Tears

• Elizabeth Yu, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2011

It was all a blur. I couldn’t react fast enough. He grabbed my orb, twisted it out of my grasp and smashed it across the concrete floor. And then there was a whoosh. Suddenly iridescent rainbow rays flashed through the air-illuminating the whole tower, and as I was in a stupor, I felt serenaded by the sheer splendor of it all-but all of those emotions vanished as the lights faded away...
The lights signified that my orb was shattering. I heard the ominous crack- and I knew I had lost. He dropped the orb and re-joined his gang who were directly behind me and jabbed sword edge into me, threatening me. Warning me not to go and prevent the orb from shattering. What he was doing was useless. The orb was unavoidably breaking and I couldn’t stop it as when the orb made the cracking noise, I had been drained of my powers. So all I could do was watch the orb break…
And it did: in a beautiful way. It splintered into gleaming diamonds; mirror shards which reflected peoples’ actions, thoughts, feelings: lives. Lives: colorful emotions, I had stolen their souls because I wanted that. And along with those images reflected on the mirror shards were feelings. I felt their hatred- burning like fire, crazy lust for revenge, and glee in what they were about to do. The revenge would happen now. I smiled as I watched the mirror shards begin to rain down. Onto me. This was their revenge for me capturing them.
His gang stepped aside and watched me smile towards my inevitable death. I suppose they wanted me to scream and curse because I was going to die, but I didn’t. I just gave an unprecedented smile. They were confused at my inexplicable smile. They didn’t know why I was this ‘happy’. Only I knew. But I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t sad either. All I knew I didn’t feel anything: no rage, no fear, no regret or content. I’d lost the ability to feel empathy a long, long ago. That is why the villagers called me the ‘Ice Witch’ and condemned me to be evil. That is why his gang attacked me to put an end to my ‘reign of terror’. They were the truly apathetic ones; who didn’t try to understand why I collected the dead souls. I just wanted to gain what humans called feelings.
The shards fired down upon me, rockets fueled by hate. I watched them lacerate my skin. I didn’t feel emotions though. Just pain. He and his gang cheerfully stared at me, their morbidity prominent. I saw some liquid spurt out, a shiny silvery-sapphire color. My blood was red, not like that. That liquid looked like tears. Then I realized it.

And only then did I feel .