Give Me Love; A Short Story

Give Me Love - A Short Story (based on the Music Video and song by Ed Sheeran)

She didn't know why it happened, but it did. In the empty loft she called home, with a simple mattress on the floor, a desk full of carving tools and two miniature mannequins mocking her from where they stood in a tight embrace, she found herself alone, scratching, itching, clawing at her back, like an animal. It hurt like hell, the soft burn pushing on her skin from inside of her. She screamed and groaned and reached around herself to touch the burn, to make it invisible, to defeat the pain but it only grew.

She ripped apart her shirt, tracing the skin with her nails and digging into the soft skin of her back with her fingers, pulling white to the surface and only increasing the pain. One after the other until there was a pile at her feet and the breaking of skin on her back, white feathers covered in red blood were poking from her skin and bones, she screamed as they broke through the flesh, the burning rising through her skin and appearing as wings on her back.

They were small, and eventually the blood staining their white glory disappeared, but they did not. They were a reminder of the burning sensation that still appeared sometimes under her skin, on her fingers and in her chest, sometimes she cried because it hurt so much, people avoided her - she wasn't the same anymore. Even the ginger man who always wore hoodie's who use to share a coffee with her at the late night coffee shop stopped sitting at her table, choosing one further away from her to enjoy his coffee. She was completely alone.

Arrows came next. She started to manufacture them in her loft, sharpening their points with her carving tools and folding the miniature mannequins over each other in poses of love, lust and affection. She wished to feel the way they seemed to feel about each other, to have someone hold her like that without having to worry about her wings, it was near impossible, so she decided on helping others find those to hold them like that, she crafted a bow and a bucket load of arrows and took the street shadows of London, hiding in the fog of late nights and the shadows of street lights, playing hide and seek with her victims, shooting them when they least expected. She hung around to watch her work, the first was a blonde girl pinning her friend up against the pole in an abandoned alley way and kissing her like crazy, she stood there almost in a trance, both scared and excited with this new found gift of emotion she could cause people, this lust she could trace their blood with, the passion she could ignite in their veins, she could control their hearts and she liked it.

So she continued to do it. She didn't discriminate, she shot anyone that had a heart and everyone that could feel and receive this love that she couldn't. She let the arrows control them; they had no opinion on who they loved anymore, only she made that decision now. She always hung around to watch, lurking in the shadows and hating the twisting, burning feeling in her gut as she watched them fight for dominance with their soft pink lips and tangled hands.

No one would ever love her like that, she couldn't be loved, not with the burn in her blood and the wings digging into broken flesh on her back, she was a creature of heaven and hell, she was unlovable, even the ginger man she shared coffee with was gone and she had seen him share coffee with even the most unusual of people and now that she had wings she was alone - Deadly alone.

The underground scene of London was tempting, there were bodies that moved to the beat of music, sweating from the emotions running through their bodies, hands grasping for the skin and flesh of others that could give them the satisfaction of harsh human contact. They wanted to be held in a different way, to be touched to the beat of a song and to live in the moment of a rough pull on clothes and the salty taste of sweat and spinning haze of alcohol in their system. They were looking for less than love, but she gave it to them anyway. She didn't take her bow, she didn't need it being so close in this venue, she was out in the open, arrow in hand, and wings spread wide on her back, brushing over the skin of dancers and drinkers in the close proximity. The sharp point of the arrow dragged over soft skin, searching for it next victim, the people didn't care, the cold touch was heaven against their skin and the stab in their backs and chests were more exciting than the illicit drugs that they could buy in the corner of every room, it made them hot, breathes heavy, skin crawled and hands grabbed the nearest body to reach their lips and fulfill the itch that the self-made arrow had inflicted on them. These were the people that wanted her, she wasn't shunned or ignored here, they ached for her to stab them, to touch them with the hands that brought so much love and lust to their systems, yet she hated every one of them. She took her arrow to them in anger, hating herself and hating the world around her. How could life be so cruel, to have given her this power of creating love but never giving love to her, no one loved her and if anyone ever had she had lost them when these wings grew from her skin and caused her to bleed out on the floor of her little loft.