Matthew laid face-down on the floor, breathing heavily.

      What just happened? One moment he was resting on his bed, reading an obscure philosophical book from an author he’d never heard of before, the next his entire world shook and he was thrown violently backwards, smashed against the wall behind him. Without any respite, he felt her fingers envelop his body, imprisoning him inside.

      He wasn’t able to judge exactly how long she had walked from the nauseating motions that confused him and from the pain, but he knew it wasn’t too long. He was thrown rather harshly on the ground when she finally released him by sliding him from her palm, momentum causing him to tumble and roll around many times before his body came to rest, utterly unprepared for the pain that followed.

      He had known pain, experiencing some of the most terrible moments in his life because of it, both the physical and the emotional kind. But none compared or even came close to the burst of unbearable torment that engulfed him in that moment, striking through every square inch of his body. The affliction rendered him paralyzed, unable to breathe or even feel anything. He became oblivious to his surroundings, the pain consuming his mind entirely, becoming the sole sovereign of his soul.

      But then it changed, shifted. His mind was barely able to register it, but it felt as if it was pushing from within, surging from the depths of his body, thrusting outwards and striking against his skin. Even through the raging inferno inside, he felt the power, the force that suddenly burst out of every fibre of his body and exploded. He felt it deep within his bones, his flesh and blood, his every nerve. It made the pain flare even more.

      He wanted to die. He wanted it to end. He had never wished for anything more in his life. And like a speck of dust suddenly finding itself within the calm eye of the storm, it really did. His eyes immediately shot open, unable to form a coherent shape out of the light that streamed in their irises, and like a furious tempest suddenly breaking free of its confinement, he let it all out.

      It took a few moments before he realized he was screaming and crying at the top of his lungs, eyes streaming in tears. He finally stopped when he ran out of air, clenching his hands as an alternative instinct of holding on to reality, feeling something soft and bristly underneath his fingernails. A carpet? The first coherent thought came from his mind. He pushed with his hands, senses finally returning, and held himself up temporarily, his blurry vision coalescing into the shape of a good old-fashioned carpet underneath, sweat dripping from his nose. His strength then gave out and he let his torso fall, laying face-down on the floor, breathing heavily.

      What just happened?

      “Quite the intense experience, isn’t it?” Her voice came from somewhere his disoriented mind couldn’t place.

      He mustered his strength again, coming much more easily than he expected, and got up, finally noticing that he was naked. He looked around, seeing leathered chairs, a few bookcases on the edges, a desk in the middle of the room with a sole lamp on it, a window covered in elegant, transparent drapes streaming with light from beyond, though he couldn’t make out any features outside, and abstract pictures covering the rest of the walls. There even was a railing that ran along the square walls of the room a level above, the walls there entirely covered in bookcases.

      He had to look around again before he spotted her sitting on one of the chairs that faced the opposite direction, only part her hair visible which stood in stark contrast against the black leather.

      “Behind you.” She said just before Matthew could speak himself. “You’ll find something to wear there.”

      Matthew looked behind and saw the black suit that hung on one of the cabinets. He stood up, unable to properly understand why he felt the shame that welled up inside of him at the prospect of her seeing him naked. He approached the hanging suit, his body drowning in endorphins. He couldn’t quite believe that he got away unscathed from the experience. The amount of pain simply didn’t match the healthy state of his body, though the memory of the pain was fading as quickly as a dream after having just woken up.

      He slowly dressed in the suit, one of the most classy pieces he’d ever seen. Even the black shoes were phenomenally elegant. After only the tie was left, he took a look on a nearby mirror, hardly believing that he was staring at himself.

      “Do you want help with that?” Her voice came from behind.

      Matthew turned around. She stood in the middle of the room, wearing an incredibly beautiful, blood-red skirt suit that left him breathless. A black shirt underneath her jacket concealed most of her perfect breasts but her upper chest was left open. Her skirt came to her knees while her legs were covered in dark stockings and she wore a pair of marvelously beautiful black high heels that matched the pair of black leather gloves she wore on her hands. Her mesmerizing red hair, which her dress matched so splendidly, was tied in this twisting pattern of graceful buns that hung loosely on the back of her head, and even her overall pose was strikingly seductive, having her left hand wrapped around her stomach just beneath the buttons of her jacket while her right hand held a glass of red wine between her fingers and she leaned slightly on her right leg, bending her opposite hip a little.

      “Matthew?” She said.

      Matthew blinked repeatedly while breaking out of his trance, taking a deep breath. “Uh... what? Help?”

      “With the tie.”

      Matthew looked down on his hands which held the tie he was supposed to wear. He wasn’t a stranger to ties and knew his fair share of knots, but she offered. She offered! He wasn’t about to miss this opportunity. “Sure.”

      She lowered the glass of wine on a nearby table and slowly walked towards him while she took her leather gloves off, placing them on a dresser behind Matthew. But just as she turned towards him, a thought occurred to Matthew, something that he hadn’t realized until now and suddenly made him incredibly anxious.

      “Wait!” He said, his eyes widening. “That… I’m… You’re…”

      “Real?” She said, smiling.

      Matthew only nodded. She was really there? Not just a Hologram? She reached forward with her arm, holding her hand right in front of his face. Matthew held his breath, but instead of thrusting forward and blinding him in colorful light, she turned her hand around, moving her fingers underneath his chin. He closed his eyes, and the sensitive feeling of touch suddenly reverberated from his cheek as she gently stroked it with her thumb. He finally exhaled, a feeling of euphoria engulfing him. She really was there, real. Like a normal human being.

      “Ah, Matt.” She said with a soft voice. “After all the things I made you witness, you still see and fall for this image of a simple woman in me.”

      Matthew immediately shot his eyes open, looking at her radiating green ones. “You are no simple woman. You are as far from that as you could possibly be.”

      She laughed, and took the tie from his hands, proceeding to tie it around his neck. “I am no simple woman. I am no psychopath. I am no god.” She said as she made the first twists and turns on the tie. “You have to make up your mind about me, Matt.”

      “I’m sorry.” He said. “I just can’t find the right words that would describe you.” He let those words out before he considered their cheesy-sounding nature. And she laughed again while causing him to sigh.

      “I suppose I should be flattered?” She said, finalizing the last moves on her knot. “Would a normal girl be?”

      “That was not my intention.”

      “I know it wasn’t.” She said, still smiling while tugging the main band of the tie, making the pattern come together into this beautiful knot that he had never seen before. Then she took a step back and regarded Matthew from top to bottom.

      “Quite the gentleman.” She said as she gestured towards the mirror. Matthew turned and looked at it, looked at himself, but only briefly because her image attracted his eyes like the gravity of a massive, blazing star would on tiny objects in its vicinity.

      “What do you want from me?” He said as he caught her eyes in the mirror.

      She said nothing at first, matching Matthews gaze. Then she moved forwards, towards the dresser and picked her gloves up, wearing them again, and then gestured with a hand towards one of the chairs. “Take a seat.”

      Matthew looked at the chairs that faced each other, sighing, and did just that, turning and walking while she followed, stopping at the table that held her glass of wine, picking it up. As Matthew sat, she moved towards a nearby counter where a bottle of wine stood, its label inscribed with letters he’d never seen before, and picked it too up, turning towards him.

      “Wine?”

      “No, thank you.” He said. “I never really understood the point of intoxication.”

      “Really?” She sounded genuinely surprised. “You have never been drunk before?”

      “Only once, out of curiosity. It’s not something I would want to try again.”

      “Why not?” She said while she poured a little more in her glass. “Do you never feel the need to loosen up your innate moral inhibitions some time?”

      “No.” He said, remembering the one time he did get drunk and what it did to his mind. “Alcohol does not have the same effect on me that it does on other people. But out of curiosity, what kind of moral inhibitions are you trying to suppress?”

      “Fair point.” She said, conceding defeat with a brief smile. “But I do not drink wine to intoxicate myself. This, “ she held up her glass of wine before she took a sip, “is a delightful two thousand year old taste whose nature is difficult to describe in words unless you understand it too.”

      “Anyway.” She put the bottle of wine on the counter and moved to the opposing chair, sitting. “Let’s move on.”

      After she sat, she crossed her left leg over the right one, and then Matthew noticed something moving at her feet. The was a small woman that he hadn’t so far noticed there, scurrying towards the black high heel on her right foot and throwing herself at it as soon as she reached it, licking and lapping at its reflecting surface. She had blonde hair and a fit body, which was about the only thing he could tell about her appearance except the brief moment he saw her tiny sore eyes and tear-laden face before she buried it on the shoe.

      “Meet Irene.” The recipient of the tiny thing’s worship said.

      The little girl though didn’t turn to meet Matthew’s eyes. “I do not think she wants to meet me.”

      “She wouldn’t dare look at you.”

      “Why?”

      “Because she is a slave.” She said. “Slaves are not permitted to look higher beings in the eyes. It’s one of the highest forms of disrespect.”

      “Higher beings?” Matthew let out a genuine laugh. “Me? Right.”

      “Why not?” She said, forming a sly smile on her face before she took another sip of the wine.“ To her, for all intents and purposes, you are. You can crush her under your shoe just as easily as I can, which is exactly what I am going to do to her shortly, anyway.”

      Her words sent a series of cold shivers reverberating through Matthew in that moment. Not just because she made him aware of the unwanted but still intoxicating power he suddenly held over another human, or that she was going to kill her, or even because of the sobs that suddenly erupted at her feet. But also because...

       “She is innocent.” He looked the redheaded, malevolent god in her jade-colored eyes. “Don’t do it, please!”

      “Innocent?” She frowned. “What? How would you know? Why would you even care? You told me you are a killer too, didn’t you?”

      “Yes, I am.” He said with a voice that was a little stronger than he intended. “But I do not kill innocent people. And she is innocent.”

      “Oh. That’s why you care.” She said. “I didn’t know that, I misjudged you. It certainly makes things more interesting. But no, she is not innocent.”

      “What did she ever do?” He asked her, looking down at the girl, still obediently licking away. Besides the tiny girl’s face, in that brief moment before, he had also seen her, his empathic gift had given him an instant insight into her mind. He only needed a split second, judging by the way she held herself, her arms, her slumped shoulders, the defeated look on her face whose dozens of muscles betrayed every tint of the underlying dark emotions that dominated her mind.

      “That look of yours… ” Her voice broke his train of thoughts. He looked up at her. “It’s very intriguing. Tell me, what do you see in her?”

      “I see someone that doesn’t deserve to die like that!” He said with a firm voice.  “I see this little, shy girl barely out of her teenage years that must have been suddenly thrown into this violent world of a redheaded god, without any reason or explanation, utterly unprepared for it. I see this innocent human being that has been robbed of the best years of her life, downtrodden into absolute obedience, beaten, humiliated and made to serve superfluous acts for the sole purpose of pleasing said god’s inner dark urges and twisted sense of amusement far beyond her understanding.

      I see someone’s daughter who will never get to see her family and friends ever again, someone who will never get to see the world again, experience it, its joys and delights. A young woman that will never get to know unconditional love or receive it and will never know the feeling of being a parent. I see a soul that has been battered, stained and corrupted by death of the most gruesome kind that surrounded her daily, her mind always on the edge of the abyss of madness. And now she is proverbially digging her own grave. What has she ever done to deserve that?”

      She didn’t respond, but only looked at him… no, not at him. Her eyes, they were pointed at him, but they were unfocused, as if looking somewhere behind him. He immediately understood. She was in another place, another time, her mind imagining something that wasn’t here or now, perhaps recalling something out of the depths of her memories. He must have managed to trigger something deep inside of her because for all the struggle that he faced while trying to read her, he could quite clearly see the pain behind the veil of her unreadable expression that she managed to wear so often. But it disappeared quickly as her eyes focused back on him.

      “Remarkable.” She said. “You could see all that just by looking at her?”

      “She is easy to read.” He said. “Makes the parts that you have to guess easy to do.”

      She nodded, then appeared to remember something and looked down towards where Irene would be, though she couldn’t see her beneath the slope of the chair. Matthew followed her gaze and saw that Irene had stopped her worship, looking towards him with her weary face, but still keeping her eyes down on the ground.

      “Ah, look!” Her goddess said. “You have managed to instill hope in her. How rude of you.”

      Irene suddenly broke out of her trance, scared, and hastily moved to continue her worship, but she was given no chance. The foot moved inescapably fast, slamming her sideways and flicking her to the ground before it settled on top of her startled body, the flat surface of the shoe’s underside pinning her down.

      “And as to your question.” She said as she met Matthews eyes again. “It’s simple. She has looked me in the eyes when she was not told to do so, and now she will die because of that.”

      Then the screams broke out. Matthew looked at Irene again as she struggled beneath the increasing pressure of the immovable foot that was slowly crushing her, desperately fighting against it with her tiny arms.

      “You don’t care, do you?” He said, looking up at her again. “You were just looking for an excuse, something to make this more that just a random kill.” Her only response was to take another sip from the wine, still maintaining her sly smile. “All this time, I had thought that all of us that found ourselves at your mercy were people that deserved to be in this place. Even though I had seen too much to believe that it was true, I still maintained the belief that all of us had, at some point in their lives, done something that was unforgivable. That man who swore like an idiot, that young kindergarten teacher, even those people you killed in your cunt. I thought that none of them were innocent, that we all deserved to die. But you just don’t care. In fact, you seem to enjoy it even more.”

      Again, she said nothing, her response this time being an increased pressure on Irene who broke into cringing cries of desperation and hopelessness as bones started breaking, the pain becoming unbearable. Then she leaned forward, elbows on her knees, and watched as she started rolling her tortured toy around on the wooden floor.

      “Innocence, ” She said, her face suddenly becoming firm, serious, “is one big lie. No human is ever innocent, not even a little child. Once they grow out of the protective shell of infancy, once they become capable of reason, once they discover their abilities, they start to lie, to deceive, to bully. You just have to give them permission, or even just the means, and they show no remorse.”

      Irene’s voice had grown cracked from the constant screaming and turned into pleas of mercy after some of her limbs had bent awkwardly, her entire body being limply rolled around now after her puny strength gave away.

      “Let alone adults.” She continued, rolling her little plaything around one final time before she settled her tortured body on her back and let it rest in enormous pain for a few moments. “You can transform whomever you like into killing machines. You can turn people that would have never hurt a fly into soldiers heeding your every command, loving fathers and mothers into genocide perpetrators, innocent lovers into torture-enjoying monsters.”

      She stood up, settling her feet to the side of the broken Irene, and looked Matthew in the eyes. “You just need to do one thing and one thing only: Take the responsibility from them.”

      “I don’t believe you.” Matthew shook his head. “No. Some you can, but not everyone, no way. You can’t just take an innocent child that never meant harm to anyone and turn it into a violent monster.”

      She sighed deeply, as if annoyed by Matthews apparent naivety. Then she spread her arms wide, holding her palms upwards, and said: “Here stands your living, breathing proof that it can.”

      Matthew suddenly held his breath. It was the first time she said something about her, about who she was, about her past. His mind was now flooded with this eerie feeling about her that made him see her for more than this dangerous entity with godly powers. Now he saw a person, a woman, someone with a story.

      “But I can’t fault you.” She continued, catching onto Matthews astonished expression. “You haven’t seen or witnessed the things that I have. There is so much that you don’t know about the world, about the universe, you’re basically a child when it comes to such matters.”

      Then she shifted her gaze down onto the wailing and whimpering Irene. “Anyway, time to put her out of her misery.” She crouched down and held a hand above Irene, spreading her palm wide. Matthew watched as somehow, she affected Irene, her small body buckling a little despite the damage, and most remarkably, the screaming stopped.

      “You like it, don’t you?” She said to her. Matthew could see Irene’s head nod ever so slightly. “The blissful nature of painless existence. Rarily does anyone know how fortunate most of them are not to know true pain. But you are dead, your body is broken, shattered beyond saving. All I can offer you now is the mercy of a quick death.”

      Then she retreated her hand, and the screaming renewed, suffering that was drilling a hole into Matthew’s mind.

      “You can live for a few more hours like this.” She said. “Or I can put you out of your misery, but only if you kiss my foot one more time and show me your devotion. It is your choice.”

      The red goddess then returned to her earlier demeanor, striking this pose of a divine being, uncaring of the suffering at her feet. She demanded sacrifice in return for her mercy and expected nothing less than total obedience, even though she offered a choice. With only the slightest hint of a tilted head to watch her slave do her bidding, she placed her right foot a mere step away from the broken form of Irene, and waited.

      At first, Matthew couldn’t see any decisiveness on Irene’s part, she just continued to cry and plead. But then, with a renewed vigor in both her motions and screams, she managed to turn her body around, laying face down. Reaching with her relatively uninjured right arm forward, she dragged herself against the wooden floor, using her left knee as support. Her left foot was badly shattered and her other two limbs were useless, but she still found the strength to do it. The pain must have been unbearable but she still moved forward with her snail-like pace in spite of it, leaving a trail of blood behind her body and screaming furiously with each drag, continuing her path towards the very being who did this to her so that she could simply kiss her foot.

      And she managed to do it. She reached her goddess’s foot, trembling violently as she pushed herself up on one arm, and planted a kiss on the polished surface of the high heel before collapsing on back the floor, crying ‘Please!’ over and over again.

      “Good.” The goddess said, smiling down at Irene. “Obedient, ready to serve even through all the pain. You deserve my mercy.” And with that, she moved her shoe over her, placing the long, slim heel above Irene’s head, and unceremoniously pressed down, crushing and popping it like a grape.

      There was a brief moment where she was lost in her thoughts after she killed her, but with a deep breath, she quickly shifted her thoughts elsewhere and looked at Matthew whose gaze was still fixed at her shoe.

      “Shall we begin?” She said, catching his attention.