From A Thorn Bound Heart

 

    Outside, a cold rain pelted the stone walls of the ancient and forgotten library. The statues of winged gargoyles lined the entrance hall and could barely be seen in the dim light that shone through the cracked, dust-covered windows.
   Further inside, in the glow of a single candle, Cupid sat at a mahogany desk that had once belonged to a king. His wings were drooped, feathers damp, and a quiver filled with arrows lay beside him.
   For centuries he had been the herald of tenderness and devotion. But in this new age, love had grown stale. People looking for love no longer swooned at his touch; they swiped left. And so, Cupid turned to the shadows and began to write. His quiver was no longer filled with arrows of love, but with shafts dipped in ink… ink held in an inkwell shaped like a broken heart bound together with thorny vines.
   The first story he had written was “The Bride Who Loved Too Long.” The story was about a bride who died just after the ceremony. She reappeared to her husband’s descendants dressed in her tattered wedding gown. She whispered to them from the shadows, telling them some vows could not be broken, not even by death.
   Cupid wrote using dark ink that was the color of dried blood, and a feathered quill he had plucked from one of his wings. In the story, he wrote of castles where ivy strangled the walls, of lovers who kissed in crypts, of hearts that beat long after burial.
   Aphrodite called his work “pulp fiction trash.” Other gods looked on in distaste and gave disparaging reviews. But humans adored it. They would stand in line to buy copies of his latest works. Then scurry home to read them. In their lonely rooms, they would turn off the lamps and read by candlelight, shivering at every page.
   Soon, the magic in his arrows absorbed the darkness of his ink. When he used his arrows of desire, they no longer inspired affection but obsession. In Venice, a couple pledged eternal love before binding themselves to forever haunt the river that crisscross the city. A poet in Paris, instead of falling in love, wrote verses so bleak that even the pigeons refused to perch near him. Cupid watched and realized the truth. For those pierced by his arrows, love became a fevered curse. Just like it does in the stories he wrote.
   One storm-lashed night, as he drafted a novel titled “The Castle of Eternal Courtship,” the bride from his first story appeared at the window, veil shredded, watching him with her lifeless eyes. As the bride vanished, moaning in despair, he heard the Parisian poet speak softly from the dark shadows in the corner of his writing room, “Your metaphors are weak.”
   Cupid’s creations had found a way to claw out of the stories and make themselves form in the physical world. His gothic romances were no longer fiction... they were becoming the blueprint for a darker world.
   He tried to return to his red feathered arrows, to use them to rekindle simple affection. But his toga remained stained with dark ink, and in flight, his arrows sang dirges instead of love songs.
   Aphrodite, Cupid’s mother, confronted him. “You are no longer a god of love,” she said with obvious disdain. “You have crossed and changed into something more ominous. A god of Gothic Romance.”
   Cupid bowed his head. At first, he felt shame, but then his feelings turned to a strange pride. Mortals had not abandoned him; they asked for more of his stories. They loved his dark stories of tragedy and haunted devotion.
   Cupid made a decision to embrace his fate. He walked past the gargoyles and sat at his writing desk. He continued to scribble by candlelight, with red feathers dipped in ink and wax. His quiver was now a reliquary of horror and dread.
   His latest bestseller, “Till Death Do Us Start Again,” was winning awards across the world. The reviews were both glowing and haunting. Lovers read his book aloud in graveyards, their hearts bound by fear as much as by passion.
   Cupid smiled wearily. He now understood that love was never simple. It was obsession, devotion, tragedy. It was roses blooming in crypts, vows uttered in the dark.
   Within the margins of his books, love found its truest form. And at a desk in an ancient library, love rewrote itself.

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