Yes it is good you've added the darkness warning at the top. This is very dark.



It is a bummer when you humanize the person whose life is ruined, but what Shanglion said got me thinking. And after an hour I decided that I think that is important. (Caution: I often think too much.)



Too many people these days go around indulging their senses of entitlement and greed by ruining the lives of others without regard to the fact that those others are fellow humans with hopes and dreams of their own. And in the end, there is seldom justice for the greedy and entitled.



The entitled and greedy donate a tiny percentage of their improper gains to charity, get a building or street named after them, (in the UK get an MBE), and everyone holds them in high regard.



And the ruined, if they live long enough spend their retirement years in real poverty (real poverty, not "poverty industry" poverty).



And that is life for many people. It is not what is most common in life, still most people are honest and good. But that 2% or so with no conscience are real, especially when you look at people positions of leadership and authority.



But such psychopathy and sociopathy (lacking a conscience, not seeing other people are fellow humans just like ourselves) is not uncommon. It deserves to be shown to the world and so we can gather round and condemn it. Condemn the psychopaths, not the people who write about them.



But I'm a techy, not an English major. To me it is a dark story, a fantasy story, a deep story, and a great story. It provokes real emotion -- I'm going to feel bad about this all day.



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Darkness can be overloaded. Like back when I was in high school we were assigned Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment". And the provincial education rules were that every year of HS you had to take one of Shakespeare's plays. Our English department always picked horrible tragedies*. And we studied each of these horrible depressing books for over a month each. I've always felt that such forced and prolonged exposure to extreme darkness contributed a bit to the high suicide rate. But this is a short story. Reading it is voluntary. And it serves a good purpose.



(Rather than softening the dark stories, it would be better to occasionally do a separate happy charitable story, if you feel like it.)



Anyway, sorry to rattle on for so long. Great story is all I really wanted to say.



* I was quite surprised many years later, as an adult, to learn Shakespeare also wrote entertaining comedies and romantic poems.