untied, and he smells of piss and other nastiness.

  “Slate is not to be betrayed, Slate is not to be betrayed,” he chants, walking past you with dead eyes.

  A dose of Retrieve could save him, could give him his life back.

  But you don’t carry that vaccine around, and you’ve already shown mercy once tonight.

  You rush to Karl, putting the chants behind you as you cross empty streets, and tap on the passenger’s window of the Ford truck he’s in.

  Karl unlocks the door, and you jump in, throwing the money in the backseat.

  “I heard gunshots,” Karl says, scanning your body up and down.

  “I didn’t shoot anyone,” you say. You’re not lying. “Or get shot.”

  “I’m happy you’re okay.” Karl smiles at you, and although your client’s smile a few minutes ago was pathetic, that one felt more real. You know Karl doesn’t approve of your business, but he continues to love you anyway. He’s a treasure.

  You lean in and kiss him. “The client called me an angel,” you tell him.

  Even though you rescued Karl, you know in his nods he’s struggling to find a greater truth in this.

  You’ll prove him wrong.

  You’ll prove everyone wrong.

  You grab the black handkerchief from the glove compartment and blindfold yourself, as is procedure. In the event someone ever captures you, the first thing they’ll want to do is drug you with Trance so you’ll reveal where you live. They’ll get your supply and then kill you. Now that you have Karl, you’ve erased your address from your own memory and can relax knowing that someone can kill you, but they’ll never find everything you’ve worked so hard to create.

  Your home has to remain a secret. Even from yourself.

  You remove your blindfold after stepping through your front door. You let Karl deal with his bastard cat while you bullet straight to your Memory Bank. As you spin the dial of your vault—2-4-8, because you tortured your father for two hours and forty-eight minutes before killing him—you wish you could just throw that cat out the window and make Karl forget it ever existed. But there are only a few things that make Karl happy, so you let the cat live, even though it hates you.

  See? You’re good. You put others before you.

  You open your vault and put away the extra Dazes and Tokens you had on you in case that kid wanted more than just Trance. You don’t close it immediately. You nod in approval at all you’ve done. The client was right. You are an angel. You’ve come to the rescue for many who’ve gone through traumas. It’s not as if painful memories shrink away as quickly as all your old childhood belongings melted the night you set your house on fire. Your services are needed.

  You’ve come a long way.

  The seeds here, particularly the grey Dazes and green Tokens, do good. The Tokens will grow in someone’s mind like a garden, where someone can grab a memory off a tree as if it were an apple. The Dazes will blossom, too, except they’ll hide whatever memory needs to be hidden in its trails of thorny vines.

  You’ve come a long way, Slate, but there’s still work to be done, and you know it. No matter how you or the others spin it, you know that what comes from the violet Trance seeds is less of a garden and more of an abyss. But you’re not the one creating the abyss or pushing others into it; you just hand others the shovel to dig that hole themselves.

  Except once.

  You were called an angel today. Prove it to yourself.

  In the colorful garden of green, grey, and violet seeds, there are a few pink ones. You pull out one pink seed and a pocketknife and close the vault.

  You play some classical music and meet Karl in the living room, joining him on the floor while the cat scratches the couch’s armrest. Your flute of chardonnay already awaits you on the diamond-shaped coffee table, as is routine in your household. You sit on the outrageously overpriced Oriental rug you bought simply because you could, kicking one boot off your foot on the spot where you tracked in mud last week and the other where you spat out Karl’s favorite red wine. You’re positive the seller would die of a heart attack if they saw the carpet today.

  You fall flat on your back, staring at yourself in the ceiling mirror, and let the music calm your pounding heart.

  Karl inches toward you with your chardonnay. “You okay? You seem a little on edge.”

  “Do you think I’m an angel?”

  The mirror doesn’t show you as an angel, but what the hell does a mirror know? Mirrors only know what you show them, not the other way around.

  Karl hovers over you, blocking your reflection, and smiles down at you. “I would have to be a clown’s ass to think the girl who saved me from a burning brid
ge is anything less than angelic.”

  “Would you love me if I didn’t save you?” You’re not sure you want the answer, but the question is out there.

  But Karl’s smile doesn’t break. “No shit, Slate. I was just too busy thanking you after you saved me to fall in love with you.”

  “When did you fall in love with me?”

  “You know the answer,” he says.

  “Maybe I forgot,” you say.

  “Been dipping into your supply of Daze lately?”

  “Tell me why you love me or I’ll make you forget your parents,” you joke.

  “Don’t threaten me with a good time,” Karl says. He laughs. He stops hovering over you and lies beside you, taking your hand in his.

  You both look at the mirror above, the you-shaped constellations gazing back at you. The cat runs across the room like a shooting star, staring at its own reflection through the closed window.

  “I love how hard you work at creating a better world,” Karl says, massaging your palm. “I know everyone doesn’t get it. I sometimes struggle with it, too. But the police and mercenaries will eventually wake up to your good one day. I can’t wait until we don’t have to sneak into masquerade-themed proms just so we can dance together in public. And I hate how our first kiss at that Korean restaurant was in the dark corner instead of under all those lit lanterns. I wish everyone could see you for who you really are. They will soon enough.” He sits up, pulling you with him by your wrists. “Once you’re done fixing the world.”

  He wants everyone to see you for who you really are.

  But he should see you before everyone can.

  You press one hand against his broad chest and gaze into his green eyes. Your other hand reaches for the pink seed in your pocket. He closes his eyes and leans in to kiss you, and you swiftly put the seed on the tip of your tongue.

  The kiss lights you up with the same electricity that it always does—victory as charged as a lightning storm and high-voltage love. The pink seed rolls into his mouth, dissolving on his tongue before he has the chance to realize it’s there. The kiss twists within moments. You open your eyes when he goes still, beaming when he opens his own. You find terror, as expected, from someone who’s no longer under Trance and kissing someone he doesn’t actually love.

  He rips himself away from you as you laugh.

  “You.”

  “Me.” You tilt your head and blow him a kiss.

  “Wh-wh-where am I?” Karl looks around, confused, and the only thing he recognizes is his cat. Well, there’s you, of course. But that’s obvious: you’re unforgettable. You watch Karl’s eyes as they scan the room. He spots the four-pronged candelabra, which would actually be a decent weapon in the hands of someone who wasn’t scared of a fight or at least knew how to make a fist; that person is not Karl. Not before, not now.

  You draw your pocketknife and flip it open, twirling it between your fingers.

  “I wouldn’t,” you warn. You tap the flat of the blade against your cheek. “Unless you want a mask, too.”

  “You drugged me,” he says.

  “Ah, there’s that astute scientist brain of yours, Karl.”

  “What? That’s not my name,” Karl says.

  “Yeah, well, Franklin is an old man’s name.”

  “It was passed down to me!”

  “I didn’t care for it.” And you refuse to call Karl by that name.

  “It’s all about you.”

  “So what if it is?” You step toward him, the pocketknife dancing between your fingers, and corner him between two oversize prints of modern art. “You have a good thing going for you here, Karl. You and Retrieve kept getting in my way, but I’m merciful. I let you live and, more important, I gave you a new life. You haven’t even said thank you.”

  “You’re an egomaniac,” Karl says.

  “And you’re unappreciative,” you say. “You’re alive, for starters. I also let you keep that damn cat.” You thought the cat would grow on you, but it’s hard to love something that tries to scar your face further, leaving scratches on your cheek like tally marks. You take another couple of steps toward Karl, closing the space between you two, and press him against the wall with the hilt of your pocketknife. You roll the knife around and drag the tip of the blade up his chest and stop at his neck. “Would you be happier dead?”

  “You won’t kill me,” Karl says, avoiding your eyes.

  You grab his arm and whisper in his ear, “I already have.” He tenses with your breath against his face. “I resurrected you, but you will die again. I don’t have to shove a knife in your throat to do so. The city will forget about you. Without Daze. All they need is time and they’ll forget about you the same way they do when airplanes vanish without a trace, or when children go missing.”

  “My friends will find me,” Karl says.

  You shake your head. You’re sure that tacky brute will have gunned down many of his friends by now. He’s probably already on his way to drown himself. “Corpses aren’t exactly known for their detective skills, I’m afraid. You’re missing, Franklin Ladeaux, and there won’t be anyone around to find you by the end of the night.” You laugh in his face, which an angel wouldn’t do; you know this, but you can’t help yourself. You create hope for many, and you’re stealing it from the person who tried to undo all your work. You’re not one for poetry, but you can stomach it this time.

  He tackles you—while you’re laughing, like a true coward—and he actually manages to take you down. You clutch the pocketknife, ready to swing it across his throat in self-defense, but he pins your arm down with his knee and strikes you in the face with his elbow. He punches you—flesh on dead flesh on flesh. He goes for your mask, peeling it off your face.

  Your face disarms him more than your mask ever has.

  He’s not disgusted by the scars on your face; he’s surprised.

  You strike him in the back with your knee, and he flies off you.

  You roll backward onto him, twisting your body and locking your hand around his throat. You lean in as if you were going to kiss him, but Karl is at his worst, most repugnant self right now—Franklin. “You said you wanted the world to see me as I am,” you say, ignoring the confusion on his face since he doesn’t actually recall any of this—not what he said to you, not any of those romantic moments you shared together at proms or Korean restaurants, nothing. But you know all this, and you’re all that matters. “Here I am.”

  He doesn’t look away from your face, not even to see if the pocketknife in your other hand is inching closer to him. His life could be stolen at any moment now, if you choose to strangle him or snap his neck, but, with great concern and strain, he asks, “What happened to you?”

  He hasn’t even asked about himself. He has no idea that months ago you drugged him with Trance in the middle of the night, while he was asleep in his lab working on a pill that could prevent your seeds from ever taking hold, with no one but that bastard cat keeping him company. And yet he asks what happened to you, what your past is.

  You help others, but you don’t care for them. And aren’t angels supposed to care?

  “Bad parenting happened,” you find yourself admitting, for the first time ever. “My father took his cruelty out on me and I finally gained control when I stole his life.”

  Saying all this out loud reminds you of childhood, when you wanted to hear fairy tales of princesses being saved from dragons by knights. Except growing up in your household taught you two important things: You have to be in charge of telling your own story. And sometimes the princess needs to get off her ass, pick up a sword, and slay the dragon herself.

  Your happily-ever-after began when your father’s life ended.

  And now you wear the crown and wield the sword, at all times.

  “I’m sorry,” Franklin says. “I didn’t know. But none of this makes you entitled to someone else’s life. Let me go. Turn yourself in. We can get you the help you need. You’ll never be innocent again, but you don’t
have to be so guilty.”

  “It’s touching how much you care. Too bad you won’t remember trying to be the hero.”

  Franklin shakes his head. “You will. Good luck living with yourself.”

  You slam the hilt of your pocketknife into his forehead, knocking him out. You climb off him, kicking his side to make sure he’s actually laid out. No groans, no winces. You ignore his cat’s meowing and walk over to your Memory Bank to grab another Trance seed.

  You catch your reflection in the mirror. There’s no mask hiding you at your purest.

  “An angel.” The word doesn’t feel right, and it’s not because of the scars on your face. You could’ve killed Franklin instead of taking his memories hostage and hiding them behind an identity of your making, but you continued to let him breathe. This is a fate his friends weren’t offered—a privilege his friends weren’t offered. Franklin is a trophy you parade around, not simply put away in a case to collect dust. He tried to beat you and you won, fair and square. Now he gets to serve you. And while angels serve the people, they above all bow before a single voice. “You’re a god,” you remind yourself.

  You smile and return to Franklin’s body.

  Maybe he’s not exactly a dragon. Maybe you’re not the angel the client believed you to be. But this life is still one of your own design, and that’s the way you like it. You roll the Trance seed around your fist, imagining what life you’ll design for him next. Every name he’s worn so far will remain good and buried, but he’s in excellent hands with you. The world knows this.

  You’ll make a name for him. And no one will remember the old ones.

  CATRIONA FEENEY’S VILLAIN CHALLENGE TO ADAM SILVERA:

  A Female Teen Crime Lord Concealed by a Mask

  BEHIND THE VILLAIN’S MASK

  BY CATRIONA FEENEY

  My original idea for Adam Silvera’s villain prompt was inspired by a blend of the supervillains Harley Quinn and the Joker. The combination of their sociopathic tendencies, energy, agility, and intelligence left so much room for exciting evil-doing, and a big part of their characters is the masks of makeup they wear. I could only imagine the fun Adam had, playing around with the possibilities while exploring Slate’s character.