Fresh Short Story: The Devil's Gift

Though a single species, humanity’s abnormal intellect provides its members with a startling scope of variety. The same organs, same habitual leanings, and same inevitable march toward self-destruction contrast with different tastes, dreams, intellects, and morals. A tragic result of these differences is that many do not live the life that best suits their skills and desires.

For instance, Iris had an incredible gift for suffering.

Her parents were highly successful in real estate, and her father found a share of fortune in stocks, leading them to larger and finer houses in quick succession. Her mother quit work to care for her, and as Iris was intended to be an only child, she was lavished and doted upon in a manner that some would call shameful. It was a laughable concept that Iris would ever know anything but softness, warmth, and a full belly.

Thanks also to her sufficient beauty and scholastic achievements, Iris flowered amid popularity and vibrant hopes for the future. However, a vague dissatisfaction that had plagued her her whole life seemed to strengthen annually. By eighteen, as she looked forward to college life away from her parents, she bordered on puzzling depression.

As humans do, she worked with stereotypes and assumed that the reason was her wealthy, suffocating upbringing. How could she have known the strange truth that she, of all people, ought never to have been coddled in paradise? That in the same city, a man born poor and beaten by his father was suited for her life, and she for his?

This is not to say that Iris deserved suffering, or that she was a masochist. A masochist generally enjoys enjoyable pain, or lashes out against life’s agonies by embracing them. If tortured, Iris would have suffered sincerely.

But she also would have suffered beautifully.

She could have been the soldier who never forfeits their secrets to the enemy, or the victim of a kidnapping who escapes years later with their sanity intact.

Like all sensible mammals, she feared pain and went to lengths to avoid it whenever possible; yet, if trapped in a world of pooling blood and broken bones, she would have, still screaming, gone limp in her soul and accepted the pain with the grace of a sapling that bends in the wind.

Ignorant Iris wept alone in her dorm room the first week, incapable of understanding the tragedy that her best skills were worst suited to this life. Unlike her opposite across town, she did not know what she wanted or needed, which, in a way, made her comfortable life the greater tragedy.

Some are not best suited to ideal conditions. Most would leap at the chance to be a movie star, famous writer, or high-born philanthropist, but we cannot all be in such positions. Every hospital must have janitors just as well as surgeons. Naturally, most people do not get what they want, as coveted positions are commonly shared; but more importantly, they do not live the life that best suits their innate talents.

Thus, when I met Iris and saw her cerulean soul, my mouth watered. My hands shook, and I buried them in my pockets. I can see human potential as easily as an x-ray can “see” bones beneath flesh. I admit that her twisted, mournful nature titillated me. I wanted to unlock and praise her. Sadly, I doubted that I had the stomach to hurt her. Suppressing my excitement, I chatted with her by the drink table, then invited her out back where the fire pit kept us students cozy in the bones of winter.

I auto-piloted a charming conversation in order to focus on the subtle melancholy unrepresented in her words themselves. This was more erotic than if her loose sleeve had fallen all the way below her expensive lace bralette, and I longed to touch her. She was the leg of a little bird in its twiggy nest, honey that settles at the bottom of a mug. Though outwardly calm, I felt the same anticipation and anxiety as a fisherman reeling in a record-breaking catch. Every moment she drew closer with shining eyes and lips moistened by cheap keg beer, I felt my heart beat faster.

She withdrew $300 from an ATM and presented it to me. "For the hotel," she said, and her body gave a quick, light tremble that made her look away. She did not want to use her credit card, to avoid the questions her parents would ask.

"I understand," I said. Swallowed audibly, and must have looked at her like a hungry wolf.

To my fortune, she wanted the lights out. This meant that as I touched her naked body, then drew close to penetration, and she whispered that she was a virgin, she could not see my tears. This, I could do for her. This slight, momentary suffering. I came because she screamed, but was ready again soon.

Hours later, her head on my chest, dyed dirty blonde hair all frayed fibers. I stroked her head. She was falling asleep, and I knew the moment had come. "You were meant for suffering," I told her, gently.

"...what?"

"That's your gift." I grasped her shoulders. "You are indescribably beautiful and rare. Iris, you were meant to be hurt. It's gone all wrong. I'm sorry. I can't do this thing for you. I admire you too much." I began to weep for the dissatisfaction her life would be. I took her lip in my teeth, tried to bite hard, and could not. "I must go."

I stumbled out, rushed into the elevator with pants unbuckled and shirt in one hand before she could clothe herself to catch me.

There is nothing like the silence of a 4-star hotel elevator at 3 AM.