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Malice

Physical pain is temporary. But memories of pain last a lifetime. Which is really fucking inconvenient for an immortal.

The bizarre thought worms into his mind, making no sense since he’s not some eternal being. Although if he were, it would make this reality more interesting, same as in the books he reads. Anyway, the strange notion comes out of nowhere to distract him.

That’s fine. He’ll take what he can get. Anything to divert his concentration, to break him from this real-life hell.

His body thrashes on a hard mattress, a bed that’s more of a gurney than a place to actually rest. Maybe they’ll eventually roll him out of here in a body bag. Once they finish cutting.

“Fucking animal,” a human voice grates to his left. “Keep still!”

“Tighten the straps,” grunts another figure.

“That won’t work,” a third stranger pants, wrestling him down. “He just keeps breaking them.”

“Goddammit,” the first brays like a mule. “Chains, then.”

Buckles cinch around Malice’s ankles, calves, hips, chest, shoulders, and mouth. They snap apart like strings as he flings himself from side to side across the cot. As promised, shackles replace the straps, the links clattering as they lock him down.

“No!” he roars. “I’m not mad! She’s real!”

One of the mortals in white jeers, “Nuttier than a bag of peanuts.”

The others cackle as if this is a fucking joke. And why the hell is Malice calling them mortals, as though he’s the opposite? And who the fuck is Malice? That isn’t his name.

So what is it? What is his name? Why can’t he remember?

A blade slices up one arm, sketching a line of crimson. Another one pricks his legs like a pincushion until he’s spasming, the carving of flesh ripping gravelly sounds from his lungs. Soon enough, the howls will tear apart the tissue in his throat.

It hurts. It hurts, but they don’t stop.

Half a dozen men in white robes administer sharp objects. Pronged. Serrated. Curved. Pointed. Blood runs like a river onto the floor, needles sting his flesh, and his bellows threaten to split the roof.

The shitheads don’t listen, don’t give a flying fuck.

Instead, they have some kind of sterile conversation involving terms like test , evaluate , and madness .

They try purging the devil from his blood, exorcising whatever has possessed him, burning the poltergeist out of its host, the reek of singed flesh filling the compartment.

His cell, with its pale walls the color of saliva. His cage, where they’ve trapped him.

Because of her.

The female he can’t see. The one responsible for his fate. The only immortal in existence, spawned into being from the pages of a novel.

Malice—again, who the hell is Malice?—fights to recall better things.

The library he oversees. His three hounds barking, happy to see him.

His black stallion nickering as he brushes the equine’s hair.

The pomegranate trees and fertile meadow outside his home.

The first letter he found from an immortal female, anonymously written, the words terrifying at first, then later becoming precious.

Dearest Wayward Star…

The next cut goes straight to his skull, to the part of his brain where all pain signals travel. His wailing dissolves to ash. Just like he’ll flake to ask someday, probably soon if he’s lucky.

Maybe after they’re done chopping him to experimental, medicinal pieces, these wards and doctors will do Malice the curtesy of fucking off and dying too. He’ll take them to the afterlife, to a new type of sooty, black underworld where he’ll be in charge.

Even better, maybe his invisible immortal will be waiting for him. Maybe she’ll be there with her arms stretched wide.

Malice’s heart beats like a hammer. He screams and screams and screams for mercy, for death, for a face he’s never seen.

He hates her. He treasures her.

He would go mad for her.