Anthony rounded the corner and as soon as he did so, he began firing, the smaller caliber rounds of his modified M4A1 carbine peppering an area in front of his intended target as he leads the streak of tracer rounds closer to his enemies shifting head. The gun kicked upwards in a decently predictable pattern, the shots raising the sights of his aim fractionally with each bullet that left the muzzle. The recoil pattern was something that, if you were good enough at shooting, you could account for during individual engagements and at most times use to your advantage. It was a fairly typical left and right deviation, with every other shot or so that made up the controllable retort of invisible gases as you fired, and he tried to remember that as his shots missed his intended mark in a scatter for the second time in less than half a minute.

The man flinched however as he went after his opponent, who had seemingly begun to flee, making an obvious mistake by giving chase and not taking a moment to consider the circumstances. The outline of a black hooded figure carrying a pump-action shotgun filled his view as the weapon in his hand blasted a single shot that sent Anthony flying backwards in a heartbeat, his body limp and the other darkly dressed man looming over him close by, suddenly accompanied by a high pitched female laugh.

“I swear to God if you keep using that shotgun, I’ll-“ Anthony began, throwing Mira who was sitting comfortably on the couch behind him, her video game controller in hand, a hard look of displeasure.

“Oh you’ll what? What are you gonna do? I’d love to hear this!” She said with a smug look of accomplishment on her face. She was bundled up in her favorite brown blanket, it was still colder outside and the apartment’s heater wasn’t running, though she still curiously didn’t change her outfit to adapt to the cooler temperature despite that.

Anthony grumbled and turned away, clicking the right bumper on the back of his controller to toggle briefly the score screen, which showed he was losing by three kills now with that last mistake of his.

“It’s not gonna change no matter how much you check it loser,” Mira says with a laugh and a smile from behind.

“Yeah, well, all you do is use shotguns anyways, it’s not so bad losing to you when I know without it, you’d suck. It’s basically not even fair on this map.”

Mira grins widely, mostly because Anthony hasn’t turned around to see her face, and says over to him with a chuckle, genuine but teasing,

“Do I look like someone who plays fair? Ever?”

Her male roommate does turn now, and he raises an eyebrow at her as she gives him a look of expectant immanency. He rolls his eyes, which makes her laugh again as he smiles and looks back to the screen, tossing his controller away finally fed up with dying to Mira’s cheap playstyle. No one’s ever really beaten him at Call to Honor, at least not legitimately in a duel, and though he was serious about his female opponent’s easy counter to the match, he had been looking forward to putting her in her place for once with something he was good at. She had, however, to his surprise beaten him.

Anthony leans back and lays against the edge of the couch, his shoulders held up by the cushions, Mira sitting next to where he’s reclined, her legs tucked beneath her rear end as she sits relaxed on her knees cocooned in her blanket.

“No,” he says agreeing with her flatly, “You don’t. But I had at least figured you’d want to have a little fun, and not just win. That sounds a lot like you.” He pauses as his mind comes to grip with another thought, “Well, not all the time anyways.”

Mira puts down her wireless remote on the sofa, leaning over to Anthony’s head as she pulls the edges of the soft, brown covers with both hands around her torso.

“Awww, are you sad you lost, my little pet?” she says with a whisper in almost convincing sympathy, just about into his ear.

“No,” Anthony continues again, still maintaining his normal volume, “I’m starving and I don’t understand why we have to wait until after 7 to eat.”

Mira sits back up and against the back of the couch, the soft green cushions pleasing her senses as she lazily slouches, rolling her eyes. Boys are so dumb, she’s really doing him a favor by not feeding him immediately, and while it may seem obvious to her, she recalls he hasn’t quite gotten used to changing sizes yet. There were, as she was coming to find out, advantages to Anthony’s reduced stature that could be played to both their benefits. Most of the helpful variables from the small man’s perspective were practical, and virtually all of the plans from Mira’s point of view were devious. This one, however, was one of the few that was not.

“Shall I explain to you the reason why?”

“Yea, I’d appreciate that, please.” He says impatiently, his stomach clearly giving him a little bit of discomfort, influencing his mood.

“If we eat after 7, don’t you see you’ll eat a lot less overall?”

Anthony suddenly turns his gaze to the side of his head, as if the image of her point has materialized across the room from him. He did now see where she was going with this, and it was actually pretty clever. Anywhere the pair of them, as college students were always looking to do so, could save money would prove to be useful no matter the context, and in this situation being able to eat as much as he wanted peaked his interest.

“If we eat after 7, you can basically eat however much you want, and it won’t cost you an arm and a leg to pay for it.” She stops for a second as she concludes her ingenious idea, but then continues, “Well, I mean, it might cost you an arm or a leg, but not financially anyways…”

She smiles over at him, but hides the lower half of her face beneath the brown blanket’s edge, knowing full well she’s just made a pretty bad joke. Anthony glances back over at her, she looks embarrassed with the lazy attempt at humor she’s just thrown out, but he can’t help but find her funny just for being herself.

The young man shakes his head and reaches behind his shoulder sitting up a bit, his toned back muscles mostly healthy but blemished with a bruise on his right shoulder. To Mira’s surprise though, as Anthony scratches his arm uncovered by the material of his black, sleeveless tank-top, she spies something curious, something that causes her to reflexively squint to get a better look at.

“Anthony,” Mira starts, her roommate looking over his shoulder at her as she says his name.

“Do you have a tattoo?” The young demon girl says with a smile and both her eyebrows raised, one more so than the other in mild excitement and surprise. She doesn’t notice it immediately, but as she mentions the new discovery she’s just made, the sitting man’s demeanor changes, a new emotion rippling within him just below the surface of his outward appearance, like the first insignificant droplet of rain in a coming monsoon.

He swallows hard and looks away, his thoughts suddenly dark, his memory flooded with long-buried feelings of remorse and nearly forgotten pain. He dips his head and fidgets with his fingers nervously, anxiously, as if he had been afraid of Mira finding it at some point, or indeed, he himself for some reason finding that it was still there having not disappeared with time.

“I have to admit, I always sort of took you for a boy scout,” the girl chuckles aloud, but even as she does so, her teasing fades the instant Anthony does not respond with a defense or the typical, good-natured retort. He’s quiet, oddly so, and looking off towards the opposite side of the room with a strange blankness she’s never seen in him before. He doesn’t speak back to her at all, the silence between the pair quickly becoming uncomfortable, and though Mira’s apprehension at his abrupt change in mood has her slightly worried, she’s still a little curious.

“Anthony?” Mira says with her voice lowered, no longer joking or trying to poke fun at him. She resists the urge to touch him, or place a comforting hand on his shoulder, she doesn’t know what’s going on, or what’s happening in his mind, and while she desires to find out, she doesn’t want to risk doing something that might make him more uncomfortable by testing something like physical boundaries.

Whatever it was that was on his back, if it was indeed a tattoo which it appeared to be, was clearly a topic that brought trouble to his mind.

Anthony shook himself suddenly and took in a deep breath, his hand coming to his face to rub his nose with the side opposite of his palm. He stood, placing his a hand on his head and running his fingers through his hair, as if trying to calm himself or pull free, like weeds, seemingly unpleasant thoughts from the roots of his brain.

“It’ll be seven soon,” his says lowly changing the subject, in the voice of a man whose mind was distracted by vivid memories playing within his subconscious, refusing to banish, “We should get started on dinner, or something.”

He’s uncharacteristically trying to push Mira away, and this causes her worry to overshadow her earlier curiosity.

“Anthony,” Mira replied moving in her seat to face him with her body, “What is it? What’s wrong?”

He was quiet for several moments as he faced away from the woman, having taken a few steps from where he’d been laying against the couch next to her, now standing adjacent to the far end of the piece of furniture she relaxed on. He spoke at last, as he shifted his jaw nervously, licking his lips before uttering his first words, clearly reluctant to actually do so.

“Yeah, it’s a tattoo. I got it a few years ago.”

“Intriguing,” thought Mira. She did honestly sort of judge him for his straight-arrowed theme in life, though not necessarily in a bad way. He seemed to not have a single bad bone in his body, but as the young woman reflected to herself that even she, a monster fueled by indiscriminate agony, could have the remains of good within her soul, he too could hide the secrets of a fallen angel.

She needed to know more, especially if she was going to help him heal this new invisible wound she’d stumbled upon by accident, so the girl pressed him ever so slightly, with the intent to keep him safe, but try and be a source of comfort.

“Would it be ok if I saw it?”

Mira tried to be supportively neutral, she didn’t want to push him to do something he didn’t want to, but she could tell something about the mark she’d gotten a small glimpse of was the cause of what troubled him.

“Why do you want to see it?” He responded curtly.

The woman was taken by surprise with the question, but she replied plainly with an honest answer of her own.

“Well, it seems important to you, and most tattoos have a story behind them, right?”

The mention of a reason for the inked-engraving other than for art or self-expressive purposes by Mira seemed to resonate with Anthony, his eyes unable, though likely not trying, to hide his discomfort at the correct point for it to exist.

“We’re still getting to know each other, and it’s something about me I’d always hoped you’d never ask about.” He lowered his head, as if ashamed, merely muttering out the words like they were themselves, an admission of fault.

“Then you don’t have to tell me the story behind it, but let me see it. It’s ok, I promise.”

Anthony had turned to consider her request as she had begun to speak her last sentence; he eyed her closely for reassurance, which she genuinely displayed to him, with no glimpse of judgment or humor. Her eyes spoke to him with their shining irises alone, confirming the promise she had said out loud was one she intended to keep with her actions. The troubled man reflected silently to himself as he stared over to her, the girl not making a sound as well waiting for his reply, that she of all people he figured, of anyone he’d ever known, would understand.

He turned back and away sighing as one hand came up and rubbed his face, his mind having been convinced of what he was about to do, given Mira’s request. His gaze moved upward and almost searched around the ceiling as if to find a final reason in the white popcorn material of the paint as to why he shouldn’t show her his black secret, but in the end, he simply reached back with his hands and began to pull the tank off his torso.

Mira watched as the shirt came away, seeing the undulation of toned muscles and tanned skin revealed in one motion as her roommate took off about half his clothing, getting a better look at the large purple and discolored bruise covering most of his right shoulder’s flank. She blushed slightly, not exactly expecting him to expose himself so willingly, but restrained herself, knowing this was an action made out of reluctance, not intimacy.

And there, in the very center of Anthony’s back, starting between his shoulder blades and ending near his lower abdomen was the surprisingly macabre tattoo. The etched skin was midnight in color, and sinister in nature, something she hadn’t anticipated would mar the flesh of someone like her sweet-hearted college crush. It was only one color, the same general shade of his shirt, but even more deep as if pulled from the emptiest part of the lightless night sky. It was a skull, an oversized human head without skin or muscle, devoid of meat and a lower jaw, screaming silently with eye sockets that no longer contained eyes. The bone of the thing was cracked, scraped, and damaged in places at random, there were a few teeth missing in the remaining upper jaw, and one cheekbone had been fractured completely off, the ragged edges sharp and unpleasant. It was an abused, ominous thing to behold.

The detail that was most curious, however, was just above the brow, something that as Mira examined it from the couch, she realized she couldn’t quite make out. Anthony heard her stand, discarding her blanket as she walked slowly over to him, keeping her eyes on the forehead of the tattooed skull. She glanced up at him meeting his gaze as she made it to just behind where he stood, he was allowing her to inspect him without resisting, so she was careful not to actually touch him. Looking back down she read two words aloud, the letters of the text, which appeared in the art to have been scratched into the bone with a knife or some other sharp instrument, the lines thin, rough, and morbidly uneven.

“Morte Perpetua?” Mira said quietly, narrowing her eyes, “Death is…Death is forever?” She said curiously up to the bearer of the words, trying to confirm if she was correct.

Anthony allowed one short, half-chuckle, and a regretful small smile break his lips. Mira is smart, and he really enjoys that about her.

His words come out with only the slightest breath of a whisper, his regret and sorrow not allowing his voice to carry any higher no matter what he commanded his vocal cords to do.

“No…Close, but no.”

The young man turns to face her, and she stares up at him, into his eyes that reveal a faded pain that no matter how distant or how well it's been concealed, looks as if it’s as permanent as the black ink sizzled into his body.

He says down to her, his smile gone, and with a cold certainty that for the first time makes her heart weep for a reason she isn’t yet permitted to know,

“It says, “Forever Dead,” Mira…”

Silence follows between the two, an unmistakable understanding passing beneath the words. There’s something awful inside of him that hasn’t gone away with the passage of time, nor with the healing qualities of new happy memories. He’s felt it, every day in some way ever since the needle broke his skin, and perhaps even long before that.

“I know what you are Mira. What you really, truly are. And I don’t care. I still…I still want you, no matter what. It doesn’t change a thing… Do you understand me?”

Mira nods while curling nervously her lower lip, fully aware that he means despite her terrible sins, he wants the opportunity to care for and be with her. His current vocalized thoughts make her feel indescribable, the feeling of being wanted, not just for her stupid appearance, or for her initial, falsified charm, but for who she was as a person. She felt…Somehow… as if she had never been safe before, in her entire life, until now. She felt at home when she was around him, especially when he told her it was so.

As she lost her thoughts in what Anthony’s just said, though she’d already known his deepest feelings for a while now of course, he broke her momentary trance, his next words a whisper of a reality that to him, seemed soul-crushingly hopeless.

“But if you knew what I was…” He trails off, unintentionally thinking to himself about if one day she’d decide to discard him upon learning the truth. “Would you feel the same?”

The wind is blowing outside, not hard, and not even against the walls of the apartment, but it’s so quiet the pair can clearly hear the air rustling the leaves of the exterior trees and bushes. He’s staring hard at her, searching her eyes for any hint of doubt or the formation of a lie, and while he finds none, and she begins to open her mouth to reply, they are interrupted.

The sharp ring of Anthony’s cell phone tone screams out, shattering the silence of the exchange and making Mira jump slightly. The tone came from the floor and Anthony glances down to regard it, fully expecting it though since it was a previously created alarm he’d armed a few hour ago. It was set for 6:50 PM intended to remind him every day that he needed to prepare to shift; he didn’t bother to set it for the morning though, as the changing seemed to not influence him while he slept, why that was, of course, he wasn’t sure.

The young man turned away as the jingling ringer began to fade, walking towards the hallway and leaving Mira standing alone by the couch.

“I’m gonna use the bathroom before dinner, I’ll be back before seven, don’t worry.”

Mira watched him walk away, the black skull leering back at her as he rounded the corner towards the restroom, not waiting for her reply or acknowledgment. Anthony was different, she’d always known that, but she now was feeling the beginning sensation of how he must have felt for her when it came to the topic of her dark past. What could he have done, this sweet and innocent person she’d taken on as a tiny pet for half a year, that could warrant a mark that promised such a tormenting destiny?

As she walked around the couch, heading for the kitchen, she paused at the opening to the hallway, looking down it to the door of the restroom, the entrance closed and a line of light beneath the rectangle of wood. Whatever it was he’d done or had become, Mira knew he would need her help to overcome it one day, and she wanted that chance to heal his abused heart, just like he had taken on for her. And besides, whatever the root of his distress was, it couldn’t be nearly as bad as what she had done in life so far…

Could it?

+ + + + +

“Drink?” Mira said with a raised eyebrow next, looking down and over to Anthony.

“Nope, and I don’t smoke either.”

“Jesus, you really are a boy scout.” She said with a smile over to Anthony as he shrugged dismissively, the young man leaning against the back of the couch, standing again at his post 7 PM height of just over one inch. Mira was laying on her chest on the firm carpet of the floor, a psychology textbook and her pen and notebook out in front of her. She was leaning on her elbows and her sockless feet were wagging in the air behind her, the bends of her knees angled to a little less than ninety degrees, displaying a casual and relaxed nature.

“Oh, so you drink and smoke then?” The tiny man says almost accusatorily.

“Yes I do, I’m a girl of every vice imaginable,” she attempted to lie.

“Right, which is why you never carry a lighter and why the fridge only has milk, water, and juice to drink,” he said countering smoothly with a dismissive nod, correctly calling her bluff.

She shrugs and raises an eyebrow in his direction, “Maybe I’m trying to quit the stuff? Ever think of that?”

“Yeah, sure, all at once to I suppose, huh? Figured since you’d take on smoking and drinking in the same week you’d just add in murdering people too, eh?”

They both laugh and Mira shakes her head down to her open book pages, turning back to look at her roommate after allowing enough time to think of a response.

“Well, you know what they say, no one likes a quitter. You keep it up and I just might decide to relapse on one of those.” She says smiling over to him and tilting her head back, looking at him from a deliberately downward angle.

The couple had been conversing for about two hours, having eaten some leftover pizza Mira had stashed in her fridge, they now talked and got to know each other a little better concerning common details about one another. They were finding they truthfully had most things in common, except at this point that Anthony didn’t appreciate pineapple on his pizza, although he happily enjoyed them separate when Mira picked one off and had teased him with it a while ago.

Anthony rubbed his shoulder with his left hand and winced slightly as he began to speak back, Mira taking notice as he did so.

“Gonna make fun of me, when you have virtually the same habits? Nice…”

“Yeah, well I’m far from the well-behaved little angel you are, bug…” She keeps looking at him and watches his fingers massage his right side joint. “And what’s wrong with your shoulder? I saw it was bruised earlier.”

“Huh? Oh,” he immediately ceases rubbing his injury he’d incurred the night before, “it’s nothing, its fine, really.”

Mira narrows her eyes at him, his statement not quite a lie, but in some ways worse, a truth he was trying unnecessarily to play off.

“…What?” He says out to her guiltily and shrugs.

The towering, beautiful, monster of a girl rolls her eyes at his silly attempt to seem resilient and sits up on her left elbow to get a better view of him, beckoning with her right hand’s index finger, signaling for Anthony to approach her.

“Come here.” She commands without room for excuse or interpretation.

The small male hesitates, and she seems agitated by it suddenly when she of course notices, though she isn’t truly angry, Mira just knows how to be dominant in virtually every context possible. The enormous woman could easily pluck him from his soft ground, bring him up to her huge eyes and examine him, but she likes to assert her superiority over him at any available moment, and promptly proceeds to do so.

“Now…” she says, noticeably taking on a slightly louder, more commanding tone. She lowers her head and gives her practically glowing brown eyes a sharp line to his small body, fixing him with her usual, menacing stare.

Anthony grumbles and begins to walk over to where Mira’s face and view are closest to the edge of the couch. He arrives before her obediently and looks up at her unnervingly large, looming face, waiting for her inevitable next instruction.

“Turn around. Let me see.”

He reluctantly does as he is told, facing away and feeling a nervous rise come up from his gut. Anthony is adjacent to the edge of the couch, and as he stands idly, he can sense Mira lean over and place her head close to his back. The small man can feel her breaths wash his skin with nitrogen and trace amounts of carbon dioxide, the warmth of her immense body transferring to her exhalations and feeling nice on his bare, exposed arms given the chilly outside weather.

“What happened, and does it hurt right now?”

“Nothing’s broken or dislocated if that’s what you’re asking,” he comments glancing over his shoulder to behold her face which fills his vision, “and it showed up after last night when I fell out of your spoon.”

Mira eyes him carefully, wishing she’d taken a better look at it when he had been normal size a while ago.

“I would know if it was broken, I’ve broken bones before.”

As the words left Mira’s terrifyingly large mouth, Anthony found himself hoping she meant she’d suffered those types of injuries herself before in the past, though as he reflected darkly upon what she was referencing, he knew better than to ask.

“Tomorrow before I go to work we’ll put something on it to help with the pain.”

She pauses and realizes a small fleeting thought.

“Which reminds me, I’ll need a ride to work tomorrow morning, I have to be there by eight alright? So stop messing with your bruise until then.”

The small man groans and then grunts with pain as his fingers rub the area again one last time, “Yeah, easy for you to say. It does hurt.” Anthony replies beginning to turn around and face Mira again.

“Aww,” Mira replies with a playful sympathy giving him a face of mock regret, then shifting her tone to a low, sensual whisper, “Was momma too rough with you sweetie?”

Anthony blanches red in an instant and Mira winks at him with a giggle, she really can’t control herself, in more than just the obvious way. He says up to her, arguing with a voice that’s trying to conceal his infatuation with her alluring personality.

“Hey! I volunteered to play the game, and if you hadn’t cheated I would have won!”

“I don’t see why you’re so upset; I accepted your friend request. I was nice even though you lost, fair and square.”

“Also,” he continued without pause, ignoring her rebuttal, “if you’re gonna keep spamming shotguns when we play Playstation, this agreement is over, and I’m getting a hotel.”

“Oh are you now?” Mira says with a nod and imitating a surprised look with her eyebrows as if she’s impressed by his boldness.

“Yup, and I’ll find another cute demon-girl to take care of me. Probably on Craigslist.”

Things technically had been fair in either situation, but in reality, Mira had bent the rules so far they were nearly playing a completely different game each time. It had been fun though, even for both of them for a while.

Mira sighs with a smile as Anthony shakes his head with minute frustration and in rising humor, she looks down at him from not far away and decides on something the pair of them will both enjoy immensely, something that will certainly shut him up and win the discussion for her.

“Alright, alright, that’s enough outta you. Come here.”

Without waiting for him to reply, Mira sits up and onto her butt against the front of the couch crossing her legs, extracting her tiny man from the sofa in between her massive index finger and thumb after readjusting herself. She moves her book with her free hand so that it’s sitting in front of her new position and still easy for her to read. The incalculable grip of Mira’s fingers bring down and release Anthony onto her thigh near her right knee, her soft, black sports pants covering her tantalizing legs.

The giant woman moves her finger over a bit, next to where her pet human has been placed standing, and she casually taps her leg twice with her index finger.

“Right here, on your chest,” she says sounding reasonably relaxed.

Anthony glances over to the spot on the soft black landscape and doesn’t move immediately, he’s not sure what she’s getting at, and is a little nervous that her finger is still raised above the indicated area Mira told him to lie at.

She sees he hasn’t moved, and she glances at the spot and then quickly back at him with a nod, communicating a clear, “do it,” without having to say anything further.

Anthony sighs and swallows nervously, rubbing his upper lip, walking a few steps to the spot beneath her fingertip, the soft, almost spongey material of her attire barely registering his weight as he went. He stretches first and winces again with a sharp exhale, the pain of the bruise on his shoulder reminding him of the ugly wound. With a final push of trust, he lays down and places his arms beneath his chin, like he’s predictably about to receive an enormous massage, finding a moment later that’s exactly what his huge, gorgeous roommate has in mind.

Without hesitation, but with gentle care, Mira lowers her black painted fingernail until she feels it contact with Anthony’s small body. She feels him exhale harshly beneath her touch, surprised by it but not harmed, and she feels a momentary flush of maternal care at her delicacy with him. She rubs him, first reassuringly to comfort his worries, then slowly, with very minute pressure as if she’s trying to finger-paint on a thin piece of paper, the woman caresses the tiny human’s back, feeling the slight bumps of his shoulder muscles and the dip in the natural curve of his lower abdomen.

Anthony groans out loudly, the pressure of the massive fingertip applied almost precisely to his liking, as if the giant woman is employing both of her hands as she would at normal size, pushing lightly and focusing on his injured right side. Her finger is of course too big to single out any one small section of his body, but she uses her lone index digit to masterfully sooth his aching muscles and joints, the small, almost wave-like ripples of her skin’s print rubbing him with exquisite satisfaction.

Mira is smiling down at him, watching her small black nail rotate in little circles as his body is pulled around lightly by the motions of her finger. She glances up and away, back to her book as she casually goes back to reading her chapter assigned earlier in the week. She’s comfortable, relaxed, and for one of the first times she can remember before meeting Anthony, she’s genuinely happy.

Her eyes scan the text and she leans over to re-read a sentence at the bottom of her current page and as she does so, she must have fractionally shifted her angle on his body, because Anthony’s immediate response alarms her for a heartbeat.

“Ohhh God, uughhh.” Mira glances down quickly with a surprised and concerned expression, and immediately stops her finger from moving, a prick of panic firing into her chest, but upon seeing her tiny pet unharmed, she smiles wider and almost laughs, understanding now his moaning is out of physical pleasure and not of pain.

“Did… Did I find a spot?” she says trying to keep her lips from breaking too widely, concealing her entertainment at his reaction.

Anthony only replies with more moaning, communicating soon after with a slow nod of his head, turning it to one side to face her own high above. The small man adjusts his posture and sets his right cheek against the fabric of her pants, arms now above his head and flat on their palms, completely intoxicated by her touch and expertly applied efforts to alleviate his body’s stress.

Mira can’t focus at all on the homework she had planned for the evening, and she’s coming to realize she’s hardly spent any of her time the past hours doing her work for school at all. The huge woman doesn’t care though, she and Anthony both are just enjoying themselves too much for it, or anything else, to matter and even now she can feel her affection for him growing due to the attention she’s giving him, and the adorable response he’s giving back. It was always the small instances in life that gave the best forms of emotion, and made for the brightest, most vivid memories, and Mira’s list of favorite moments and times with Anthony was expanding every second they spent together.

As her feelings swirled around in her heart and in her mind, the slight rotation of her finger emulating her thoughts as they did so, she had a sudden need to divulge something to her tiny roommate, who was in absolute heaven at the moment. She hoped he wouldn’t mind her speaking and breaking his little trance.

“Anthony,” she almost whispered out, turning her face to watch him bask in her personal attention.

A faint, “hmm?” or mumbled confirmation for her to continue came back from the relaxed human ant, but it was muted and clearly seemed distracted.

Mira licked her lips nervously and took a deep breath despite smiling, already relaxed herself, but always hesitant to expose her deepest emotions, though that was changing when it came to Anthony. She was about to say something important to her, and she was hopeful he would receive it well.

“Thanks…” She muttered down, her eyes melting at his obviously relaxed figure as his body remained limp, and his microscopic eyes closed. “For everything...”

Anthony sighed heavily and revealed his brown gaze, his lids had been closed since she’d first began to caress him, his euphoria enhanced by his vision being reflexively shut in response to the soothing pressure of her immense finger.

“Is…” He started to reply lowly, his voice still blatantly influenced by his physical high, Mira’s finger still rubbing his body.

“This your way of telling me you’re about to kill me?” he mutters up to her entirely joking.

Mira couldn’t contain herself at his humor he intended to make obvious, and she let out a giggle and looked up rolling her eyes at the ridiculousness of the question.

“Because right now, I’d be totally OK with that…”

Still laughing Mira babbles out, not able to maintain her demeanor and Anthony’s joke overcoming her typical calm.

“Oh my God,” she says between short bits of cute laughter, “you would definitely not be ok with that.”

It was strange really, now that she had the minuscule human at her mercy again, she didn’t feel as if she had a need to destroy him utterly, ending his life. Mira could, undeniably, still feel the desire beneath the surface, but it was coated almost entirely by her infatuation with him, overpowered by her desire to comfort and keep him safe, instead of how best to go about killing him. She still had urges, a lot of them in fact, but she noticed for certain they were more distanced from her immediate sub-conscious, like in the way you would sometimes forget about having a toothache if you preoccupied your mind with something else. And as she rubbed his little back while he lay comfortably on her thigh, her thoughts began to drift.

She did, truthfully, have a thing for ending the existences of small creatures, and people in particular. She loved the way they could display fear and fully understand their impending doom; the merciless vixen had partaken in the murderous behavior for more than a few years now, and crucially during the most influential period of her young life.

Mira had tried at first to, “ween,” herself of the insidious craving, she’d tried crushing toys initially when she was younger, then things like cans or bottles that made satisfying crunching noises, but that hadn’t worked. She wanted something that could feel pain to suffer her wrath. After inanimate objects had failed, she had moved onto insects, and when she found out how much more enjoyable it was to actually kill something, that had been when her mom had stepped in.

The young woman, then about twenty-one, had been scolded by her mother for taking part in such a disturbing hobby, her single remaining parent vehemently warning her that such actions would lead to nothing but a worse craving for something more…satisfying.

The scolding and warnings had come to late however, and soon after the conversation, in that very month, he mother had died. That was when Mira had lost herself, unfortunately in many ways. The distress of being alone in the world, the fact she was going to be moving away soon and going off to school, the undeniable truth as she had outlined previously that she had few friends and was very unskilled at making them, it all just simply proved too much for the heartbroken, beautiful little demon.

It had all started with a girl in her anatomy class, the very first class she’d taken in college a few years back. The poor damaged young lady had just wanted to fit in, to try and salvage the pieces of her life, and some preppy, blonde harlot had been cruel to her, made fun of her looks, and even taunted her about where she had come from originally before going off to pursue her higher education. Mira knew it was because she too was pretty, and the idiotic human had been threatened by her being the more attractive female in the class. She was so petty. So stupid. So…undeserving of life.

One day Mira had just had enough and snapped. She finally silenced the weaker, human side of her heart and decided the only course of action was to kill her, and what better way to accomplish that and satisfy her nagging hunger for special forms of death than to curse her with insignificance, something Mira knew, that she was already guilty of on the inside anyway.

Mira had dehumanized her in a day. It almost took no effort at all to convince herself that despite the unlikely event she’d be caught and exposed as a murderer, despite even committing the most dastardly of damning sins, she wanted to feel, and see, the end of this person’s life.

Mira Lamia, only months after losing her mother, and weeks after moving to a new city and beginning what was supposed to be a positive new chapter in her life, had killed her first human being at age twenty-one. Most soldiers could not brag about that accomplishment. Most doctors, convicted felons, and even ruthless dictators could not share a spot at the table for villains such as herself. She had become exactly what the black demon had called her when it had first visited her with the terms of the pact for redemption. A monster.

Lions, tigers, animals, and beasts of the darkest corners of the frail reality that was human understanding knew as she did now what it was like. They had killed ever since they could stand. They had been butchering other living things for food or sport ever since they’d been born into this wretched place called existence. Mira was one of them now, she wasn’t human anymore, she probably never was, she’d been separated from the rest of her apparent kind and placed herself an enormous step above them all. It was fitting then, she felt, as if a strange wash of poetic comprehension had suddenly become obvious to her at the time, that Mira’s first victim, a girl whose name she couldn’t even remember, would meet her end in a very specific way.

Mira had eaten her first human, solidifying all beliefs in her mind that she was superior in every way imaginable. Everyone else, everyone she knew and would ever come to know, was just food to her, or worse, just a means of self-satisfaction.

The pathetic thing, no longer human in Mira’s eyes, no longer a person, just a less than bite-sized piece of squirming meat she happened to be able to understand the frantic words of, had satisfied her in ways she never felt before when it crunched beneath the molars of her jaw line’s slightest pressure. The blonde girl had of course panicked, screamed, begged, and even cried, but it had only made Mira more excited… Even more hungry…

She had assured the sobbing thing it would serve the body she had been so jealous of well. Before devouring her Mira had happily explained she’d soon contribute vital nutrients and sustenance to her elegant appearance, enhancing it microscopically forever. This had only seemed to trouble her even more for some reason, and the titan of a girl had annoyingly given up on trying to make things easier for her, promptly tilting her head back, rolling out her tongue, and not shutting her eyes as she watched the tiny human fall into her gaping mouth released from her pinched fingers.

The deed had taken place in a locker room, not too unlike the one Mira had confronted Anthony in a few days ago, and it had all happened so fast, almost in less than two minutes, but the event had let loose something dark in Mira’s soul, something she found, with more and more frequency, was difficult to satiate after that. She’d settled for a few months on just the girl from anatomy, but then it had happened again. The devious inhuman had nearly been caught the second time, and after that, she took, to her frustration, a longer break between horrid acts of violence. She’d learned from her mistakes and moved things to her apartment then, and that immediately improved her ability to safely enjoy her sinister hobby on a more reliably regular basis.

Slowly but surely, Mira amassed a body count as she got better and better at the techniques of her unspeakably disturbing pleasures. The young woman weaponized her obvious female attraction, crafted her personality into a sticky web with which to secure potential victims, and honed her skills at deception to the point of a dagger’s edge. She had only gotten two in her first year, then five the next, then ten after that. Finally, at last, this year she had encountered Anthony, innocent, sweet Anthony in psychology class and he had brought the grand total to twenty-six, strangely, oddly coincidentally even, the same count as both their ages.

The dead victims had been men and women. Young and old. From school and even more frequently, not. There was no trend, there was no rhyme or reason to how or why she selected specific people whose lives she planned to end for the appeasement of her own desires. The only person she’d really so suddenly ever wanted, as Mira reflected with him beneath her right hand’s index finger, had been Anthony.

Mira swallowed hard as she felt a twitch in the left ventricle of her heart, she was corrupt in mind, body, and spirit, just as the demon had promised, and for that, she hated herself. Thus far, the reality of her life was that she existed only to cause pain and that she was nothing, nor ever would be, anything but a savage beast.

By stark contrast, Anthony was kind, and never seemed to stop caring given any form of turmoil or circumstance. He may at times hide it, even try to do so from someone like Mira, but she knew he was bright with the vibrant light of compassion on the inside. However, there was again that thought, that small hope: nobody was perfect, and nobody was completely innocent. If somebody like Anthony held a tiny portion of wrongdoing from his life, it comforted Mira, as shamefully as she admitted, that that meant perhaps for herself there was a sliver of hope for her return to humanity and maybe even a normal life. If it was at all possible, in any way, she knew it would only be with Anthony’s support. She just hoped to whatever God there was that it would be enough for him to arrive safely at the other end.

“Hey,” the tiny man said sitting up and raising his left arm, placing it against the towering monster’s fingertip, meaning to and succeeding in stopping it from rotating so he could focus on speaking, “You OK Mira?”

She glanced down, back to her little roommate, and blinked a few times in quick succession as if woken from a dream…or a nightmare that took place with her eyes open. There he was again, as she brought her mind back to reality, appearing when Mira needed him most to rescue her from herself.

“Yeah,” she said wanting to convince her own internal thoughts, even as the words left her lips, “Yeah, I’m fine, sorry.”

He looked up at her, keeping her finger from massaging him still, with concern for her written on his face. He was worried about her, and as he said why, she admired his support and his silly disregard for his own safety.

“It’s the urges, isn’t it?” He replies understanding and with a smile, looking as if he’s ready again to prove his determination to help her.

She nods, with a tiny smile of her own, staring down at him and moving her massive finger away off to his side as he stands up and to his feet.

“Yeah… Something like that, but I’m fine. Really.” She pauses and keeps smiling down to him, nodding again, the truth in her eyes as well as in her voice, “I’m alright… Thanks to you.”

Anthony beams with a rush of blood to his entire face as he gulps and looks away, bashfully scratching the back of his head with a raised arm, he knows she wants him to feel this way, she wouldn’t have said what she had otherwise, but he’s always adorably embarrassed when Mira compliments him in any way.

“Well…I mean. You would do the same for me. Right?”

Without skipping a beat, understanding the question also has something to do with what Anthony has hidden behind his personality’s golden curtain, she replies purely,

“I would...”

The two smile at each other feeling a warmth pass between them as they do so, however, something that this time surprises them both happens in the next moment, as if the affectionate instance has a need, for some reason, to be ruined.

Anthony’s phone rings in his pocket, a ringtone that’s different than most of his other, more standard tones. It’s upbeat, and as soon as it goes off Mira notices that he’s got a sudden urgency to retrieve the smartphone and answer it. He finally yanks it out after wrestling with his shorts, and as he gets a look at the screen, he mutters out something that peaks the female roommate’s interest.

“Shit…” Anthony says with a gasp and a frown.

“What? Who is it?” Mira says half-curious and a little surprised.

“Be quiet alright, don’t say anything! Seriously!”

Mira furrows her eyebrows at his sudden, daring command, a small part of her angered at being told what to do by someone at the small man’s size, but her interest at this new discomfort her pet human is displaying is peaked.

“What? Why?” the woman says looking clearly surprised and confused.

Anthony waves his free hand down and around as the ringer ceases and he picks up the call, his voice shifting in an instant, more restrained, and a lot sweeter.

“Hello?...Hey mom!”

Mira immediately, almost reflexively, covers her mouth with one of her hands as she closes her eyes and stifles her bumbling laughter, her smile nearly breaks from behind her cupped left hand as her chest undulates with erratic breaths and contractions of her esophagus.

Anthony looks up and over to her face as she opens her eyes again, waving his hand around up and down signaling her to cease the noise she’s making. Mira can’t stop smiling and brings her hand’s index finger up to her right eyebrow, rolling it around seeming overwhelmed by being entertained beyond belief. She tilts her head back and fails to contain her grin as she looks down past her nose to regard Anthony as he continues his conversation.

“Yeah, I’m good, everything’s going great…No, I didn’t check the text conversation, is it tomorrow?”

“Hey…” Mira whispers, her top row of teeth pushed against her lower lip, indicating she’s suddenly having way too much fun, “tell her I said hi…”

He continues, but now holding an index finger to his mouth, trying in vain to silence the giant girl, “What? No, I can still go, but I have to be home by six, I have a lot of work to do.”

Mira rolls her eyes and smiles wider before licking her lips preparing, once again, to do something slightly naughty.

Mira looks down at Anthony as he is faced perpendicular to her chest, his gaze off to her side looking away, she says in a partially raised voice, not quite at her normal volume, with a giddy look in her eyes,

“Hey, is it your mom? Tell her I said hi!”

Anthony spins on his heel and shoots her a look of anger and one of shattered deception, making his free hand into a bear claw of fingers, his mom of course reacting in the predictable manner Mira had hoped.

“What? Oh yeah, that was just my friend…Yeah we were just doing some psych homework…Yes, this late at night mom.” Anthony wipes his face guiltily at his abhorrent attempt at formulating a lie, it was even more frail than he had anticipated when his mother had easily called him out on it without skipping a beat. Turning again to regard Mira he fired her a glare as he continued talking with his parent on the line, the beautiful girl in response, throwing him a wink and chewing on her lower lip with a smile as she always did in these situations.

“Yeah, I’ll see if she can come…Yes, yes, I will ma… Yeah, tell dad I said hi…”

He was wrapping things up now Mira could see, and every blood vessel flowing through her body was excited with eager anticipation. The inhuman girl had taken what she had for cards just now and played them in the exact order needed to take the entire game, stacking the odds in her favor as if she were the dealer herself. She waited for him to finish, and as he did so, she knew she had played a royal flush based on his reaction alone.

“Alright, love you too…See you tomorrow…Mhm, bye!”

Anthony hung up the call and sagged his arm with the phone in its hand, bringing his other to his face and rubbing the top of his head sighing with the heaviest of exhalations. He groaned out as he stammered under his breath, Mira’s objective obviously accomplished with her little comment.

The inch tall man looked up and over to his roommate, gorgeous as ever and excitedly awaiting his response.

“She says hi…Also, you’re unbelievable, you know that?”

“Yeah, you’ve said that before,” she says trying not to laugh and watching him shake his head back and forth in disbelief.

“So,” she began again quietly, a cute smile on her face showing that she was entirely pleased with herself, Anthony turning back up to regard her as she spoke, “What are we doing tomorrow?”