Hello everyone! I am here today with my first flash fiction for 2023. It's loosely connected to my current WIP, so hopefully it gets you interested in that story. It's a vague prequel story.

“I’ll kill everyone you love.” 

“How convenient.” Lucien slipped lower, holding himself up with his elbows. The ground below him was drenched with rain, rain mixed with his blood. “There’s no one left I do love.” He looked up at Annie, standing over him with both knives drawn.

The girl laughed. He wished he had the strength to be angry that all she did was laugh, but he couldn’t be angry. Annie was a mad woman. A mad child, her mind lost to the darkness that had once taken over her. 

He was not angry that she laughed, but that could not stop him from being angry.

Annie laughed, a loud, mad laugh that ripped through his veins. “No one? Not a single soul? Shame, shame, tsk, tsk.”

Lucien’s elbows slipped out from under him, depositing him in the blood and water. He groaned and tried to raise his head. “Not anymore,” he whispered.

If he hurt her, if he touched the right part of whatever heart remained to her, perhaps she would demonstrate that she still had feelings. If she could feel, he could heal her.

Annie spun in the street, sending up a spray of water from the puddle under her feet. “What a shame,” she sang out, and then hummed a tune to herself. “I’ll kill all you love, love, love, if anyone anyone is left.”

Her heart was empty, black, and dark, as unfeeling as the stones he lay upon.

Lucien groaned and rolled onto his back. The rain fell onto his upraised face, sliding down his cheeks like tears. “Annie,” he whispered, because he could not say the words that haunted him: I loved you. 

There was no one left that he loved because he had never loved the real version of her, the version that wished to harm and maim and kill, who cackled and shed blood and hurt him in everything. She’d never raised a hand against him, but he’d loved her anyway.

He’d hoped to fix her. He would never succeed, but he’d nursed a sorrowful hope.

Annie knelt in the street in front of him. “What do you think?” she whispered with a laugh. “I thought your power seemed… fascinating. Turning things to stone. Turning your heart to stone. I want it. I want to do that.” She pressed her hands against his cheeks and tipped her forehead against his, sighing long and weary. If only it were real. If only it were for sorrow that she broke him.

“My power is nothing,” he whispered. “You don’t need to turn your heart to stone. Your heart is already stone.” He let his head fall back.

Annie knelt over him, turning her face down toward his. “I want to turn myself into stone,” she sang. “Stone. I will be stone. I don’t have to feel. I don’t want to feel.”

He closed his eyes. The tears ran down his face, mingling with the rainwater.

Annie. She was a force to be reckoned with, her laughter loud, her dancing beautiful. He’d been arrested by her. He’d run to her and hoped that she would hold him fast.

Lucien sighed. He’d known she could kill and yet he’d chosen her anyway. She’d stabbed him just like she’d stabbed everyone else.

She put one hand on either of his temples. “I’m taking your power for myself, sweetie,” she said, her voice gentle. “It’ll keep living, no matter what. I promise.” She patted his arm.

Lucien let another tear slide down his cheek.

Annie’s hands gripped the sides of his head. Something grew tight. Tension sprouted across the front of his forehead. He groaned and tried to turn his head away, but the pain was growing stronger, ripping him apart from the inside. He cried out, unable to restrain it. His power, sliding through his veins with his blood, felt thin and distant. Tears slid from his eyes. His heart. His love. His only hope.

He’d loved Annie with his entire heart, and now she would steal it.

She was ripping power out of him, and he could not hold onto it. His blood was sliding out of his body, taking his power with it. His head spun. His body spun. Annie. Annie. Annie, who he had loved. Annie, who he had given his heart to. Annie, who would now kill him.

His eyes slid closed and he let his mind fly. He had loved her.

But now no one was left for him to love.