After the world stopped tying itself in knots, I found that I was standing inside what could only be a library. Books lined row after row of shelves and the place was deathly quiet. I looked at Cupid as he began walking.

I warily took a step after him, expecting my foot to land sloppily from my drinking, but I found that I was stone sober.

Quickly catching up, I noticed that my footsteps were slightly muffled against the hardwood floor. Looking down, I realized that I could see through my feet. Raising my arms up in raising horror I found I could see through them too.

“Am I dead!” I said in a panic.

Cupid turned to me and brought a finger to his lips, “Shhh we’re in a library.” Then he burst into laughter at his own joke, louder than my panicked yell.

“No, you're not dead, we’re just in The Place Between. Now let's go, she’s over there.” He continued walking.

Doing a little awkward jog, speedwalk, run hybrid I caught up to him. Taking a corner around a large bookshelf into an open study area, we came across a girl, she sat at a table alone with a pile of books in front of her and a heavy book open in her hands, reading studiously. The glasses that sat on her face didn’t help with the overwhelming nerdy vibe she was giving off.

“Kinda sad to be reading alone in a library on valentines day.” I said absentmindedly, then I quickly slapped a hand over my mouth, not knowing if she could hear me.

“Hey, not everyone is so fortunate to have such drama in their lives as to walk in on their girlfriend with another guy, like you.” Cupid said shutting me up. “Now quiet, who says she’s alone? Plus she can't hear you when we’re in The Place Between.”

I heard heavy footsteps coming from my right and I looked over, a strapping young man came walking towards the girl, a colorful, obviously fiction novel in his hand. He pulled out a seat, which made a loud screech and made the elderly librarian let out a hiss of a shush and plopped down next to her.

“Really Jared, do you have to make a scene everywhere we go?” The girl said in a whisper yell, pulling her head from her book finally.

“What? I can’t help it if I pull people's attention.” He said back with a confident smile.

“Whatcha readin’?” He asked leaning over and lifting the book forward so he could see the cover.

Glancing at it myself, the book looked so boring I lost interest halfway through reading the title.

“It’s a biology textbook, so in essence something you can’t comprehend since you read at a first-grade level.” She said jokingly.

“OH!” Jaret yelled in the silent library, “ You wound me, Juliet.” He fell off of his chair clutching his chest, really hamming up the whole thing and leaving the librarian gasping for breath from her extended shush.

“Jared stop, your going to get us kicked out.”Juliet said cheeks beat red with a barely contained smile on her lips.

“I don’t think I can go on for much longer, not after such an assault from someone I L-” Jared paused seeming to catch himself. “Would call my friend.” He ended, correcting himself.

The smile on Juliet’s face faded completely and she went back to her book. I looked at Cupid.

“How aren’t these two a thing yet?” I asked genuinely curious as to how it didn’t happen, their display alone showed that they were familiar and comfortable with each other.

“They’ve known one another since they were kids. Grew up together, and went through kindergarten, middle school, and high school together. She went to all of his games, he cheered her on through all of her debate competitions, mathlete competitions, and chess matches - she’s a real nerd - they know everything about one another, their deepest darkest, and saddest secrets. They love one another. But she is waiting for him to move, and Jared is too petrified of losing her if he screws up. The fear of losing her has Jared in a death grip that almost no one can break. That's where I come in. It’s humans like them that make me love my job, relationships like this are like a fine wine I get to sit back and watch age to perfection.” I looked at Cupid and the pudgy little man was actually getting misty-eyed. But from the way he talked, I could kind of understand his feelings.

He raised one hand, made a gun, and pointed it at Jared. “Bang.” Then at Juliet. “Bang.”

An explosion of color and I could instantly see the magic take effect. Jared clenched his jaw, building his resolve. He sat down next to Juliet, getting close.

She seemed to notice and raised her head from her book to look at him, his close proximity instantly made her face as red as a tomato.

“Juliet-” The large young man paused, his confidence shaky, even with the aid of Cupid's magic. His fear of losing her must have been tremendous.

“C’mon kid, push through, you got this.” Cupid said cheering Jared on. I couldn’t help but cheer him on also.

“Do it, man, just tell her how you feel.”

“Juliet,” He said once more.

“Yes,” she said, knowing what he wanted to say but needing to hear it herself.

“Juliet, I’ve been…in love with you since we were kids. And I didn’t know how to tell you, I was too scared of messing it up and-”

Juliet cut him off and planted a kiss on his lips, and took his big hand in hers.

“Alright, let's leave them alone, my job here is done.” Cupid said wiping a single tear from his eye.

As we turned to walk away Cupid put his hand on my shoulder and I could hear Juliet say in a soft voice, “You finally did it.” Then the world folded in on itself.

I blinked my eyes as the world finally stopped doing aerobics and took a deep breath, I couldn’t feel the world moving, but the visual effect was harsh on the eyes.

“Why doesn’t that feel as uncomfortable as I feel it should?” I asked Cupid.

“Some of you mortals handle it better than others, last one of you I let tag along, threw up at every stop until she had to bow out, then there was another woman that didn’t flinch at all, kinda like you. It’s different for everyone. Now quiet, this one is not going to be like the last. And speaking of quitting, you can call it at any time.” I got another sense of unease at his words.

We stood on a dry, grassy lawn in a neighborhood that had seen better days. In front of us, was a small one-story house, with peeling blue paint and trimmed with paint so faded I wasn’t sure what the original color was. The sense of unease grew as I looked at it.

Cupid walked towards the door and I followed. Like a ghost he moved through the closed portal and I followed having less confidence than he did since I had never done something like this before.

Like the teleportation though, I couldn’t feel it as my body passed through the door. Once inside, we were met with a living room, or what I could only assume was a living room.

A disheveled man sat on a couch that was covered in stains, wearing a wife beater that seemed to have the same motif going on as the couch. He was sipping a beer, watching a flat-screen tv but could have only been taking in half of what was going on, since one side of the tv had a huge crack running through it and the image was unintelligible.

I jumped as he suddenly shouted, “Woman! Where’s my sandwich?”

From what I could only assume was the kitchen a timid voice said in reply, “It’s coming right now dear.”

A woman that looked to be in her mid-thirties, with slight streaks of grey running through her hair, shuffled out of the kitchen. A plate with a hefty sandwich sat atop it in her hands.

As I looked at her, already putting together the situation, two things stood out like a candle in a pitch-black room. Number one was the several bruises that covered her arms and the deep purple black eye that seemed to take up half her face, which she tried and failed to hide behind dark hair with grey streaks running through it.

Number two, and the thing that made my blood run cold, more so than the obvious signs of abuse was the large entity that trailed behind her. It was at least seven feet tall, with inky black skin that trailed a damp stain wherever its clawed feet landed. It had a featureless face, just two pits that were obviously where the eyes were supposed to be. It had a large left hand clamped onto the woman’s shoulder following right behind her as she walked toward the man.

The man snatched the plate from the woman not even taking his eyes off the TV, just as I was barely able to take my eyes off the creature to see what else was going on.

I heard some noise but wasn’t sure what, my focus too transfixed on the entity. It seemed to suck the light out of the room how dark it was. It loomed over the woman like a monstrous living shadow.

My attention was pulled away from it though when suddenly the woman went flying, tumbling to the ground in a heap, holding the other side of her face that wasn’t scarred. The large man was up from his seat, faster than should seem to be possible for someone his size.

The creature still stood where the woman was, but its arm was stretched to where she now lay. In slow, glacier-like movements, it looked over to where the woman was and moved towards her, in long slow strides, as the man approached in quick heavy steps.

The woman lay holding her face on the ground sobbing, and I could see the bruise already starting to appear. I was moving before I knew it. I wasn’t normally one to put myself out there and attempt to be a good samaritan, and the man was much larger than I was, but seeing things like this made me sick.

I ran at the man, the terrifying creature forgotten, hunching low, and slammed into the man, or at least I attempted to. My incorporeal form slid through the man like sand through a loose grip. His movements didn’t slow in the slightest.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

I looked back to the woman and then to Cupid.

“We have to help her!” I yelled still on the floor.

“Not now, we’ve got bigger things to worry about.” I followed his eyes to the creature, whose expressionless face now was locked on me, the only other thing besides Cupid, that seemed to register my existence.

My heart rate started to pick up as it slowly started to approach me, its arm stretching, still attached to the woman, whose partner had started to kick her as she curled into a ball.

As much as I wanted to help her the creature seemed to be picking up the pace in its approach to me as I scrambled away from it.

I blinked, panic taking over me as the lumbering creature got closer, and in the moments my eyelids shut and opened Cupid had filled the space between us.

“Now I’m gonna need you to slow your roll there buddy, no attacking my guests.”

Cupid had lost the coat to his wrinkled suit and was currently folding up the sleeves of his shirt. He picked his cup up off the floor from where he had apparently placed it and took a swig.

Then he moved, and I lost track of him, the pudgy man seemed just to vanish. I heard a squelch and a sucking sound and looked at the creature's face. Cupid was off the ground, his arm, elbow deep into the creature's featureless visage, in a savage punch.

He pulled his arm back and it was covered in the inky black liquid, the creature leaned forwards, a river of the thick ooze seeping from the impact site. It still had its hand on the woman, and with each impact, the man planted on her, I could see something travel up its arm and into the creature. It seemed to grow.

“You’re a greedy little bastard aren’t you?” Cupid said in complete seriousness, seemingly unaware of how ironic it was since the creature was about three times taller than he was.

With its free hand the shadow thing swung at Cupid. Its large clawed hand whistled through the air. Cupid moved again. This time I could partially follow his movements.

He slipped under the swing, his pudgy form almost seeming to compress, and popped up behind the creature, his chest facing its back. His left hand came up like a comet and slammed into the creature harder than most bullets impact flesh.

Once again his arm sunk deep into the creature, and as quickly as it had entered the monster's side, it was pulled free.

More of the thick black liquid, which seemed to be some kind of blood, gushed from the shadow being.

The creature writhed from the hit and leaned back, holding its side. The featureless face seemed to stretch as it let out a soundless scream.

Taking the opening, Cupid kicked out its legs and its knees hit the floor, splattering the inky black liquid that seemed to cover its body. Cupid raised his hand to the back of the creature's head, hand made into the finger gun I’d seen him use several times already.

He opened his mouth, and behind him, I could still see the man whaling away at the poor woman. The creature's hand was still attached to her prone form, and I watched as its stretched arm flexed as a large amount of something traveled up the limb.

Cupid's finger glowed in a bright color I could not begin to describe, the magic thick enough I could almost taste it. But as he was about to say the words, whatever it was that the thing was sucking out of the woman, it completed traveling up its arm.

In one final attempt at saving its life and a burst of whatever power it got from the poor woman. The creature twisted its body and lashed out, bringing its clawed hand away from its wounded side, striking Cupid across the face.

Gold speckles lept from his face as the midnight claws dug into his flesh. Cupid stood there, his head knocked back leaving him to look up at the water-damaged ceiling. The world seemed to shudder, almost like reality itself was shocked by the creature's actions. Even the monster itself just lay there, arm outstretched, unmoving as though it couldn’t believe what it had done. In slow agonizing movements, Cupid brought his head back down to look at the creature. The expression of anger on his face was unearthly, his face contorted in a type of rage a human face was never meant to dawn, or even begin to hope to muster.

His finger was still extended, the indescribable ball of magic cracking at the tip. “You pathetic, feckless Caligo. You dare lay your wretched talons against my form? I will send you to the abyss.”

Cupid's words shook reality, as I watched. The pudgy man with the heavy rings around his eyes was nothing more than a mask that he put on. From the terrible wound that had ripped most of the flesh from his face, I could see behind the mask and see him for what he really was.

Thick purple-red muscle, with strands of golden filigree, weaved between the muscle fibers, his face pulsed, at a steady rhythm, as the golden threads moved along the muscle that was his real skin. He was hard to look at, not just because the scene was grim, but because just the majesty of it all. He was so much more than I already thought he was. I had seen the diagrams of the muscle layer under human skin, what Cupid was, looked nothing like that.

His face was split in sectors, with slight color variations, I could see arteries that ran across his face, with golden thread crisscrossing through them. His face expanded and contracted and a could hear a steady thumbing as his anger built.

The other details of his form were too much for my mind to handle, even now to try and call them to the front of my mind is near impossible.

Then he opened his mouth, the words were heavy, and even the abusive man seemed to feel the force of them, the power seeming to disregard that we were in the Space Between. “Pathetic Caligo, be cleansed, Gnab!”

The flash of light was magnificent as the orb of color lept from his finger. When the light finally subsided, there was nothing left of the thing.

Cupid strode over to his cup, which still sat on the floor undisturbed, and took a swig. His faux skin instantly started healing over, and in seconds the short pudgy man was back to normal.

“Good for nothin’ Caligo.” Cupid said wiping his arms off with a rag he’d pulled from his back pocket.

“What are you still doing on the floor?” He asked me.

I pushed myself to my feet, so many new questions wanting to leave my mouth, I just made an unintelligible sound.

“Before you ask, or have another seizure trying to, that was a Caligo, they feed off of the sorrow and despair of abuse victims, whether that be mental or like in this case physical. Thier servants of another person I don’t have the time to go into. They usually aren’t that big, but with relationships like this, that run on for this long, they can get out of hand if they feed enough. Sometimes a good therapist is enough to banish them without me having to do anything. But if someone is truly entrenched in the bonds of abuse, I have to step in, to give them another chance at freedom. They are a direct opposition to my very being.” He spat on the floor as if even the act of explaining what they were had left a bad taste in his mouth.

I looked over to the man, that had stopped hitting the woman ever since Cupid has spoken his powerful words. He seemed to be scanning the room, looking for something.

“Now as for you.” Cupid walked over to the man who stood head and shoulders above him. I thought he was about to grab ahold of the man, but he walked right through him and stooped down to the woman, who was slowly pushing herself up.

It was shocking that she could even move after the ruthless breathing she had taken.

He reached a palm out to her and placed it on her swollen forehead. “My poor child. You’ve been so afraid, afraid to run, afraid to fight, afraid to ask for help. Be free of your bonds, this is no place for you, leave.” Another flash of light not as bright as the last but I still had to squint.

As the light went away, a foggy look that had been in her eye since we had arrived seemed to lift. With a seeming new energy, the woman pushed herself up off the ground and ran towards the door, pulling it open and slamming it behind her.

That seemed to stir her abuser. He instantly made after her.

“Cupid, what the hell? He’s just going to grab her and beat her bloody again.”

Cupid looked at me, “this terrible scenario had stunted my design for a long time, but I always make adjustments. Don’t doubt me.” He gestured towards the door and started walking. I followed behind as he walked through the door the man had left open.

We watched as the woman ran down the street, pushing hard on bruised legs. The man reached for her. She stumbled forward and to the side out of his reach, and subsequently into the road.

My attention was pulled as the car came down the road, cruising at a speed that probably wasn’t best for residential areas. I looked back at the woman and saw that she was right in the line of fire of the oncoming car.

“Cupid! He’s going to hit her!” I yelled as the car closed the distance.

“My design boy, remember.”

The large man walked out into the street, heedless of everything else around him. His mind was solely on inflicting more damage on the woman. He brought back a foot and kicked her in the stomach, she rolled further into the street onto the opposite lane, I looked, no car on that side. As I looked back at the man, it was perfectly timed to see his body impact the car that hadn’t seemed to slow down at all.

The hood of the car crumpled as his large bulk slammed into it, and his body rolled over the hood and up the windshield, landing in a heap on the hot asphalt. Limbs were broken and a pool of blood seemed to instantly manifest as his body hit, crimson quickly taking up the street.

A loud crash made me jump as the car slammed into a thick utility pole. Something flew out of the windshield of the car and landed with a thud over into a neighbor's yard, behind a tall fence.

The woman got up from the ground, stunned from having a front-row seat to the entire thing. She looked over to the corpse of her abuser, and it looked as though she was about to check on him, but she shuffled over to the car whose horn was blasting.

She pulled open the door with some struggle and a man fell out from behind the steering wheel.

The sound of police sirens came a few seconds later, far too fast for an accident that had just happened.

Cupid made two finger guns and pointed them at the two battered and bruised people, the woman sat on her knees with the driver of the car laid out, his head in her lap, her hands cradling his face gently. Police cars came to a screeching halt as they surrounded the two.

“Bang. Bang” Lights erupted.

“Cupid, what the hell’s going on?” I asked, my confusion growing by the second.

“The guy there was a hostage. That thing that flew out of his car, a bank robber who had apparently never learned to wear a seatbelt. Like I said kid, trust my design.”

“But what about the woman? She probably won’t want to be in a relationship after what she’s been through.”

“For now Margert won’t, and rightfully so. But Bradly just saved her life and she kinda indirectly saved his. They won’t get together right now, she’s got a lot of healing to do. And Bradly will stick with her through all of it. Down the line though, that relationship will blossom into something good, something beautiful. Tragedy and bad times have an odd way of doing that.”

He just looked at me, as if to gauge if his explanation was satisfactory. And to be honest it was hard to think about. Between the woman's abuse, seeing the Caligo, Cupids fight with the monster, seeing a piece of his true face, and then the accident that left two people dead, I had a lot to think about. I ended up just giving him a shrug and a grunt of assent.

“Welp, okay then. Let's get to the next location.” He reached out a hand to me. And to my surprise and to his, my body moved on its own flinching away from him. Visions of his face flashed through my mind, clearer than any thought that's ever been in my head. His majestic yet ghastly form made my mind shake and twist. I hadn’t realized that seeing that had such an effect on me.

“I’m sorry” I instantly said.

“No no, it's fine, I understand. It was seeing my face wasn’t it?” Cupid asked, and I could tell he was kinda sad. I didn’t even get to answer before he spoke.

“There’s something about seeing it that really does affect you mortals on a spiritual level. Bet you didn’t realize how much it freaked you out up until now.” He gave a bitter scoff. It didn’t feel like it was aimed at me, but more so at someone else.

“If you want me to send you back I will, and I understand, there won’t be any hard feelings, seriously.”

I was sure this wasn’t the first time he had gotten a reaction like this, and that the person had leaped at the opportunity of escape, and I would have been a liar to say I didn’t think about ending it there either but my curiosity for more seemed to be stronger, and I felt bad for Cupid as well, he seemed like a normal enough guy just doing a job, his real face was just intimidating.

“Nah, I’m good, let's keep going.”

He perked up and was genuinely surprised at my words. The bags under his eyes almost seemed to listen as he smiled and reached up his hand to place on my shoulder.

As reality started to do backflips in my vision I heard Cupid say in a soft voice. “Thanks.”