Cupid

It turns out Cupid was a fat man dressed in a toga, who took his last stand on top of a department store in the height of Christmas season. His big crescendo was to fire off a dozen heart-tipped arrows into the torsos of the crowd below. His outfit also had wings, of the inexpensive Halloween cherubic variety, the feathers made of polyester, one of those plastic yellowish halos with the adjoining headband, and a brown felt quiver. Truth be told, considering the quality of the arrows (twelve carbon-fibre shafts with goose-feather fletching and tempered steel tips finely sharpened and dipped in red acrylic) and his bow (a compound with composite frame), he really skimped on the attire, suggesting his act was more important than his presentation, or maybe he just ran out of money. All the arrows hit with more or less fatal results, which you'd think would be a testament to his skill, but for the fact that before he'd launched even the first one someone in the crowd spotted him and shouted, with a hint of long-buried glee, “Holy shit, it's Cupid!” At which point everyone stopped what they were doing and looked up at him, and pointed, and laughed. And then, when he started firing arrows into the crowd, sure most took off for cover screaming, but an astonishing number of people just stood still. Their feet riveted, they practically bore their chests for the arrows to find, smiling, tears of a joyful sort streaming down their faces right until the very last moment of penetration, which, being so very, astonishingly, incomparably final, took everything else away.