Is Gaston cursed to be forever known as the villain? The answer is yes—not because of fate or luck, but because of his choices. The world seems pitted against villains. Whereas heroes get success, love interests, and unblemished reputations practically handed to them, villains are forced to put sweat and blood into each of their endeavors, a process that makes villains seem like they succumb to the pressures of life whereas heroes twist misadventures to benefit them.
If you were a villain, you would see firsthand how the gears of a hierarchical society work—rewarding the minor endeavors of heroes and punishing the slight advancement of villains. Perhaps your expectations, pure at heart, would be thwarted in a burst of smoke. So imagine yourself in Gaston’s shoes. You might think the following . . .
Expectation:
You get the girl.
Reality:
Your heart swells the first time you see her. Darkness has reigned for so long that this new sensation overwhelming your chest feels like an unsolicited invasion, yet you feel compelled to talk to her. You do. Your heart quivers, then cracks, seeping into the once-hollow chasm of your chest. You are bleeding with emotion, fingertips tingling and vision dancing. But then she looks away. She can’t be yours. She distances herself from you, and the once-quaking center of your chest crushes to an insatiable emptiness only ever slightly mollified by the urge for revenge.
Expectation:
You are accomplished at every skill you try.
Reality:
You spend meticulous hours perfecting your craft, honing your sense of purpose, and extinguishing any thoughts of imperfection. If only the girl could see how much better you are than her lover. A blade sheathed at your side feels like a loving hand there to grasp when you’re feeling unsure. The wicked gleam grows in your eyes each time your knife finds the perfect mark, each time you add another tick to your body count. You notice how the townsmen cheer at the young man who has proven himself as the city’s most revered and experienced hunter as you laugh, an isolated sound in a desolate wood, crouched in the puddle of blood surrounding your most recent kill. The irony is an iron fist in your gut.
Expectation:
You are loved by everyone.
Reality:
Eccentricity drives you to madness. Nights are spent, sleeves rolled up, elbow-deep in ink of nights toiling beneath shrouds of darkness, plotting. Darkness has become the only embrace you ever feel warmly enveloped in. All of your friendships have tapered to the single fact that when you are standing in a room full of other people, the atmosphere grows so thick it is almost as if you can feel those around you compartmentalizing in their minds all of the other places that they would rather be.
Expectation:
Every issue has a smooth, clear, and triumphant solution.
Reality:
Every failed attempt, every scornful gaze, every rejection, every shortcoming collects and settles in the gape that occupies your chest. You become heavy with hatred, lethargic, and dripping with disgust. Your blood and sweat stains the soles of your boots and leaves a trail of toiling everywhere you go, but you are still resented and alienated. Your status creates an impermeable shell around your existence, driving you further into exile, but this time, via a prison of your own making. Your brain has degenerated so completely that if any shred of the old, enthusiastic you remains, it must be smothered.
So if that’s what’s inside the mind of a villain, what do heroes deal with? Interestingly, the answer is, the same struggles. Except they overcome; they conquer.
Villains and heroes are chillingly more similar in that respect than a lot of people realize. The difference is that villains get stuck sometime during the battle. They succumb to the challenges they face, regardless of whether it is their own fault or due to the circumstances they are trapped in. There is something painfully relatable in the failure to overcome hardship, and to have that disappointment fester within you. In this way, heroes represent success, the acquisition of true love, and a prosperous future, whereas villains embrace the more realistic and less glamorized version of our reality—a world in which not every problem can be solved with a sweep of a magic wand or true love’s kiss.
SERA
BY NICOLA YOON
I.
PRESENT DAY
The detective pulls his eyes away from Kareena Thomas, the woman he’s questioning. The lurid graphics and logos of CNN Breaking News demand his attention. Usually they don’t have the television on in the interrogation room, but it’s been an unusual day. He turns up the volume.
The news anchor’s voice strives to be calm and dignified, but doesn’t quite achieve it. He sounds somewhere between panicked and excited.
Panic is winning out.
In the upper right quadrant of the screen, a girl is marching slowly down the middle of Interstate 10, a major Los Angeles highway that runs east to west. All around the girl is fire. Every car in her vicinity is either in flames or a smoldering, burned-out husk. The quadrant expands to full screen and pushes the anchor’s frightened face out of view.
The girl has become a familiar sight over the last twelve hours. The media has dubbed her Soldier Girl, because she’s covered head to toe in camouflage. And because she doesn’t simply walk—she marches like a general leading an army to war. Though she’s being followed by a gang of men, they are not soldiers.
And they are killing one another.
The news helicopter above doesn’t dare get too close. CNN has already lost two helicopters to inexplicable crashes. The other reason the helicopter doesn’t get too close is the bodies. Decency says you can’t show that kind of carnage on American television.
The drivers—the commuters, the beachgoers, the unlucky travelers who happen to be on the 10 that day—are not dying by fire. They are dying by fist. They are bludgeoning one another to death. They hit until their knuckles bleed, until white bone gleams, until teeth are loosened and spit out, until external injuries become internal ones. They beat one another until the world hemorrhages blood.
One more thing about the bodies: they are all men. Every single one.
The detective forces his eyes back to the woman in front of him. He’d met her once before, when she was a young mother. She and her daughters had narrowly escaped the clutches of a serial killer. It wasn’t his case, but it was a strange one. Strange enough that he’d never forgotten it or her or her daughters, the younger one in particular.
Tonight when they brought Kareena Thomas in, she reminded him of their previous meeting. The mother said, “Then you already know. You already know about my daughter.”
At the time, he didn’t know what to think or believe. Her older daughter, Calliope, had just died. She had set herself on fire. Or she was set on fire. It was his job to figure out which.