hell is for real, red girl!

━━━━ ❝𝗔𝗖𝗧 𝗢𝗡𝗘 ::: (𝘺/𝘯) (𝘭/𝘯) .

Dear reader, yes, you. Don't look behind you. I have always enjoyed speaking with you like this, across the thin veil of a screen and pretense. There's something intimate about it, isn't there? You with your cup of something warm, me with my god complex and a keyboard.

I enjoy talking to my readers.

But what I enjoy more, and this is a confession, is being a hater.

Not the petty, fleeting kind. Not the sort that tweets and deletes. I mean the old, artisanal craft of hating. The slow roast. The delicate seasoning. It has been a long while since I have hated purely for the sake of hating. One grows busy. One matures. One begins to consider "themes" and "character arcs" and other respectable disguises for cruelty.

And then you ruined it.

You began writing to me. Long messages. Breathless comments. Jubilant little texts glittering with glee. You delighted in the deaths. Oh, how you delighted. You spoke of catharsis. Of justice. Of how satisfying it was to see those particular characters , yes, those ones, meet their ends.

And somewhere, deep in the damp folds of my brain, something twitched.

An itch.

A sharp, insistent little itch.

Hell no, I thought. Not under my watch.

I read your joy again. I imagined you nodding in approval. I pictured you closing your laptop with a satisfied sigh. And the itch became a pulse. A heartbeat. A dare.

So I did what any reasonable author would do,

I turned to my beautiful wife.

She was existing, radiant in the way only a person entirely unbothered by fictional casualties can be. I asked her what she thought. I told her about the glee. About the cheering. About the delicious, coordinated satisfaction at those deaths.

She looked at me for a long moment, the way one regards a man who is about to commit either genius or mild arson, and said, "Do it."

That was all the permission I needed to unpublished the book. Yes. I took it down. Stripped it from its pedestal. Dragged it back into the dark. And I rewrote it.

This time, those hated characters live. Oh, they live. They wake in the morning. They breathe. They laugh in places they did not laugh before. They thrive, inconveniently. They persist with a stubbornness that borders on spite. The narrative bends around them like grass refusing to be trampled.

You wanted closure, I chose irritation.

You wanted justice, I chose endurance.

Because sometimes, dear reader, the greatest act of love an author can commit is to give you exactly what you don't want, and watch you keep reading anyway.

Welcome to the new version. They're alive. And it's entirely your fault. 

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎