a story for my New Year’s Prompt Call, which you should go prompt at please, here.

She had learned tricks in her time, and one of them was the fuel that kept her going.

She wasn’t supposed to keep going, that was part of the problem.  She was a construct, and she had been built for one particularly strange revenge that had been intended to last a couple weeks, maybe a couple months. She had been designed to build this one person up and then watch them crumble down, and she had done very well at her job. 

She had been built well, because the one that built her liked to make things work out, but she had been, from Day 1, a short-term solution.

The problem – if you wanted to get right down to the meat of it – was that she enjoyed living much more than she enjoyed having done her duty, and she had no interest in continuing to be a revenge.

But she had been built for revenge, and so it was suffering that helped her live.  So she found herself at a college, searching for someone with enough suffering to keep her alive.  She found herself enrolled in difficult classes and arguing philosophy with professors and, all in all, having a great time while she skimmed off of the pain and frustration and misery of people around her.

When she found him, she thought she was beginning to fall apart.  He seemed made of the stuff.  He was dripping with pain. He was overloaded with suffering.  He was a creature of nothing but misery.

She started dating him.  She found if she spent an hour with him a day, she was happy, invigorated, shining and healthy.  She found if she spent two hours with him a day, she became a little drunk – and he became able to function.

At three hours, she was giddy and had to take breaks to clear her head, but at three hours he could actual smile.

She considered her maker, considered her purpose, and spent as much time around him as she could stand.  Her homework was starting to suffer for the drunken feelings – but she had not been built for such pursuits, after all.

She had been built to build someone up only to watch him fall.

She thought she might try just building him up this time around.

Want more?