Super-Villain: Data Loading

The phone buzzed. A Snapchat message; it had to be, for Snapchat messages always seemed to have this inexplicable aggression about them. It was like Snapchat assumed that its users needed that extra push to interact and tried to get the adrenaline pumping by emulating a hornet seconds away from stinging. I complain not because I am the busiest bee around, but simply because I can. More on that later.

The app opened with alarming readiness (but who am I to kink-shame in this wonderfully accepting era of ours?). It was another question from him, as I had guessed already via my masterful powers of deduction. Funny, I feel strong vibes of disbelief; it couldn't be that you don't trust me, would it reader dear? It wasn't a tough guess, to be fair; he asked too many questions. No, that isn't precisely accurate; he expected too many answers. I wanted to claim inability to articulate my thoughts: okay, now you may call me a liar. Don't fret, it's true. Honestly, I'm a liar.

I reread the question and considered lying (I also considered baking cookies, but that seems like a detail steeped in irrelevance). Except it wasn't a question where a lie would end things any quicker than the truth, and more's the pity. It was time to put my gift of gab to the test (you never hear anyone calling lungs a gift, yet this adaptive mechanism gets dubbed with such an iffy honor). A deplorable attempt at humor, a feint; the joke rebuffed yet the feint fools. Forces him to feign interest, as I knew it would. Love never fails to catch his fancy, especially when faced with a person as evasive as I. It's surprisingly distasteful to deal with a person who feels no love and drives the debate into alleys too morbid for most simply to distract. Poor him. No wait, scratch that; poor me for at least he could feel love. Whatever that may be, I can barely see past the self-pity.

"Life is meaningless without it"

I stared at the statement with mild annoyance. Must I possess meaning to exist? What a bland way to phrase the happiness that supposedly tagged along with love. Drones in beehives weren't given the choice to love, but their lives had plenty of meaning (and plenty of honey). In the grand scheme of things, no life had meaning; we couldn't affect the universe in a way sizable enough to matter. But that never stopped us from existing (or killing each other- call it yin-yang and stuff it). Existentialism didn't mean that I'd get up one day and off myself simply because my life meant nothing. I'd rather live, if without meaning so be it, simply to spite the universe. Can pettiness be dubbed meaning? Isn't it the raison d'être for all super-villains in existence?

Does being a super-villain have a height requirement?

Love hurts, he says, yet is a happiness like no other. Getting kicked in the nuts hurts, and if you find the right kinda masochist, he'd say much the same. Poor guy would get quite a few raised eyebrows; very hypocritical, especially when you consider the similarly masochistic desire for love. It's like the pot calling the kettle black, while the flame chars them both.

Am I similarly charred, you ask. "Who hurt you?" is also a question I get asked often (ruder than it sounds, believe me). What's my super-villain origin story, I wonder, to be out to discomfit life herself (that bitch).

My cookies turned out perfect, if you were wondering. As did my life. One is a lie, the other fiction; which is which, I wonder.

The question asked initially had been throttled; I smiled with grim satisfaction. Where I'm from, we kill curious cats before the spill the milk; I can shed a tear for a dead cat, but wise men say it's pointless to do the same for split milk.

I can shed a tear for love never felt, but it is pointless to do the same for a love lost. "Get over it", say the wise men.