𝙫𝙚𝙣𝙪𝙨

a short story with some dark themes.

trigger warning // blood, mental breakdown, borderline insanity, darker aspects of love

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VENUS

It was a rather ordinary day, rather a boring day actually, when Venus stepped into my town. I first caught sight of her standing across my house as I returned home from school. She wore a long black gown and stood with her head held high, as wind blew through her red hair. But when I blinked, she disappeared, there seemed to be no sight of her any where near, figuring she was a figment of my imagination I headed inside my house.

The second time I saw her was at school the next morning. We were told she was a transfer student, why anyone would transfer to Silver Hollow, a tiny town with a population of barely a 1000 people, was a mystery in itself. She entered our class and swept her gaze around, pausing at me for just a second, before a small smile grazed her lips. When she introduced herself to the class, I noticed everyone giving her their full attention and when my teacher asked if anyone could show her around, my twin, Adiran was the first to volunteer. While everyone else was falling over their feet trying to introduce themselves to her, I took the chance to observe her. Contrary to the day before, she wore a short black dress and her hair was tied up into a bun. She had deep blue eyes and carried herself with grace. But while, the very sense of her radiated a feeling of comfort and warmth, I couldn’t help but feel like something was off. When I told this to my best friend, Myra, she simply laughed it off and then proceeded to help what a nice person Venus was and that I, too, should try and get to know her better and that’s when things took a turn. Myra started talking about how much she loved Venus’s blonde hair and grey eyes, I was so confused and thought I misheard her for a second, but when I asked Myra to repeat herself, she said the same thing. I started laughing and asked Myra if she was okay and was she pulling my leg because Venus had red hair and green eyes. Myra touched my head and told me that wasn’t true at all and that Venus had blonde hair. We argued for quite a while until I told her I had had enough of her jokes and I went back home. I entered the house to find my brother standing in the kitchen texting furiously on his phone, I asked him who he was texting to which he replied with one word,” Venus”. Trying to sound casual, and failing, I asked him,” so what color are her hair and eyes?” He gave me a weird look and told me she had brown hair and brown eyes. My eyes widened in shock and I excused myself to my room.

The next morning, I asked my classmates the same question I asked my brother. While I did get a lot of weird looks, I also found out that each of my classmates viewed Venus as a different person. I apologized to Myra, I lied and told her that I was the one who was kidding and that Venus indeed had blonde hair and grey eyes. As the day went by, I noticed more and more how obsessed my classmates were with her, they kept talking about her striking beauty yet none of them seem to notice each of them seem to view her with a different perspective with a different look. But whenever I seemed to gaze at Venus, I couldn’t look at her for longer than a minute without my eyes starting to tear up and I had to look away, whenever that would happen, she would give me a mysterious smile as if we were in on some joke.

As days passed by my feelings of unsettlement around Venus grew where is for Adiran he became more and more enamoured with her. He would spend all his waking time, all his free time with her, he used to come home late at night smelling like her perfume. The more I told him to stay away from her, the closer he would try and get to her. We never used to fight but now we fought all the time, all because of Venus. That should’ve been my first sign really. Things went this way for weeks after weeks until one fateful day, Adiran didn’t return home that night, I thought he was staying at friend’s house so I thought nothing of it and went to sleep. The next morning when I looked into his room and saw that it was empty, that he hadn’t returned, I rushed downstairs to my parents and told them that Adiran hadn’t returned home that night, my mother touched my head and asked if I was feeling okay while my father asked who I was talking about. When I told him, I was talking about my brother, he looked at me suspiciously and asked if I was playing a prank on them for they never had a son and that I was their only child. I got annoyed at this point and told my father to stop joking around and help me find him. My father got angry and yelled at me to stop playing pranks on him early in the morning and go get dressed for school. I fled the room with tears in my eyes, I got dressed for school and ran out of the house. When I reached school, I asked Adrian’s friends where he was and they all gave me a peculiar look and told me they didn’t know who that was that they never knew an Adrian. My eyes widened and I shook with fear, I turned to walk away when I accidentally slammed into Venus and we both went toppling onto the ground. I stood up and took one look at her before I started yelling, “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY BROTHER, WHERE IS HE?” Venus looked at me innocently and told me she didn’t know who that was, she asked if she could take me to the infirmary as it seemed that I wasn’t feeling well. I stood silently convinced everyone was playing a joke on me and that they all knew where Adiran was. V Venus had my shoulders lightly and help me out the door. On the way to the infirmary, we encountered Ms. Khan who asked us where we were going, I looked and told her that all my classmates were playing a joke on me saying they didn’t know where Adiran was and that they should be punished for it. Ms. Khan looked at me with concern in her eyes,” Laila dear, I don’t know any Adiran, no one with that name has ever studied here.” At this point, I burst into loud hysterical sobs, Ms. Khan looked at me kindly and asked Venus to escort me to the infirmary and return back to class. Venus handed me to the nurse and started to exit, she paused for a second before she turned towards me and smirked. “Get well soon”, she said mockingly and walked away. Before I could say anything she walked away and left, the nurse told me to sit quietly on the bed as she had to finish tending to another child. I snuck to the reception outside the principal’s office and found the computer unmanned. I switched on the laptop and searched my brother’s name, I looked through documents after documents yet there was no record of him having ever been there. I had my heads in my hands as I silently cried, which was how the principal found me. I took one look at her and lost my temper, I started yelling and accusing them of having done something to my brother I screamed and screamed until other teachers and students came running out to see what the commotion was, the principal grabbed me by my hand and took me into her office where she called my parents. When they arrived, they angrily took me home and told me I was given a 'medical leave' for a week from school and that it would have been more if that ‘lovely child’ Venus hadn’t come in and advocated to the principal on my behalf. They told me they were disappointed in me and told me I was grounded as they exited the room. I crawled into my brother’s room and saw it was completely empty, there was no sign of anyone having ever lived there. It got too much for me and I raced out of the room, I was heading downstairs when I heard the hushed voices of my parents. I distinctly heard the words ‘mentally disturbed’, ‘send away’ and ‘boarding school’. I turned and ran into Adiran’s room and fell on my knees in front of his bed as I grabbed his blankets, tears streaming down my face as I silently mourned the brother no one remembered I had, the brother they were making me doubt I ever had.

I awoke the next morning with an agenda in mind, Venus knew what happened to Adiran and since, no adult would believe me Venus was my only option. Since I was on leave, I waited till 2:30 which is when school broke out, I waited outside the school. When Venus exited the building and headed home, I quietly followed her. For the rest of the week, wherever she went I followed, I barely ate, I barely slept, she soon became an addiction. I never followed her into her house, never her house. Her house was alike all others in the locality but there seemed to be a sort of shimmery and transparent wall, not unlike a forcefield, that I didn’t dare go near, nor cross.

My first day of school, post leave, was a peculiar one. All my friends greeted me when I entered, Myra the loudest. My breakdown the week prior was chalked up to be a stress induced nervous breakdown. Venus merely looked up when I entered but I saw a small smirk dawn her face as she resumed working. I spent almost the entire school day trying to look at her longer than a minute and then finally after a lo of tries, tears and pain I broke through her barrier and almost fainted of shock. Her hair was blood red, as were her eyes- she had no pupil nor an iris, it was only red. Blood dripped down her lips as though she had feasted on it. She had claw marks running down the right side of her face and fingerprints of a hand on the left. There, even, was a small dagger stabbed into her neck. Her lifeless, bloody eyes were looking directly at me and as she laughed, a snakelike tongue emerged from her mouth and flickered in my direction. I kept staring at this vision in shock and I was finally pulled out of my trance when Myra tapped my shoulder, “hey, where did you drift off to? I have been talking to you for so long and there you were gazing at Venus. Wait, how did you look at her for so long, my eyes always start hurting, so weird huh?” Before I could reply, I saw a look of fear cross Venus’s face and she glanced at Myra for a second before turning away again. I turned to reply to Myra but she had already moved on from the topic and was know talking to Astoria. The rest of the day was uneventful as I kept trying to look at the real Venus again but I couldn’t cross the barrier.

The next morning when I got to school, Myra wasn’t there and neither was Venus. At first, I didn’t think anything of it as I had tailed Venus the day before and nothing was out of the ordinary. But soon an unsettling feeling came on. I asked I asked my friends and teachers and just like Adrian none of them remembered that she existed. I once again broke into the reception and checked the records for her which as expected were empty. I stumbled out of the school and sprinted to Myra’s house, I banged on the door and of course, when her parents opened the door, they did not have any recollection of having a child and shooed me away.

I had reached past my breaking point. Tears were flowing freely from eyes. I seemed to be covered in blood and so were my surroundings. Every person on the street seemed to look like Venus, all of them laughing at me, mocking me, completely and utterly destroying me. I held my hands in my head as I stumbled on the street, screams of agony emitting from my throat. I heard whispers around me, expressions of disgust, concern and even amusement ‘mentally disturbed’ ‘problem child’ ‘disgrace’ ‘off her rockers’ ‘how humiliating’.

I finally made my way to Venus’s house and dashed towards the forcefield and it felt like my skin was ripping itself apart. After what seemed like hours of incredible pain, I made it through and burst into the house. Upon my entry I saw a glass case with two phones in it, both of which I recognized to be Adiran’s and Myra’s. Right above it, was a mirror- well if that’s what you could call it- while the reflection was indeed me, the person who looked back wasn’t. My reflection had neither a pupil nor an iris, it only had pits of bottomless black staring back at me, lipstick marks around my face and my hair was extremely tousled. I took some steps back in fear and accidentally bumped against a candle, which in turn fell over and lit the curtains and so on and so forth, within seconds the whole room was aflame. I was about to turn and find an exit when I heard Venus,” about time, you’ve made me wait for far too long, ignis spiritus chao.” I turned to look at her and there she stood in all her glory, once again in her true form, and she was breathtaking. She murmured,” ensemble, nous allons détruire le monde, mon amour”, as she brought her hands towards my face and trailed her finger done my face, her nail drawing blood while our surroundings went up in flames.

Author’s note:

I wrote this short story with the idea of the dark, the merciless side of love. Venus is the Roman version of Aphrodite, the Greek Goddess of Love, and throughout myths, we see Aphrodite being quite ruthless and using her powers of love to create a lot of pain and destruction.

Now, the names- our protagonist is named Laila- the Indian version of Juliet, a character who suffered a lot and ultimately died for love. Her brother’s name Adiran means ‘the Dark One’, I wanted to use that to represent why he was so attracted to her, dark calls to dark.

Venus’s ‘true’ form here symbolizes the dark side of love. The blood red eyes are meant to be a sign of wrath, of a rage when the person you love hurts you, they betray you. The fingerprints are meant to be a sign of aggression of when love turns into possessiveness, into something much darker. The blood dripping from the lips are meant to symbolize lust. The claw marks are meant to be a symbol of clawing at your own self, it symbolizes the idea of love pushing a person into insanity. And finally, the dagger stabbed into her neck is meant to symbolize death, i.e. the literal personification of the quote, “If I can’t have you, no one can.”

I might make this a series, I plan on writing a Venus pov, Adiran pov, Myra pov and perhaps a continuation of my ending here. I left this as the ending because I want the reader’s imagination to spark here, I want the ending to be left up to the reader’s perspective and their perception of the stories and the characters.