If it wasn’t for just one unsettling flaw, it didn’t seem like she had anything inherently wrong with her. In fact, she was practically the embodiment of an archetypal dream that countless men have shared; one from which they wish not to wake.

Yet, here I was, focusing on that which jolts my inner being to its core. I can even distance myself from the situation and realize the irrationality of my predicament. Like an ornithologist with a penguin phobia, I could clearly see the unfortunate humor in the situation.

Her gaze filters to the deepest recesses of my sense of self, and I cannot seem to escape from it. It’s as though there isn’t even a single private corner within my mind left untouched. That special clearing in the cool dew-soaked forest I would escape to when I needed to ground myself is now tainted by a probe of immense power.

If I had a soul, you tried to find it, and you accidentally fried my inner sense of self.