13

Ares

This place hadn't changed in the four years I hadn't been here. I didn't know if the lack of change was comforting or merely a testament to the stagnant, rotting nature of my own mind.

Dr. Theo cleared his throat, drawing my focus back to him. He had aged significantly. The last time I’d sat in this chair, he’d had a fringe of grey hair; now, he was totally bald.

“I didn't expect to see you again, Mr. Marcelli.”

Neither had I expected to return. Coming back here felt like admitting defeat, like acknowledging that the beast I’d tried to domesticate with silence was finally slipping its chain.

“How are you?” he asked, sliding on blue-rimmed glasses that looked ridiculous against his aged skin. His fingers hovered briefly over a notebook, the exact shade of cobalt as the one he'd used four years ago, before tapping it lightly.

Humans were obsessive creatures, no matter how small the fixation. They disguised their compulsions as habits, preferences, or aesthetics. Theo’s was the color blue. It was a pathetic attempt at tranquility. Even the pen he clicked was a translucent sapphire, and a single, ugly cerulean paperweight sat on his desk, pinning down lives he couldn't possibly understand.

“I suppose you're not very talkative today,” he said gently. “So let's get straight to it. Why are you here?”

My gaze dropped to my hands, encased in black lambskin. When I was sixteen, I'd been diagnosed with a laundry list of dark-triad traits: a complete absence of affective empathy, proactive aggression, and a predatory fixation that made the average sociopath look well-adjusted. Theo labeled it as a trauma response to watching my mother kill herself. To me, it wasn't a response. It was my architecture. I was a house with no windows, and I was perfectly comfortable in the dark.

Killing had been the only release that quieted the static in my brain. Until it was no longer enough.

‘The old hunger was easier,’ I signed, the leather of my gloves creaking in the silence.

Theo’s glasses slid down his nose as he leaned forward. “Easier? Ares, you’ve spent your life treating the world as a hunting ground. What could possibly be harder than the urge to destroy?”

‘The urge to possess.’

“I saw the news,” he said carefully. “Congratulations on your marriage.” His pen poised over a blank page, gauging my reaction.

She was the reason I was here.

‘I want to possess the air she breathes,’ my hands moved faster. ‘I want to possess the thoughts she hasn't had yet. I want to be the reason her heart beats and the reason it stops.’

“Tell me how you met.”

‘That’s not why I'm here.’ I signed sharply.

“Yes, but understanding the origin of this fixation could help us contextualize the intensity,” he pressed, his eyes searching mine.

‘I met her on the night of my engagement to her sister.’

The memory was still so sharp. At first, I couldn't believe she was real, not until I touched her, and when I did, the hunger had been an instantaneous, violent colonization of my senses.

“Perhaps it was love at first sight?” Theo offered, a desperate attempt to grasp for something human.

I almost laughed. We both knew I was incapable of love.

‘It was a blackout,’ I continued, my signs becoming more aggressive. ‘I looked at her and the noise that only blood usually silences, went deafeningly quiet.’

I didn't tell him I spent every night after that watching her. The urge grew into a sickness… a fever that made killing feel like less satisfying.

“So you broke off your engagement with her sister?” he asked softly.

I shook my head. A Marcelli didn't break contracts; we rewrote them in blood.

“What did you do?” Theo whispered, almost like he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

‘I made her sister disappear,’ I signed slowly.

With Val's absence at the wedding, I was going to demand a replacement. I had it all mapped out. I would force their hand, and claim the prize I had cleared the field for… but her family had chosen to play a different game.

Theo stared at me, his professional mask slipping away entirely. Blood drained from his face, leaving him sickly grey. “Ares, this is beyond anything we’ve ever discussed,” he breathed, the blue notebook slipping from his numb fingers. "You’ve replaced your drive to kill with a drive to consume a human soul. You are in a state of hyper-fixation that has bypassed all logic.”

I didn't need a doctor to tell me I was a monster. I’d known that since the day I watched the light go out of my mother’s eyes and felt nothing but curiosity.