[attr="class","header2"]APPEARANCE

[attr="class","header2"]THE GODS WILL NOT LET YOU

[attr="class","body"]


i don't want to talk about this.

(emie was born of a difficult labor that her mother would not survive. this event bore a rift between her and her father that would never close. as emie grew, so did her father's resentment of her. by the time emie was in school, she and her father lived mostly separate lives.

in school, emie was unremarkable. she had few friends and her test scores were middling. few peers resolved to talk to her, so emie lived a lonely life. given the many hours she had alone, given her father's general absence, emie often spent them transfixed by old movies and television shows, where she gained a passion for the performing arts.

she never was popular by any means, but acting gave her a reason to keep coming to school by the time she was in high school. it allowed her to put on a new face, a new identity that was not emie ankage, the lonely girl with no friends, no family, and no joy. she often played comic relief characters, as she found herself gifted in physical comedy. her local shows ignited a new passion in her—being able to make people laugh!

as soon as she was able, emie ran from home and joined a local troupe of actors and improv artists, who themselves had a small group of modern day clowns. from here, she had a new identity—puddles the clown!

as a clown with a gifted talent to make people laugh, especially with the use of her quirk, emie found herself at a local children's hospital often, where she was hired out by the hospital to provide entertainment to dying and sick children. before this moment, emie had been sheltered from the tragedies of daily life, living blissfully unaware of the unfairness of existence. it was in this hospital that she finally reckoned with the reality of life.

emie met a little girl named misa. she had cancer, but her outlook looked good. emie and misa got along so well, that emie slowly began to favor misa more than the other children she entertained. to emie, misa was the first—and last—friend she ever had. they just understood eachother in a way nobody else could.

and then misa died. the cancer metastisized and spread to her blood, and she died within a month of emie starting to work at the hospital.

emie lost it. she had been religious before, often praying to god to rescue her from her dad's abusive household, but not anymore. how could there be kindness or happiness in a world that allows children to die at 8 years old? how could there be real joy if it was so fleeting, there one moment and gone in the next?

emie's worldview shattered and shifted in an instant. she had once been so optimistic, and now she turned to extreme nihilism and paranoia. her life had sucked. everybody else's life sucked too, it appeared. not even her old passion, acting, made her happy anymore. though emie kept returning to the hospital, children kept dying. what the hell was the point of life given so much tragedy?

there was no point, emie concluded. none at all. so what did any of her actions on earth matter?

she was still hopeful though. maybe there's something after life that is good. maybe there is a place where there is no more suffering, where all dads are good and all moms live and all children with cancer get better. emie wanted to reach that place. in all of her endless compassion, she wanted all of her peers to reach it too so that everyone could go party in the afterlife.

so she killed someone. and then another person. and then another. and when everybody is gone, she'll be the last to go to the afterlife. finally, she'll be free.

finally, something that makes her happy.)