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Rated: E · Short Story · Other · #1059841
Happy new year
Tantalus was a man, made famous by the punishment reserved for him after death, a man whose life was far duller in comparison. In one of the rare occasions, fame came without the opportunity to dilute it, with blatant attempts to attract the opposite, and spread it thinly over time.
He died for no noble cause, martyrdom was far too good, yet he continually inspires generations as his fate continues.

For Agatha (21, from South London), he would have reminded her of something but truly meant very little. One disc of moonlight cheated everything else in her head until it swamped all her senses.

Four months earlier, similar discs of unnatural light invaded her head hour after hour.
They always covered her vision in an instant with a white sheet, before it lifted to reveal the rest of the shoot. At moments such as these, Agatha, currently “(18, from Northampton)” to appeal to the target demographic, never grew accustomed to losing her eyes in addition to her clothes. To her, it seemed as if every snap stole something vital from within her while she was defenceless. It scared her, but made the photographers chuckle.
Four months earlier, her manager still chuckled too. It seemed like that’s all he did.
It must have been exactly four months earlier that her manager also told her about her taking a break from tabloids and “stereotypes”. He always gestured his inverted commas whenever judging others had to be done. He knew she was someone really, really special, and told her so on many occasions. Only when they were alone. He’s so sensitive of jealousy.
He announced, with a great build-up, he had the power that could get Agatha (26, of course, to protect from prejudice against the childish, from Buckinghamshire) a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity on reality television!
The very words made her skin crawl and her stomach lurch in the same way her primate ancestors reacted to the tasting yellow-and-black frogs. Natural selection eventually led them to understand tipping their arrows with certain extracted fluids proved better than consuming the poison themselves. These particular frogs made him too hungry and she knew too little about what they contained to construct an argument to prevent him from trying them himself.

Pale nausea from the past reddened into deep anger as she realised she was his cutlery, simply a tool of his, yet again.
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