Happy Valentine's Day

Cupid's Revenge

I sat on the park bench, after having moved from one place to another via train, taxi, ferry, people watching. And all that I saw was anger, hurt, cruelty, selfishness. There was no love in the air. I found myself completely disgusted with humanity.

In all my existence, I have observed the humans, even in their pathetic wars. They still cared for one another, but now all sense of family, community have all but ceased to exist. Now it’s just me, myself and I, their cruelty knows no bounds, and I was tired of it. I had to do something, teach these pathetic excuses of meat-bags a lesson of love and kindness. Luckily for me, my holiday was coming up in a few days, so I still have to come up with an idea that will make humanity change their ways.

Getting up, I gave one last disgust glare at these obnoxious creatures before teleporting myself to the dark forest where my love bush grew. I usually use their leaves for love potions, but this time I’m going to use hemlock with my mixture. Now just to get the world to consume the potion on Valentine’s Day? Not everyone eats candy, and not everyone celebrates this festivity. To get it into the water, supplies will dilute the potion, and my bush will be depleted if I made it stronger, but not all countries can drink their tap water because of the pollution.

“Damit! Think! You’re Cupid.” I growled in frustration at my blank mind.

I paced up and down for a few minutes, each time dismissing an idea as soon as it entered my thoughts, until a decent idea came to mind, which I could improve. I could make the potion into a powder and spread it like the Sandman does, but to visit each person will take forever. But maybe if I made it into a finer dust and sprayed it over each town and country, then every human would inhale it and be infected. Plus, the wind would help to spread the dust to the remaining areas and to those humans that I missed. Essentially, 7 billion people would be infected by the time Valentine’s Day arrived.

I got to work on my potion, grinding the leaves of my love bush and hemlock roots into a fine powder. I added a few more poisonous plants just for good measure. The powder glimmered like gold particles and had the most indescribable, sweetest scent that no human could resist. I even had a hard time resisting the urge to smell powder. I might be Cupid, but that doesn’t mean I’m immune to my own potions and other gods’ spells and potions, either.

If this concussion of powder works, then in theory it should make the hearts of the humans harden like a tree. With the more hate that is in their hearts, the quicker it will harden into a tree’s trunk, sprouting flowers, shrubs, moss and leaves, just like a forest would. If they have love in their hearts, then they’re spared turning into a tree. For it won’t just be their hearts turning into a tree, but their whole body would portray what happens on the inside. It will appear on the outside so that everyone can also see how ugly your heart truly is. The saying of ugly on the inside is as ugly on the outside, or something like that. Anyway, the only means for your heart to beat again is to show love and kindness, but not just for pretense to save your ass, no it has to truly come from deep within, otherwise bye-bye human life, hello plant life.

Well, considering the pollution and deforestation these ungrateful meat-bags have caused, it might actually be something they deserve. At least, this way, they’ll be giving something back to the planet. I poured the powder into my magical bag and got ready to teleport the four corners of the world. If Santa can deliver presents in one night, then I could spread powder in one night too. I took in a deep breath and teleported to the highest mountains and windiest places first so that the cities and towns below would get infected while the strong winds would carry the rest of the powder to the next settlement.

Finally, after gruesome 24 hours, I sat down on a park bench and waited for the magic to start. I must say hats off to the big fat guy. That was not easy, and I didn’t even drop down into every chimney and I’m exhausted. I sipped my coffee as I listened to the groans and screams filling the air from all across the world. A small smile spread across my lips. It will be too late by the time they realize true love and kindness are the cure.

My smile deepened over the next few days as I travelled the world and saw how many humans were becoming or had turned into trees. Emergency telephone lines were eventually switched off because of such a high call volume as well as hospitals and clinics were no longer accepting people. CDC couldn’t explain this “plague” and they too themselves were infected and dying. Scientist too could not explain this “plague” and there were so many conspiracy theories, it was acutely hilarious. From aliens doing experiments, to mother nature taken a swipe at us, to governments conducting biological warfare and experiments. One or two got it right that they are being punished for all the cruelty in the world and need to show love and kindness. And so many ran to the pope, churches and protests. Now that is funny. The world was in absolute chaos, and I was loving it. About time these filthy humans learn they are not superior.

By the time Valentine’s Day came around, very few people were in the celebrating mood and I laughed at this notion for a world that supposedly celebrated love on this day is now incapable of doing just that, showing love on the day of love. There were a few exceptions which made me happy to see the best of the best of humanity surviving.

I stared up to the dark sky waiting for Valentine’s Day to be over. For those who haven’t figured out yet how to love, their time is about to run out. For you see, I made it so that come the stroke of midnight signaling the end of Valentine’s Day, the deadline. If the secret had not yet been cracked, then you are stuck, frozen in whatever form the person has taken on will remain so until their dying breath because, obviously, their organs will have stopped working and shut down. Then they will turn into a tree and when they die, they will replenish the earth they destroyed. Really, they have one else to blame but themselves. The clock struck 12.

“Happy Valentine’s Day.” I smirked as screams filled the air.