Valentine’s Day was always a joke to us, a commercial holiday for saps and those too desperate to cling to the idea of romantic love. So, when Mia found that ancient book buried in the corner of that musty old bookstore, it was meant to be another laugh. A dusty tome with spells for love, prosperity, and, amusingly, one to summon Cupid himself.
“Hey, Chase, how about we summon Cupid? You know, bind our love eternally, yada yada…” Mia suggested with a smirk, her eyes alight with mischief.
I looked at her skeptically. “Sure, why not? Maybe we’ll have a story to tell afterwards,” I conceded.
We didn’t believe it, not really. But we were curious, thirsty for a thrill that our mundane lives lacked. The ritual was simple, almost disappointingly so: a circle of rose petals, two candles lit at its center, and a chant in a language that sounded like gibberish. We held hands, our fingers laced tightly together, and recited the words with skepticism.
“This feels ridiculous,” I whispered, trying to stifle a laugh.
“Shh, just go with it,” Mia whispered back, squeezing my hand.
The moment the final syllable left our lips, a gust of wind extinguished the candles, and the room fell into an unnerving silence. We laughed it off, ready to move on from our little adventure, but then we saw him.
Cupid, a figure far removed from any quaint depiction we had imagined. Not the plump cherub of greeting cards, but a being of ancient majesty and awe, his presence alone rendering the air around us thick, almost tangible. He stood enveloped in a soft, ethereal glow, his wings magnificent and iridescent, casting dancing shadows around us. His attire, a blend of armor and robes, spoke of eras long past, and his eyes, deep pools of timeless wisdom tinged with a melancholy that tugged at the very essence of our beings, held us captive.
“Your love will be eternal, bound beyond the confines of time and flesh,” he proclaimed, his gaze penetrating our very beings. “But heed this warning, for two souls merged as one will traverse a path fraught with bliss and torment in equal measure. The bond you seek is irrevocable, intertwining your fates forevermore.”
We thought it poetic, if overly dramatic. But before either of us could protest, his form dissipated like mist under the morning sun. The reality of his words began to take shape in a way neither of us expected.
—
In the days that followed, our love intensified, a burning passion that consumed every waking moment.
“I’ve never felt this way before,” Mia confessed after a night of passionate lovemaking. Her eyes gleamed with an intensity that both thrilled and scared me. “It was like…”
“…You felt what I felt,” I completed her thought.
We were ecstatic, basking in the glow of an unbreakable bond, a love that felt like it could defy the gods themselves. But as weeks turned into months, that ecstasy began to morph into something else. An unyielding attachment, a need so deep it bordered on obsession.
“It hurts when you’re not here,” I admitted during one of our increasingly rare moments apart, feeling a pang in my chest that was more than just emotional.
Our friends noticed the change, voicing concerns that we initially brushed off as jealousy. “You two are losing yourselves,” one of them said, but we couldn’t see it, wouldn’t see it.
Work became an afterthought, our careers a distant memory as we lost ourselves in each other. But even that wasn’t enough. The need to be closer, to become truly one, gnawed at our sanity. We stopped leaving the house, stopped seeing anyone else. Our world shrank until it was just the two of us, and still, it felt as though there was too much space between us.
One night, in a fit of desperate madness, we tried to reverse the spell, to sever the bond Cupid had forged. But the book offered no answers, and our pleas to the ether went unanswered.
“What have we done?” Mia cried, her voice a mix of fear and despair. We were trapped in a love that had turned into a prison, our minds becoming as one, our bodies slowly losing their distinction.
“I can’t tell where I end and you begin anymore,” I said, looking into her eyes, which now mirrored my own thoughts and fears.
—
One morning, as the first rays of the sun crept through the curtains, casting a dim light on our apartment, the world around us felt eerily still. I opened my eyes, or perhaps Mia did—by then, the distinction was a luxury we could no longer afford. The room looked different, as if seen through a lens that slightly distorted reality, making everything familiar seem foreign.
I tried to stretch, a morning ritual that once belonged to me alone, but found that my, or our, limbs moved with a fluidity that was unsettling. There was no resistance, no sense of individual control. Panic set in, a shared terror that coursed through our combined consciousness. We rushed to the mirror, but the reflection that greeted us was neither Mia nor I. It was a grotesque amalgamation, features blended so seamlessly that it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.
Our eyes, once distinctly different in color, now shared the same shade, a swirling mix of our former selves. Our hair, a tangle of strands that couldn’t decide on a color, fell around a face that seemed to shift subtly with each blink. The horror was not just in our appearance; it was in the realization that we had become a single entity, a thought process that was no longer mine or hers but ours.
The terror of our new existence was palpable, a shared dread that made our heart—now a singular, beating organ within our merged chest—race. We tried to speak, to cry out in despair, but the voice that emerged was neither mine nor Mia’s. It was a harmonic blend that seemed to echo around the room, a sound so alien it sent shivers down our spine.
As the days passed, the reality of our existence became a living nightmare. Memories began to merge, individual experiences blending into a collective consciousness that was increasingly difficult to navigate. Emotions intensified to an unbearable degree, each feeling amplified by our shared mind. Joy was euphoric, sadness was a chasm of despair, and fear was paralyzing.
—
In moments of lucidity, we long for the simplicity of our previous lives, for the loss of our individuality, the unique quirks that made us, Mia and Chase. But those moments are now fleeting, quickly drowned out by our growing oneness.