"I am not your redemption." The words snake out in an oiled hiss, smooth and sweet and pleasant as arsenic. "I am not the device through which you find some sort of meaning to your sad, sorry state of existence."

They are calm. Quite calm, completely and entirely. The blood in their ears - it is not blood at all. It is LOVE, it has to be, boiling in their heart and in whatever passes for a SOUL that doubtless lies shriveled up in their chest like a tumor.

They are

Calm.

They are quite calm.

After all, they cannot stop smiling.