You Create a Villain (Entry Four)

I have an idea. I have a plan. I have a terrible, wonderful plot of justice. I will break the sky to bring the clouds to earth. I will silence the thunder to control the lightning. I will wreck the earth to bring you to your knees. 

And the world will remember me as a villain. 

The villain set aside their pen, rubbing their eyes. The bruises and broken bones had healed a bit. Eventually, they would fade to nothing but scars. Scars upon scars that covered a scarred soul. But scars weren’t ugly. They weren’t a sign of weakness. 

Scars were marks of every hardship the villain had ever endured. Proof that they had come through. 

Yawning, the villain slipped into a soft bathrobe and switched on the T.V. Inevitably, the hero would be on, and they could use a bit of motivation for tomorrow. 

There they stood. But no hosts, no well-groomed interviewer to properly set off the hero’s exhaustion and batteredness. 

Just the hero. 

“I know you’re watching me, Villain,” they said. Their voice was tight with anger, eyebrows drawn together in fury. “I know you’re out there, and I know you’re planning something.”

The villain’s lips ticked up at the corners. 

“I know you’ll come for me. And when you do, I’m prepared to die. I’m ready to lay down my life for this city, and nothing you do will ever change that. You’ll never be able to hold down justice. You cannot contain hope. Joy will not be caged.”

For reasons they couldn’t explain, the villain pressed their lips together and folded their hands tightly on their lap to keep from turning the broadcast off. The words rang true, but not in the way the hero anticipated. 

Justice would not be held down, true. Hope could not be contained and no bars would ever hold joy back. But you could muffle it. You could strangle it. You could bury a lonely child’s hope until all they felt was despair. 

You could smother the justice in the world until a teenager had to surrender their childhood just to survive. 

You could wipe the joy away from someone’s soul by surrounding them with so much sadness that they wanted to die. 

You could steal all the light from someone’s life and stand on a stage and call yourself a hero. You could ignore everyone who was too quiet and too smothered to ever make you listen. 

And suddenly, you created a villain.