What ruined me, standing before his stone, was feeling, in place of the sweet creamy hatred I hoped to savor like soft-serve, a terrifying dissolve into pity. For this small cockroach of a man, who had never found a woman he could convince to marry him, who was so alone in the world that he chose a child. From pity my heart moved, sliding in a neatly fluid mass like egg white, to a terrible, shamed love. This despite every attempt at rescuing the calmly kinked malice that had protected me so well for so many years.
