Rage Potion

[WP] Love/Lust Potions only have that particular effect on MOST people. Folks who're actively repulsed by the thought of sex are instead sent into a blind rage when given those same potions.

*****

"You're in the wrong part of town, boy." a sneering voice called from the shadows.

Wendell froze, and flinched, but he resisted the urge to run. He knew he was in the wrong part of town, course. He was too short, too timid, too pale -- too Wendell, to be here, especially at this time of night.

He turned to face the man stalking up to him from out of the darkened maw of a nearby alley. Wendell took in the man's features in the flickering light of the gas streetlamp that provided the only illumination in the immediate vicinity. Tall, dark skin and eyes, shaved head, with a thin horizontal scar over one eyebrow.

That was the description Carmelita had given of the man who'd demanded her purse when she'd walked these same streets a few nights ago. She'd resisted, and he'd struck her hard enough to fracture her jaw, and taken her purse anyway, leaving her lying in the street.

Everyone was sympathetic, outwardly. The City Watch said they'd find the man who'd robbed and beaten her. Wendell knew they were lying. Privately, he knew they thought she was partly to blame. Indeed, they probably thought she was lucky the man hadn't done worse to her. Lucky, they'd say, that she'd "only" been robbed and beaten.

After all, like Wendell, she had been in the "wrong part of town."

"Seeing as you're tresspassing, you're gonna have to pay a fine." the man said, with easy confidence, resting a hand on the iron-studded cudgel at his belt. "Everything you've got should cover--" the man paused, tensing up, as Wendell pulled out a vial, gripping it shakily.

Alchemists, who distilled the purified essences of the elements and recombined them into tinctures and potions with wondrous effects, could be deadly in a fight. They'd hurl volatile concoctions of concentrated fire, or lightning, or wind, that could devastate their opponents.

Wendell, however was not an alchemist, and the man relaxed as he realized this. Volatile tinctures of elemental power had a characteristic bright glow, in various colors corresponding to the element they contained. None looked like the pale pink liquid in the glass vial Wendell held, stoppered with a decorative gold-topped cork in the shape of a heart.

The man chuckled. "Is that...a love potion? Well, that's worth something, too, if it's real -- I'll take it, but I'm still taking your coins, too. Hand it ov--"

The mugger's jaw dropped in disbelief as Wendell downed the potion, and smashed the vial on the ground. Then his expression darkened.

"I could have gotten good coin for that, bastard." the man snarled, hefting his cudgel and closing the distance.

Wendell snarled back. The thug's eyes grew wide, and he skidded to a halt, as Wendell began to change.

Wendell, you see, loved Carmelita. He wanted to be in love with her. He wanted to love her, as a man loved a woman. But he could not. The thought of Carmelita filled him with joy and delight. But the thought of touching her, of kissing her...that filled him with revulsion strong enough to turn his stomach.

He didn't know why. He had told very few people of it, mostly because people always tried to label him, when he told them how he felt when he thought of sex. "Oh!" they'd say, "You must be this, or must be that, or perhaps you're this other thing." But he was none of those things. He was just Wendell.

He'd hoped that the marvelous alchemists, who could master thunder and lightning, and sell them in flasks for a handful of silver, would be able to help him. But their so-called love potions did not effect him as they did others -- he knew, because he'd tried them before. For most, a love potion simply fed the tiny sparks of interest, fanning them into a bonfire of desire and infatuation.

But in Wendell, if such passions were present at all, they were smothered beneath the reflexive disgust he felt at he idea of physical intimacy. And so, as a result, it was that disgust, that revulsion, that rejection, that the magic of the potion fed instead. The results had been ghastly.

The potion could not change him enough to let him touch, or kiss, or make love to the woman he adored. It only amplified what was already there. But when he learned what happened to Carmelita, he'd cleared out his savings, and bought another dose of the alchemist's brew. Because he knew it could change him enough to avenge her.

The Thing-That-Was-Not-Wendell roared into the night, as it flailed warped and misshapen limbs that had grown to twice their original size, and spewed out streams of caustic burning bile. Louder still, rose the screams of the object of its blind rage.

The next day, Wendell went to work as he always did. Later, he would visit Carmelita in the hospital, and bring her fresh flowers. It would always weigh on him, that he could not express his love as others did. But, at the same time, he could always take comfort in one simple truth:

There are many ways to express love.

*****

THE END.

Well, this is the laziest Wednesday I've had in a while. .The sun is unforgiving so I'm stuck at home 🥲