Chapter 27
SO, WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Two mortals, one beatific like sunshine, the other morose like midnight, giggle over the viewing glass of the infant room, watching their friend’s twins wiggle with glee.
Children, both of them. Barely past the juvenile stage of the infants they’re smitten with.
His arm coils around her side, drawing her near, Kore’s mortal shadow spilling her daffodil-colored hair over him.
I suppose the hapless fools are grateful that their friend’s spawn live. Unbeknownst to them, the Fates won’t force our paths closer anytime soon. I’m not coming for either of them, either, which is… remarkably unexpected.
I rarely get the chance to watch someone step further from me.
The caduceus of paradoxes they’ve wrapped around themselves has slowly unwoven, leaving them hapless yet rather optimistic human beings.
Instead, they stand on their own, their thread of fate woven solely around a singular Rod of Aescelpus, as it should be.
Doctors, as they were always meant to be.
I suppose I can leave now.
But that simpering love goddess sabotaged my bets.
I predicted Operation Match Day would be a success. Not that those meddling Fates would spare the boy’s second reaping by orchestrating an Operation Love Match.
Fate has favorites.
And I am not one of them, lingering in the shadows, lurking on the joys of the others, on the fraught, incurable condition of love.
Arrangements are underway for my current victim’s official wedding. Something gaudy and dramatic, if the young socialite is to be believed.
Even the dead I routinely collect have heard her flying through the halls to hand-deliver invitations.
If I embody death, she is the relentless pursuit of life, which is as abhorrent as it is fatiguing. I understand why the middle one distances herself.
The Prodigy watches her sibling and sister-in-law now, peering her inquisitive eyes around the corner.
She’s resting from visiting her father, who marches closer to me by the day, and whose heart is about as frail as her attention span. She alternates between visiting him and checking her watch, where her UnHinged dates message unceasingly.
I’ve reaped too many women who trusted the men on those depraved soul traps to ever endorse them.
But in the spirit of avoiding hypocrisy, if men chase women in dark times for companionship, I couldn’t condemn the adolescent girl for it.
After all, she’s merely imitating her brother.
Though I wonder how long it will take her to learn that no quality man in their 30s wants a veritable child.
But perhaps I want to follow the prodigy’s prophecy.
I could find entertainment with a fellow phantom.
Hmm…
I fly through the hospital, stalking the other children I like to plague.
I can’t follow the Goodyear baby long... whatever guardian angel follows her chases me down through multiple dimensions like he’s the reaper, sapping my energy dry.
Apollo’s daughter, as always, is woefully dull.
How pitifully tragic. A hopeless romantic, able to wield and manipulate everyone’s love story except her own. Although it’s fascinating that nobody in this hospital has noticed the oracle’s patients do remarkably better than everybody else’s…
So I suppose I will follow the teenage prodigy after all…
But I’ll have to wait until she’s grown to return.
These students think they’ve encountered their worst, but that’s only because they haven’t hit intern year yet.
After all, the M4s are right about to begin.
It wasn’t long ago when they were tasked with the classic medical school question:
“So, what do you want to be when you grow up?”
And upon graduation, the prodigy’s class will find out.
Every generation tries to beguile the Fates. This cynic does not believe they can.
After all, I am the most hateful to men, a horror to the gods, and an affliction to the mortals.
So, I shall return.
I have an inkling they haven’t even scratched the surface of me yet…
I do so enjoy haunting the narrative.
THANATOS
THE END