Cupid’s Demise by Nicholas Oliver Murdock

Cupid’s Demise by Nicholas Oliver Murdock

Desdemona had to do it. She had to kill that stupid, insipid, little interfering brat of a child, Cupid. It has been her one burning passion since this morning . . . now that she thought about it, she didn’t know where her hatred for Cupid had come from. She sat down and tried to think.

When she woke up this morning, she had no particular plans for the day. Just the standard, torture the humans, bringing pestilence and pain to their very existence. Just a normal everyday kind of day. But some moron had put a statue of Cupid right on her bedside table, next to her alarm clock. It was the first thing she saw upon waking.

But something happened while she was getting ready. An overwhelming desire to kill Cupid seized her. Not someday, not eventually. She wanted him dead today.

Cupid had woken that day, as every other day filled with the desire to spread passion and love and sweet cakes and lemonade. Well, perhaps, filled isn’t entirely accurate. There was a small, but growing, part of him that truly hated his life and wanted out of it. So a minute part of his brain hatched a plan to fix his eternal happy, happy, joy, love and laughter life.

He went through his day, like he perpetually did, slinging his arrows of passion at people, making this man fall in love with that woman, causing that woman to fall in desperate love with that woman. Inflaming the passion of an artist for his work. It was that arrow that had triggered a hint of an idea of a plan for him.

That plan festered and grew until he finally crafted the arrow of his own desire. Then he just had to wait for the right victim to come along. Desdemona came around the corner just then, dragging a human, a lawyer, from the smell of him into an alley to gather what little soul he hadn’t already lost to her kin.

Cupid had heard of Desdemona and her dedication to her calling. She was the perfect one for his arrow. The best part was she wouldn’t even know it had happened, as this one had a delay in its effect. It would center on the first thing she saw upon waking the next morning. He was good at those kinds of arrows. He was also good at sneaking in where he shouldn’t be and leaving gifts.

& & &

“Cupid, my love, why do you hide from me?” Desdemona asked

“Well, you wouldn’t want me to make this too easy.”

“I don’t suppose you know why I have this insatiable need and desire to end your pathetic life, do you?”

“I might, at that, but part of me is apparently having second thoughts,” Cupid replied.

“I’ve had passions to kill before. This one is different. What did you do to me?”

“Do you think I really enjoy spreading all this passion and love around every day? Do you think I have a choice? I can’t stop it, even though I’d like nothing more than a few centuries off.”

“Have you thought about spreading hate? I think we have a few openings. If you’d like to switch sides.”

A mace impacted marble and sent chips flying everywhere. Followed by Desdemona’s guttural scream.

“I really wish I could just blatantly help you. I really do. Apparently, I have a powerful survival instinct,” Cupid said.

“Not strong enough if you sent one of your passionate arrows my way.”

“It gets worse. I put the statue of me in your room.”

“You are a complicated and strange little love god, Cupid,” Desdemona said.

“Oh, would that I could be anything else.”

“I’m working on it. Just hold still and I make it painless.”

“Painless would be nice. Preferable to the alternative,” Cupid said.

“The more you make me chase you, the more likely it is to be painful.”

“Survival instincts are hard to suppress. Sorry,”

“You shot your dart at me with full knowledge of what it would provoke,” Desdemona said.

“Just give me a moment or two to compose myself and I’ll see if I can’t give you a clean shot.”

“That would be best for both of us, I think.”

There was a pause in the room’s destruction. Desdemona charged the tips of her nails, readying for a last strike. Cupid steeled himself for his final breath. Gathering what courage a god of love and passion could, he surprised himself with how much that actually was. He stood to accept the consequence of his arrows.

“Here I am. Strike me down, that I may have rest.”

Desdemona slashed at him with one hand, then the other. Both found their mark. With a wild splash of blood, Desdemona’s slashes ripped the throat of the god of love fully open, sending his living essence spilling onto the gleaming white marble floor. It pooled around his body. His face somehow managed a peaceful smile as it lay there in his demise.

“I hope you’re happy and at peace now. I didn’t really want to do that. But you literally didn’t give me an option.”

As Desdemona stood there over her latest victim, feeling the glow of a job well done and finished, a question dawned on her. Without the god of love, without his arrows of passion, would the world be a sadder and less vibrant place? She knew people would still fall in love, and artists would still create, but would the depth of those passions be as deep and lasting?

She needn’t have worried too much. The universe is an unusual creation. It doesn’t allow for things to be out of balance for too long, if it can help it. Here it had been allowed a unique sense of irony as well.

Desdemona felt a pull at her core that she hadn’t before. She looked out over the expanse of the world from this elevation that cupid had called home. It suddenly seemed to be brighter and more hopeful than it ever had for her. Joy, happiness, and love, previously anathema to her, now filled her. She was a daemon. What did she know of these emotions? Still, those and more flowed into her now. As she looked out, her vision sharpened and focused on a pair of lost souls who were despondent and forlorn. They sat in a park on opposite benches, not seeing each other or anything else, lost in their own miseries.

She suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to help these two people find each other. She found in her hand a dark lightning bolt charged with energy to melt their hearts toward each other. Desdemona almost dropped the shaft in shock at what had happened. Then she remembered something that her mother had told her once about daemons. If they kill something stronger than they are, they claim all those powers and responsibilities. She nearly wept at her new fate.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Nicholas Oliver Murdock 2025