
Note: This is a self-published book. It should be stated that the content of this book is fairly mature and not for the faint-hearted. That being said, I hope you enjoy this short novel.

Dedicated to no one

## Chapter One

_"Lover where did you die and where did you forget my heart?"_

It was slightly cold. A breezy, mild temperate in which children wore rain boots but not coats. An occasional jacket with fleece innards could be seen on the streets, white tassels hanging from their fronts, jumping with every step. Children especially delighted in this time of year, as leaves fell in cascades of reds, oranges, and yellows, gliding down softly into their outstretched palms. The cicadas had come that summer and had left hollow, transparent shells hanging on bark and littered in the dried grass around tree roots. They crunched beneath hurried feet on the sidewalk, the wet patter of boots running up and down the block.   
Some of the younger boys picked a few of the shells up, holding them against the sun before stuffing them into their pockets to scare the girls with later. They'd toss them into their pretty tied-back (or, in a lucky sighting, loose) hair, the barbed insect feet sticking on like branches.  
Along the sidewalk out front of an elementary school, a ten-year-old child sat on his heels as he dragged his palm against the concrete. Under his skin, ants smeared a dark brown color, squashed and their guts moved. He was a thin child with white, pallor hands and red knuckles. The dry skin on his hands lifted in white tufts and when he curled his fingers inwards into a fist they ached.  
A girl slid down the playground slide, screaming as a she held her dress down.  
The boy examined his hand with little enthusiasm, simply observing the chaos he had wrecked upon the little creature's life. Now one had to take the past tense, so it was what _had_ been its life. The racing black dots swerved around his sneakers—they were heavy platformers with their tongues sticking out—and disappeared in the cracks between the concrete slabs. The boy sat back on his heels, wiping his hand on his shorts, a slight burn going up his flushed palms. One must have bitten him, somewhere too small for the human eye to readily make out. It was small, but it still hurt.  
Small. This boy considered himself to be small.  
But he was growing. Ten was a defining age, the age where kids began to realize who they were and what they wanted to become. Except, many didn't realize anything at all, and sometimes never did for the rest of their lives. They'd grow up and be exactly the same, just larger and more tired.  
Maybe they'd have a little more forcibly crammed, stuffed inside of them, but nothing actually important. Geniuses were found at the age of ten and cultivated separately; tiny hands clutched onto college text books as they walked innocently into the gaping maul of the system. Others could envy them but there was never much to envy when those children were never heard from again.  
The boy sitting on the sidewalk was of the age of ten, as stated before.   
This was important because of the above reasons, and because this child in particular was wary and bent under the weight of having to assume the responsibility of finding himself. You see, no one has an easy transition from child to adult. People are not given a pamphlet as they age, detailing out to them what they should and shouldn't do. Fortunately, most humans are able to navigate themselves around the obstacles of an awaking self and slip in smoothly with the rest of society. No one truly ever fits but they appear as though they do, and that's the best we imperfect animals, as we surely are, can hope for.  
Then, in other cases, people do not have it as easy at all. In fact, they have it rather difficult, as was the unfortunate case of this young boy. His name was Theodoros, Theodoros Terrell, derived from the Greek words that meant "gift of god." His family had never been very religious, but it had been his grandfather's name, and so was passed down to him. It was a saint's name, something divine and undeniably sophisticated. It pushed him away from other children, who had stumbled all over his name since kindergarten, never quite being able to get their tongue around it. It escaped as 'Te-do-rus' or 'The-dor-es' followed by an awkward correction and an apologetic smile. Over the years, he'd shortened his name to Theo despite what guilt he felt over losing some of his family heritage. He was ten, he could make his own choices now.  
He made the choice because his full name was like a branded warning burned into his body, announcing This Kid Is Different. A Stay Away to his collective peers. He was a red stop light, a Slam Your Brakes And Turn.  
Theo was a freak, or so the boys in his class told him, a weirdo. The kids on the playground talked about him just loud enough so that he could hear, telling stories about how messed up he was, how he liked to kill animals and would take them home with him. Probably to kiss or something. The girls made Ew! sounds and giggled nervously as they scampered away from the sidewalk. Their pretty brown hair swung behind them in pigtails and a flurry of layered dress skirts.   
Theo looked down at the remains of the dead ant on his palm, just a faint tint of a shade darker than the rest of his hand. He licked it to get the stain off and then stood up, brushing some stray ants off his pants and arms. Their feelers stuck up and their tiny teeth made clapping motions. The bite on his palm still stung, so he redoubled his efforts of getting rid of the little pests. He stood in front of the school door, waiting patiently for recess to end. He crammed his fingers into his pocket, waited for the sweat to start forming in his palm. He waited silently with dead grasshoppers and spiders and ladybugs nestled warmly, humidly, in his jean pockets against his hands. He had to get new companions every evening in his backyard because during the day their legs fell off and got lost in his pockets and their feelers got crumpled and fell off too along with their delicate lace-thin wings.   
The ladybugs made Theo's hands smell especially bad after he caught and smothered them in his pockets. The bitter smell hung to his fingers throughout most of the day.  
The electronic bell rang and all of the students pushed and crowded their way around him, stepping through the doors, laughing and running and talking. The ten-year-old boy walked in quietly and didn't speak for the rest of the day. His thumb ran over the sleek, half-circle of a detached ladybug wing.  
It was thin and shiny and when he applied just a little pressure with his thumb and forefinger, it broke into three glossy pieces.   
Yes, Theo was a boy with unusual habits. The big one for most people was that he killed animals. It wasn't for the fun of it, but because he could. (He was also very, very lonely.) His mentality was Why Not? He killed animals that would go unnoticed, creatures that nobody cared for anyway. (Just like him.) If no one cared, what difference did it make if they were alive or dead? Theo had a collection of dead insects lining his shelves where a normal boy would have one lively butterfly, waiting for a good time to set it free. Theo's insects were never set free. Instead, they gathered in rows and rows of glass jars that eventually became his own insect necropolis. It wasn't normal, he was intensely aware of that fact.  
Theo had always been afraid of being crazy.  
He'd always known that there was something a little off about the way he thought, about the way he acted. There was something dark and clumsy around the frayed edges of his mind that he'd promised himself never to indulge, never to let see the light of day. They were dirty, not suitable for saying. At the age of six he'd learned that normal children did, in fact, not kill their pet goldfishes for fun. Sadness hadn't been brought up within him, hadn't even occurred to him, until his mother walked in and asked him if he was okay. He didn't cry when he flushed the fish down the toilet drain.  
Theo was weird in all aspects of his life. Stuck out like a sore thumb.  
The way he talked (quietly, like he was whispering, stuttered), the way he walked (hunched, shoulders bent inwards), even the way he smiled (tight, curving up just a little too far).  
His hair was curly and brown and hung over his eyebrows just slightly.  
His eyes were unremittingly squinted because—although he wasn't aware of it—he was short-sighted and was badly in need of glasses. The stumbling he was prone to was a side effect of this, whereas he'd always just assumed he was clumsy. This assumption hadn't been completely unprecedented, as he did have odd body proportions. Long legs and arms, slim, tall body with bony features and elbows. Speaking of arms, his arms were as dirty as his finger beds, as his hobby often led him elbow-deep in soil looking for new bug companions.  
All together, Theo was a sickly looking individual with worrying fascinations. His parents hadn't had the heart to take their son to a therapist yet, arguing that ten was too young. He was going through a phase. He just needed more friends. A lot of children are a little awkward at first. The bugs? He just liked how they looked. They're pretty. He might be an artist or a biologist!  
That being said, that afternoon as Theo was walking home alone from the school, he felt more left out than usual. That meant killing more bugs, almost obsessively for the rest of the afternoon when he got home.  
He adjusted the straps on his backpack, pulling them up higher on his shoulders.  
Across the street a couple of boys were playing ball on the road, kicking it to each other. The thing about boys his age was that they were almost all inherently violent in nature. They played by punching each other, rolling on the ground in fist fights until one of them gave or broke something.  
Theo walked a little quicker, determined not to be stopped by them.  
Unfortunately, having somehow unwittingly picked the short stick in life, Theo had no such luck. One of the boys said something, loudly, and suddenly all of the boys were looking at him with their freckled skin and short hair.  
The undisputed leader of this group was Alec Chase, an eleven-year-old with hard eyes and tousled black hair. His family had moved to Washington a few years ago, having left Osaka for better job prospects. It was rumored that recently his parents had gotten a messy divorce, and that Alec had missed school days because he'd been in court. The boy stepped towards Theo, his dirty sneakers wet and cold-looking. He didn't have socks on.  
"Hey, kill any more bugs today, freak?" Alec spat the word Freak with a sneer as he blocked the pathway.  
"No." Theo lied and looked at his shoes, his fingers tightening around the backpack straps. Alec pushed his chest and Theo stumbled backwards, hands scrapping against the concrete as he fell. It hurt, the skin peeling up his palms. "I saw him, he was killing ants during recess," one of the other boys revealed as they crowded behind Alec. They looked at him like he was confusing, a little scary, but mostly just weird. Alec shook his head and glared at Theo, "gross." Theo's chest constricted. "you have to be messed up in the head to like killing insects." The statement felt humorously ironic, coming from a bully who liked to beat up other kids for fun. Theo would have laughed had he not been worried of being Alec's next victim of physical assault.   
More importantly, Theo really didn't have anything to say in retaliation. He was almost completely sure that he was mentally ill in some way. He wasn't necessarily ashamed of it, he just hadn't completely come to terms with the notion yet. Apparently bullies were not the patient type because while Theo was scrambling for a good way of coming out about his insecurities, they had grown bored. It was pretty insensitive of them, when Theo really thought about it; they'd caused him to pursue a pretty life-changing internal debate and had not waited long enough to let him get used to the idea and verbalize it.  
"Whatever," Alec laughed as he kicked dust off the sidewalk at Theo, a fine brown mist flying airborne at him. The leader stuffed his fists in his shorts and then walked down the sidewalk. The rest of the boys gave Theo mocking glances as they hurried to follow Alec. They followed at the boy's heels like dogs. Pack mentality. It was interesting once Theo got over how terrifying they were. He watched them until they were a few good blocks away and then stood up, kicking his leg out to get dust off of it. They left him in better shape than usual. He examined the scratch on his hand, marveling a little too long at the blood that rose from multiple pin-sized cuts on his palm. The scrape of skin traveled from the base of his palm to the base of his fingers. Small pebbles stuck in the groves and a few places bled just slightly.  
He curled his hand into a fist and then started walking home. His left sneaker was untied and he stopped and kneeled down in front of the house door because his mother always got mad when he didn't have his laces tied.  
The screen door opened and he walked inside, closing the door with a tug—it was old, his father said, and needed to be tugged into place.  
The house was dimly lit by sunlight and his parents weren't home. They wouldn't be home until ten probably. He silently surveyed the living room, making sure that nothing was out of place. Once he'd deemed the house safe, Theo set down his backpack on the ground and walked to his room.  
He carefully closed and locked the door and then climbed up on his bed with his jacket and some jars from his side table. He lined them up on his blanket and then pulled out the dead bugs from his pockets, sorting out the ladybugs and dropping them in a jar labeled LADIE BUG. Next were the grasshoppers or GREEN BUGs. Then the fallen off pieces went in the LEFT OVER jar. Legs and antenna and sometimes dry little eyeballs. The heads seemed to come off quite easily as well. Theo nodded and then put the jars back on their table, pushing them back perfectly in place. Now all he had to do was wait.  
It usually took a while for souls to rise from dead creatures. It was okay, Theo was a patient boy. More so than a lot of kids his age. He knew that it took time for the living to give up control of their bodies and become ghosts. He followed the Golden Rule.  
You see, Theo was not an ordinary boy. Now, no person is ordinary, as every single person is unique. In a sense, ironically, our uniqueness makes all of the same. Just as math prodigies are found at a young age, Theo too had found out something at the age of ten. He found out that he could see ghosts. He'd realized this one day when he was talking to a boy who did not exist. The boy hadn't looked too different from any of the other people waiting for the bus, he just hadn't existed to other people. During the course of their conversation Theo had realized that the boy was very much dead. He'd died in a car accident, the boy had told him. Sometimes Theo wondered where that boy had gone because he hadn't been hanging around the usual road intersection lately.  
That was old news though.  
Theo sat back on the bed and watched the jars. "They're taking a little long," he said quietly, as if talking would disturb them. It probably wouldn't though, as bugs tended not to speak English. Theo looked across the room at Lindy, gauging what she thought. "What do you think, Lindy?"  
Lindy was a young girl with brown hair down to her chin and a morose half-smile. Theo considered her to be his first friend. Theo's parents had never liked Lindy and often refused to acknowledge her at all. It was almost as though they couldn't see her and that had confused Theo at first because she was obviously there. Yes, she was a little shy, but she was definitely not hiding from his mom and dad. After a few months it had dawned on him that perhaps he was the only who could see her. His parents referred to her as "an imaginary friend" and that eventually she would go away. It bothered Theo that they could be right. What if she just left one day?  
What if she left like the boy at the bus station had? Where would she go?  
Theo decided that it was high time that they talked about this. He cleared his throat in the silence. Lindy didn't talk much, just kind of hung out in his room. When he was younger, he and Lindy used to talk more. Now they had grown apart a bit. Theo was upset because it seemed like she didn't want to be his friend anymore.  
She looked at him, kind of glum, like she were upset about something. Sometimes at night Theo would hear her cry by the closet because she thought that he was asleep. Poor Lindy.  
"Lindy, I think that we should talk. You seem sad these days." Theo pointed at her and she wavered slightly on her feet. She didn't talk to him, but she nodded. Her translucent skin was looking more silvery than usual.  
"You're not going away, are you?" Theo asked, worried that his best friend might leave him. Her eyebrows scrunched together and she shook her head no. That was a relief. "Good," Theo smiled.  
Sometimes Theo wondered how Lindy had died. He couldn't remember her ever telling him, although he figured that she must have at some point.  
Ghosts always told him how they died. Unless they were insects of course, then they just acted as insects might, crawling up and down furniture although they didn't need to. They were a lot more durable when they were dead. Oh, the ladybug!  
Theo looked down and saw the translucent ghost of the ladybug slowly escape from its previous body. It crawled through the jar and then stopped, as though it were confused, before it continued on its way. Insects didn't really mull on their death as long as humans did, barely taking a second before moving on. Their souls were also the first to disappear. Some of the insects' ghosts would disappear after a day, some after a few hours. Humans took longer to let go, some of them staying for years.  
Old people were usually the quickest to let go, almost content to leave.  
Theo mostly saw the ghosts of younger people, people who had been killed quickly and too early. Those ghosts were usually bitter and confused, unable to accept their early departure. They felt cheated and stayed. Lindy, for example, had been with him for a while now. Her somber countenance reminded him of a particularly gloomy day, the kind with clouds and thick rain. He stood up and walked over to her, as she rarely ever moved from her levitating spot by the window.  
"Do you want to talk? I think we should talk." He reached out his hand to touch hers and his fingers passed through hers like water. Ghosts couldn't feel objects, but Theo reasoned that it was the thought that counted. Lindy scowled and withdrew her hand, floating a little further up the wall, out of his reach. She did this when she was angry. "Lindy," Theo sighed and rolled his chair up to the wall so he could stand on it. He wobbled a bit but was able to stand successfully face-to-face with her again. "Are you angry about something I did?" He asked and Lindy shook her head quickly, locks flying over her face. "Are you angry at mum and dad again?" He asked and she stopped the shaking, staring at him with translucent eyes. Her perpetually childish face squished in a way that Theo recognized as her teary face.  
Theo sighed, they must have ignored her again. "Lindy, you can't take it personally. They just can't see you. It doesn't mean that they don't like you." She didn't look moved. He tried again, "come down and we can do something you want to do. Do you want to play a game? Come on."  
Lindy pouted but slowly drifted down, small feet almost meeting the floor as she sat cross-legged and waited. Theo sighed in relief and hopped from the chair, which sent it careening backwards into his desk on its wheels. He sat down on the floor as well and tried to think of a game. "You want to play outside? We can play tag."  
Lindy shook her locks again angrily. "You always cheat," she whispered bitterly. Theo smiled, relived that she was talking again. "Yeah, well, it's not my fault that I can't feel it when you get me." He shrugged helplessly and she seemed to forgive him, wandering through the wall, and he saw her slip outside from the window. Theo quickly put on his shoes again and went out the front door, the way living people had to. It seemed a little cooler outside as the wind had picked up. Lindy's wavering form beckoned him away from the door, clearly already having gotten a head start. She laughed as he fruitlessly chased her, her glimmering toes barely touching the ground; an afterthought. Whenever he happened to get close she'd "accidentally" go through a tree or bush and Theo was forced to find another way around it."You're not allowed to go through stuff!" Theo yelled as he stopped at a fence—the neighbor's—she'd just flown through, trying to see if there was a way over it without getting scuffed up. She stopped a few feet away and grinned at him, "oops."   
Theo frowned and then grabbed onto the top part of the wooden fence, hoisting himself up. At the top, he had a slight backlash of dizziness but regained himself and dropped down on the other side. "God, Lindy, don't do that. You could have just flown back over. I'm not good with heights."  
He paused and looked around for his companion. "Lindy?" No answer. Theo frowned again, feeling like an overbearing parent who had lost their child in a supermarket. He walked around the back of the house, looking at the hedge of woods behind the yard. There was another breeze and he saw Lindy drift from the forest, a look of odd remorse on her face. She drifted over to him, her hands clutched together. "Theo, Theo. There's someone in the woods."

## Chapter Two

He was so beautifully flawed it hurt. One couldn't help but love his helplessness. Eye his pale, blue-veined hands and imagine them in their own.  
Protective and selfish. Imagine rough fingers curling over his throat and pressing there until purple and yellow and blue bruises rose up his skin like watercolors. Up under his chin, the soft skin there. The click and constrict of shallow breaths and swallows. Never hard enough to kill though, no, just to blemish. Everyone wanted to blemish this boy. It was so hard not to.  
As a child he'd almost been kidnapped from stores and out of parks and off of sidewalks more times than he cared to remember. Didn't remember most of them.  
He could still picture the black-heavy stench of a taller anonymous man walking up to him, face dark against the sunlight. A halo.  
The man had tried to grab the boy's hand, hold it in his own dirty ones.  
"Such a beautiful child," the sour, humid breath.   
Fear, no. The boy's brother was inside and he got red-angry, spittle mad, when someone tried to touch the boy. The brother grabbed his handgun, stumble-drunk, and ran out the door threatening to shoot the man. The hand pulled and the boy tumbled forward onto the sidewalk, the tell-tale sting of blood blooming at his knee. He didn't cry, just looked at the black devil, churning, smiling crescent fear frozen until the man ran down the sidewalk, corporate shoes smacking against the pavement.  
The boy's brother knelt by him, sweat and beer radiating from him like the bedroom AC. "That bastard, look at him go. You get scuffed, Cole?  
Just a little blood. Let's go inside to clean you up. Come on." The boy, Cole, stood and took his brother's similarly large hand. Followed him into the apartment building and up the shaky elevator. Shk, shk, shk. The door dinged its thin, short hurrah and they both got off at the floor. The older brother still held Cole's hand, always did, like this. It wasn't gentle though because his hands were rough and flaking with callouses and dried skin. Cole didn't like how they felt, they hurt, felt decayed against his skin.  
The brother turned a rusty key into their door and it opened, the darkness of the apartment was familiar and chilling. The slanted rays of light from the blinds illuminated lines on the floor. There was a slightly larger gap where Cole's brother had probably been watching him play outside. He was a good brother. Protective. Cole followed him into the bathroom and jumped onto the lid of the toilet. The brother opened the medicine cabinet with the squeaky hinges and took out a box of bandaids. Then the brother kneeled between Cole's skinny knees and scrubbed at the wound with a washcloth hanging from the sink. The boy winced. Black devil smile.  
"We should move out of this dump." The brother said and moved the cloth back and forth. Red stained the cloth. "Pay day is soon. The army is bloody protective about its money. But I'll get you out of here. Might have to pick up another job, but I'll get you out." Small hand, child's hands, pushing, "that hurts, Oscar." "Shh, shh." "That hurts. That hurts." "Shut up. Shh. Shhh, be quiet before the neighbors hear."  
Cole wanted the neighbors to hear, sometimes. So that they could crack open the door, allow the light from the hallway to block into the apartment room, and find him. Save him. His brother was a good person. A good person except for when The Devil took him over in the night. Hands pitch like lead. "Stop. It hurts," was the song played every evening accompanied by "shh, shh. Shut up boy."  
The neighbors never came, not through elementary school. Not through middle school. Not even when on Christmas he'd been shut out on the balcony in negative 10 degrees. Naked and skin bruising red with cold cracks. Cole had given up by middle school. He didn't scream, he was quiet. He'd unlock the door, drop his backpack on the ground, and lean down to untie his shoes. Checkered. Black and blue. Hands shaking like an addict's. He was one, now, but he knew the sick-sore pit in his stomach was not from the after-school heroin. The scratching, that was. The dry mouth, the euphoria, the shaking in and out of time. That was all needle. He'd walk into the kitchen and see his brother, eyebrows weighing his face down into a steely glare. Bloodshot eyes, blood-cracked finger beds, physique that one would think of as handsome. Slim muscle, slim waist and big upper body. Hands that looked like they could kill. Rough and large. Cole knew them too well.  
Knew them on his skin too well.  
"You're back late," Oscar said.  
"I know." Cole said.  
"I'm sorry," he added because he didn't want to get hit.  
"I've been waiting for you to get back. You know I'm busy. Someone has to be here to man the fort. You're going to be on time in the future."  
Cole nodded mutely. Oscar nodded too, once, and stood up from the table, knocking his chair backwards. It tottered, like a child, and then stayed upright. Oscar retrieved his black suitcase from under the table. Cole knew what his brother kept in those suitcases. His brother was a bad man. The wheels went _shhs sh shhhh_ on the linoleum floor and then out the door. On his way out he slapped Cole's ass for good measure.  
"I'll be back in a day. Do the laundry." The voice said, loud, from outside. The sound of children playing on the jungle in the yard made Cole feel sick under his skin. The door shut and so did the light. Curtains closed, smoke smell. _I'll be back.  
_ Cole shivered and sagged against the kitchen wall, heart hitting his ribs awkwardly. Too lethargic, too heavy. He took a breath, another, gasped.  
Went down and crawled on his knees to his computer. Pupils small like ballpoint pen tips. Teeth clacking like chalk. Soft. He didn't cry. He'd stopped doing that a long time ago when his hands were still too small to reach around cereal boxes and glass cups. He didn't cry anymore, he didn't. He only sobbed. Heaved, dry-hot, unpleasant with a user's careless breath. He pulled himself up the couch and his head fell back, back. Exposed throat. Red with bruises and finger-shaped hickies. He was not flawless, he was not that perfect boy who thought evil was the Devil's fault. It wasn't.  
Everybody blamed The Devil too much.  
At least The Devil was honest.

## Chapter Three

Alec's usually tanned face looked dry and pale, like paper. Theo's fingers were shaking in their loose fists and he wondered why he hadn't started to cry yet. There was a dead boy laying in front of him, obviously murdered, and Theo was just standing there. The body was still a little warm. Theo had touched Alec's wrist, right over where a heart should have been beating.  
Nothing. What if the killer was still around? Theo felt a chill run up his arms and he clenched his teeth. He stopped and looked behind him. Only trees. Shakily, he knelt by the body and examined the head wound. It was a deep gash, dark red and messy in the boy's black hair. It stuck the strands together. The skin around the wound was raised and a black-red-brown color. Theo had never actually seen a dead body. Yes, he had seen the ghosts of dead people, but never the actual body. It was an odd feeling, looking at someone he'd known, still and unmoving. Empathy. That's what he was supposed to be feeling. Theo didn't really feel anything other than fascination. Perhaps he was just too shocked and the empathy would come later.  
That's what he told himself at least, albeit the nagging, little voice in the back of his head that said "you like it."  
That was undeniably true, Theo realized. He wanted to trace the blood that ran down Alec's face with his finger. See what it felt like. He desisted though, knowing enough about police to know that they could somehow see peoples' fingerprints. That's what TV shows said. Theo stood up and looked at Lindy sitting on a tree branch above him. "Come on Lindy, we have to get the police." He tried to memorize the location before he ran back to his house. He threw the screen door open and went to the kitchen and dialed 9-1-1 like the note on the fridge said (In case of an emergency: 911). There were a few ringing sounds ("press 1 if you're in an emergency" no, Theo thought, he wasn't really. Alec was already dead) and then after a while a lady said, "this is the Washington police department, what can I help you with?" Theo bit his lip and tried to sound sad, the way he did when his mother caught him doing something bad.  
"Th-there's a dead boy in the woods." He stuttered into the receiver, hands clenched around the landline phone. There was a shocked silence and then the sound of papers ruffling and cracking. "A dead boy? Are you sure? Where do you live?" The woman sounded agitated so Theo tried to match the tone. "I think he's dead. He wasn't moving and there was blood on his head." He gave his address and the woman assured him that someone would be over right away. She told him to stay on the line, a slightly hysterical note creeping into her voice. Theo wondered why she worked at a police department if she didn't like hearing about this kind of stuff, which he assumed was fairly normal. He stayed on the line though, with Lindy giving him funny faces that threatened to make him laugh. He couldn't do that though, that would sound weird to the police lady.  
There was a knock on the front door, heavy and steady. Lindy looked at it, holding up a finger (wait) as she slipped through the door to see who it was. Being a killer's next victim didn't sound all too nice, so Theo was grateful. She flew back through the door and gave him a thumbs-up and he nodded, slipping from the kitchen chair and walking to the door. He opened it to two uniformed policemen. Both of whom were very tall and had some excess fat around their waists. One of them had ruddy cheeks and short, cropped hair whereas the other one looked a little older. "Hi kid. Where's the body?" The ruddy one asked, looking into Theo's house suspiciously.  
"Are your parents home?" Theo shook his head and tried to fake cry but found he couldn't (he'd have to practice) so instead he bit his lip and said  
"in the woods." He walked out of the house and led the two men over the fence and through the bare woods. Leaves crunched under their feet and Theo offhandedly wondered if the policemen had guns on them, and whether or not they'd be capable enough to shoot an attacker. Theo led them to the site and _oh good_ the body was still there. Theo had been worried that it might've been dragged off. There was a substantial wolf population this time of year in Washington. At least that's what the newspaper said.  
Theo wanted to look at the dead body again but the policemen held onto his arm.  
"Good God, there actually is a dead boy." The ruddy one gaped as the other man knelt by Alec's body and pressed two fingers to his throat. "He's actually dead." They gave each other wide-eyed looks, their cheeks draining white. The one by the body took out a black box and said, "Sherif. Car 48. There's a dead boy here. Black hair. Asian. He looks around eleven. He has a head wound, probably died from it, poor kid. Requesting backup and investigators." The policeman finished talking and stepped backwards, as if uncertain on his feet. The ruddy one released Theo's arm and hobbled off into the bushes to vomit, heaving against a tree. Theo ignored them, having served their purpose, and walked over to the body again. Theo felt a certain kind of responsibility now.  
It was his duty to wait for Alec's ghost and help it into the afterlife. It made him feel powerful, being in charge of someone's fate like that.  
Theo looked up and realized that Lindy hadn't left the house with him. She was probably jealous, not that she needed to be. She was his best friend, and having Alec's ghost around wouldn't change that. Especially considering his and Alec's past. He only had to look at the bruises on his knees, hands, and elbows to be reminded. It was strangely touching that she cared so much though. He sighed and put his chin in his hands, quietly willing the ghost to hurry up before it woke up in the dark halls of a crematorium. The policemen recovered and walked over to him. There was a look in their eyes that Theo recognized from the faces of the kids at his school. Concern (why is this boy so okay with dead things?), suspicion (did he kill the boy?), and wariness (could he kill me?). Theo actively tried harder to play a convincing distressed person.  
The not ruddy cheeked officer knelt down in front of Theo, "hey there, kid, what's your name?" Theo looked to the side and then back up, "it's Theo, sir." The officer nodded, apparently relived that he had a name. "Ok Theo, do you know this boy?" The policeman pointed to Alec's body and Theo nodded, "yes, he's in my grade. His name's Alec."  
"Were you friends with Alec, Theo?" The policeman asked softly. Theo shook his head, "no, not really." The man nodded and the other one wrote something down on a little notepad. "Okay, and how did you find the body?"  
Theo was about to say "Lindy found him" when he remembered that people couldn't see her. He lied, "I was looking for bugs in the back of the house and I heard something so I walked over here." The policeman frowned, "what did you hear?" Theo thought of something believable. Maybe a scream?  
No, what if Alec had been killed somewhere else and then dragged? He bit the inside of his cheek, "I heard someone say some...bad words. He yelled them real-ly loud too so I went to see what happened. Only Alec was here when I found him though." Theo hugged his arms around himself and the police officer nodded and motioned to his coworker. "Hey, get the kid outta here Smith, he doesn't need to see this." The ruddy cheeked officer—Smith—walked over to Theo and took his arm, "okay kid, let's go."  
Theo shook his head, resisting the tug, "I don't want to go." Alec's ghost hadn't come out yet. The policeman got the weird look in his eye again and tugged harder,  
"look, this is a crime scene. You can't be here." Theo felt his eyes water up because of nothing but the fact that he wasn't having his way, the policemen didn't understand, and he couldn't tell them. "I'm not going," Theo decided stubbornly and let his body hang like an anvil. "Jesus," Smith muttered and looked at the other man who just shrugged. In the distance, Theo heard the wail police sirens. He stayed where he was, sitting on wet leaves. "Just carry him to the car." Smith shook his head, "what if his parents sue? I don't want to lose this job."  
Some more police officers ran to the scene, similarly dressed in black-blue uniforms. A older man walked forward and began talking to Smith. Some other officers started pulling out bright yellow tape with CRIME SCENE IN PROGRESS DO NOT CROSS written on it. One of the men looked at Theo curiously and then motioned to him while talking to another officer who said something and they didn't look at him again. He continued to sit and stare at the body. The blood on Alec's head had mostly dried now and was gritty looking and dull. There was an interesting blue tint to the boy's face and his eyelids looked wafer thing. Theo tugged at his shirt, nervousness creeping up his throat like bile.  
Then, a dull flash of white light illuminated Alec's body like a sonar wave.  
Theo thought he saw the dead body jolt, and then relax. Souls were a heavy burden to carry. There was another wave of light and then Alec's soul broke away from his body. Theo's eyes widened and he whipped his head around to look at the officers in case any of them had seen anything. They hadn't. He watched as Alec's ghost stumbled into the air, disorientation setting him off-balance. Ghosts, when they were new, were usually convinced that they were still alive, or could come back to life. Unfortunately, that wasn't true.  
A ghost myth, or something like it. Alec's ghost looked around, suspended in air.  
He looked frightened, examining all of the policemen. "What's going on? Where am I?" He asked, voice high and frantic. Alec waved his semi-transparent hand in front of a policeman's eyes, "hello?" Alec was unknowingly and completely ignored. With this, his actions became increasingly desperate. "Hello? What's going on? I'm here! I'm right here. What are you looking at..." then Alec looked down and saw his dead, bloody body lying in the wet leaves. If ghosts could pale, he would have. Alec's knees went out and he stared at his body, hands trembling. He couldn't tell if it was warm or cold, he couldn't feel anything. "That's me." He whispered, glanc-ing down at his hands and finding that he could see through them. That's when Alec seemed to put the pieces together and he started to cry. There weren't actual tears—ghost can't cry—but the motions were made. It was a quiet, hitched sobbing sound. Ghost Alec still had on the red shirt he'd been wearing that day and Theo noticed a deep scar cut across his forehead.  
Theo winced. It would suck to have the cause of your death broadcasted so openly to all of the other ghosts. Not to mention having to see it everyday. Most ghosts didn't have any outer scars because they died of cancer or heart diseases—something internal.  
Theo walked over to Alec's ghost, trying to appear normal to all of the officers. In retrospect, nothing he'd done at the crime scene could be labeled as "normal," but that was beside the point. He stepped close to Alec, who was floating just above him. "Alec," he whispered, pretending to examine the tree behind the ghost (as a normal person perhaps would).  
Alec frowned and looked down, wiping tears from his face. His eyes grew and then he glared when he saw who it was. "You can see me?" Alec asked, voice wavering and accusing. Theo nodded. "Am I dead?" Alec asked. Theo frowned sympathetically and nodded again, giving his best I'm-afraid-so look. He hoped that he wasn't taking this too lightly, but he hadn't exactly ever been taught how to receive a dead ghost and was just making do with what he had. He apparently had to work on his bearer-of-bad-news bit a little more because that's when Alec really started to freak out. His tanned hands clutched his knees and he rested his forehead on them, muttering, "oh no, oh no, no no." Theo glanced up at him in concern, not really being able to say anything with all of the officers around. He had to get Alec somewhere else. Preferably as far away from his dead, smashed body as possible.  
Theo walked up to the nearest, friendliest looking officer and tugged on her jacket. "Miss, can I go home now? I really don't like seeing the dead body. It scares me." The woman knelt down a bit and put her hand on his shoulder, her wrinkled eyes looked tender and worried, "oh goodness, yes of course. I just have to ask Mr. Nile over there something and then I'll take you home, okay? Wait right here." He nodded and she smiled at him comfortingly before she stood up and talked to the old man. He gave Theo a long stare and then nodded gruffly before turning back to a man with a camera. The woman walked back to him and held out her hand.  
"Alright sweetie, where do you live?" He told her and looked behind him to make sure that Alec was following him. He was, a few feet away, looking uncertain and nervous as he left the site of his body. It was a ten minute walk back to the house and the policewoman kept trying to make conversation but Theo told her that he felt sick so she stopped talking. When they got to the house, Theo closed the door behind him and sighed. He had math homework to finish today as well. He supposed that newly dead people were more important. Alec drifted in front of him, impatient and obviously upset.  
"So, you're a ghost." Theo said this in what he meant to be a cheerful manner. Alec glared at him, nose flaring as he exhaled, "yeah, I'm dead.  
Thanks for the update." Theo looked down, upset. Why did ghosts always have to be so ill-tempered? "I'm sorry?" Theo said, unsure what Alec wanted him to say. "I'm just trying to help you out. I mean, since I'm the only one who can talk to you..." Theo trailed off and Alec just crossed his arms and stared at him suspiciously.  
"Why would you want to help me?" Alec had a point but Theo just shrugged, "you didn't know that I could talk to ghosts and, I mean, it would be kind of weird...It is kind of weird that I collect dead things. I understand."  
Kind of. He kind of understood, not really. He figured it didn't matter anymore, considering their new circumstances. For once, Theo wasn't the awkward one in a two-party conversation. Alec looked at his hands and then groaned and shoved them into his hair. He stayed like that for a few seconds before he exhaled (not really air, just the frustrated sound. WOOSH.) and his hands slipped down his face. "Okay, so now that I'm...that I'm, you know, what do I do? Do I just float around forever or what?" Theo shook his head, "Well, no, probably not. Most ghosts eventually ascend to—" Theo pointed upwards and shrugged, "but you might not. Well, at least not as fast." Alec stared at him, frightened, "why not?"  
"Well, your death wasn't, uh, natural. You were killed. Murdered. Your spirit probably won't want to go yet." Theo explained, feeling like he was stating something obvious. Hadn't Alec seen the blood? The crime scene had been fairly self-explanatory. Maybe he just hadn't registered it. Everyone reads _Ghosts and the Paranormal 101_ , right? Alec crossed his arms and looked baffled, "I was...killed. Who? Who killed me?" Theo shrugged as he took off his shoes, leading the way to his bedroom with a wave of his hand. "I don't know, I just found you in the woods, dead. Well, actually Lindy found you so you should thank her."  
Alec snorted, "Lindy? I didn't think you knew any girls. What is she, your sister?" Theo shook his head, "no, no. She's my best friend. She's uhm, she's like you." He didn't see the face Alec made but he could imagine it. Confused, maybe a little comforted by the idea of someone like him.  
Theo turned into his bedroom and flicked on the lights. "Lindy, I'm back.  
There's someone I want you to meet...Lindy?" He looked around the room and saw that she wasn't there. She liked hiding from him, just because she knew it got him nervous. _Is she really gone?_ Then she'd come out when she'd forgiven him, which could take anywhere from a few hours to a few days. Theo sighed and sat down on his bed, watching as Alec carefully floated into the room, his legs still moved in a walking motion even though it wasn't needed anymore. Old habits died hard. People died hard.  
"So this is my room," Theo said lamely, motioning around the walls.  
"Lindy's, well, she's not here right now I think." Alec nodded, a little slowly, then drifted over to the bed. He hovered above the sheets and sat down, crossing his arms, "So, what do I do now?" Theo didn't really have an answer to that question. Once a person was dead, there wasn't really much they _could_ do. They couldn't interact with physical objects, they couldn't talk to or be seen by most people, and so they really didn't have much of a purpose anymore in life. The only things ghost could do was fly around and try to ascend to heaven (or something. Despite everything, Theo wasn't sure if he was religious. Probably not).  
"Well," Theo said slowly, "you'll be able to leave once you let go of this world. Maybe by killing your killer or finding inner peace or something."  
Theo honestly wasn't very sure.  
"Leave to where?" Alec asked and Theo just shrugged and leaned back on the bed. "I don't really know. I haven't been there and no one's ever come back."  
"Then do I want to go?"  
"I don't know. Do you?"  
Alec's shoulders slumped and he looked at his hands, "I'll never talk to my parents again. Never go to college or get a job." Theo nodded solemnly, the idea of death more familiar to him than most. "If it's any consolation, you're taking this very well. Most people are hysterical right after they die. But I don't know, maybe you're still in shock." It dawned on him that there'd probably been a better way to say that. It had already been said though, so there wasn't much point in feeling bad about it.  
"I'll help you find him," Theo offered, just because it felt like something he was supposed to say. He didn't have any experience in catching murderers, mostly because he was only ten-years-old, but he figured that he could if he tried hard enough. At least that's what happy teachers were convinced of.  
Alec seemed to think that over for a second, his black-brown—Theo couldn't decide if they had color to them or not—eyes staring dully at the ceiling. "I don't think I want to."  
Theo turned his head to look at the other boy and then said, "okay. You can stay here then." Alec thought about that to for a long minute, "no, I don't want to do that either." Theo was getting impatient and was a little offended by how little gratitude he was receiving for his help. He sat up on the bed, crossing his legs, "well then what do you want to do?" The spirit next to him curled up a little, like a little shell, and then sunk into the bed.  
Theo sighed at the childishness of it and figured that dead people just made it a game to be as annoying as possible. It wasn't like they had anything better to do.  
"You'll stay here." Theo decided, like he had the authority to do so. Alec didn't reappear for another few minutes, and another hour after that, but Theo sat and he waited, silently tapping his fingers on his legs. He was patient for his age. When it was time to sleep, he turned off the lights and slipped under the covers, wondering if ghosts had any sense of time.  
"I'm here," Alec said, two minutes past midnight.  
"I know you are," Theo whispered back, scared of waking up his parents.

## Chapter Four

Down the street, on a small, forest-shrouded road, there lived a teenage girl named Amelia Eisen.  
To give you some context: Amelia was a young girl with wiry brown hair and dark, stale eyes that watered sometimes for no good reason. Not out of sadness, but because for some curious reason she sometimes forgot to blink. It was odd, her parents admitted to that, but there were larger things for them to fret over. Their upcoming divorce, for instance. Whether or not they knew of it. Amelia certainly did. Their constant bickering and throwing of things that shouldn't be thrown backed her in a fairly convincing fashion. It was sometimes scary, sometimes just sad, and the household was running out of glass plates at an alarming rate. That being said, Amelia also enjoyed the time she had alone in her room as she was a very reclusive and quiet girl.  
The thing about Amelia Eisen was that in essence she was misunderstood. In the second grade her teacher almost held her back because she often slurred her words together and didn't write cursive well like the other children did. "Amy's a's looked like open u's," her teacher explained, "and she doesn't talk with the other children, why, she doesn't even talk to me."  
Her parents just chalked it up to her being a late bloomer and Amelia grad-uated successfully into third grade. What the teacher hadn't said was that Amelia often spent entire class periods inside of the closet in the back of the room. There were thin, horizontal slits in the door from which she's peer through and observe the other student. Perhaps no one had noticed.  
The teacher did, however, mention that Amelia had an odd tendency to eat the pebbles on the playground, and that they should probably see a doctor about that. "Maybe she's not getting enough iron in her diet," the teacher suggested and later that week her father had come home from work with a plastic bottle of supplementary vitamins. Those sat on the kitchen counter until they eventually ended up in the trashcan when spring cleaning came along.  
Throughout the third grade Amelia continued to do poorly academically, and her parents grew increasingly worried over their daughter's mental ca-pabilities. They themselves were both botanists, and had been assured that their genes would formulate successful and intelligent offspring. Amelia's near-failure to pass the second grade had started to make them doubt themselves so much so that they took her to a doctor to test her. In a small room with plastic play toys, a smiling woman asked young Amelia some questions and showed her pictures of a dog, a house, various faces in differing emotional states, and some actions. "How does this make you feel?" the woman asked as she held up a picture of two adults and a child. Amelia looked at the blue block in her hand and contemplated the question before she turned around and set the block on top of a red one. "I don't know," she mumbled in the slurred way children do, naive and evasive. Her large eyes looked into the lady's and then back to the toys in her hands. After some more prompting she crossly said, "stop it." A small fit and a few questions later, the doctor unclipped a sheet of paper from a clipboard and handed it to her parents. The doctor ushered them into a different room and later that evening her parents sat her down and explained in whispers what "autism" was. "You're just a little different," her mother said but Amelia felt like it was a bad thing because her mother was crying and her father kept yelling about it. After that, they complained less about her asocial behavior and let her do what she wanted.  
As she grew older, Amelia took advantage of her freedom and made it a game to do as little work as she could to get by. She got absolute average grades or worse in every class except for math, which she excelled in. Amelia liked it simply because no one ever expected her to talk. If there was one thing Amelia hated, it was talking. Math was easy to understand and lacked the pressure and extravagance that English had. Students nattered that she was mute behind cupped hands but no one ever told her to her face. The other children disliked her, that much was plain. Perhaps it was her fault to the core, silence breeding in the spaces between her words and festering like an illness. She never intended to make them angry, to have them despise and dislike who she was and what she'd become. It was imposing, her self-riotousness, which she often substituted for her lack of charm and social grace. _You're better than them_ , she built herself up, only to knock others down. If they were lower than her than they couldn't hurt her as easily.  
That's how the game had to played. It was either her or the other team, and it didn't matter if blood was left on the playing field as long as most of it wasn't hers. So she brooded, a young girl of blooming and repressed intelligence, told that she wasn't good enough to be one of the best.  
Anger is at the heart of every conflict. Anger over being poor, anger over being lied to, anger over being ugly, anger over being misunderstood by the only people you thought would understand.   
Amelia lived on anger, that was her special, justified condition. She lived off of it; she ate it. She never believed her mother when she lectured that "anger saps the life from you" because it was Amelia's only source of motivation. Her Screw You to the world.  
The worse things were, the harder she fought back.   
Perhaps that was the reason she was never quite happy, always on the edge of depressed but never quite making it down that hole. More than sad, she was bitter at the world and felt under appreciated and cheated. Her angry episodes were quick and violent, brooding swings at a wall and snapping things. Hurting people. "She scares me," was a common sentiment among her classmates. They too, were justified in their fear. Her violent tendencies were fueled by hormones and something a lot less explainable, and vivid _thoughts_ began to appear shorty after she turned eleven. Vague notions of physical violence; cracked bones, broken noses, bloody cuts and gashes under her hands became a common daydream. She didn't understand it, she just acted on it, as what else was a child in her position—with her unbounded freedom—supposed to do? Amelia was labeled "The scary kid" after an incident at school. On the playground one day a boy—Timmy, the class clown of Mr. Steel's fifth grade class—had stolen Amelia's stuffed cat toy and colored one of its soft, white paws green with chalk. Amelia was the only student in the fifth grade that still brought stuffed animals to school.  
Her stuffed cat had been her only condolence in the loud, jarring ruckus of the playground, and having it defaced brought upon a loud tantrum. None of the teachers had been able to settle her and she'd been sent home in the afternoon. The next day, Timmy fell off of the metal playground tower and broke his leg on the wood chips during recess. Noah, the class gossiper, swore he saw Amelia push him off. Timmy never discussed the incident, even after weeks of pestering, and spent his time in a cast reading quietly under the trees during recess. A few similar incidents happened over the years but nobody ever had proof and adults never got involved. Bite marks on Mark's arms, a staple in Kelly's leg and, in a memorable event, Ms. Edmond's purse was found in the toilet after a required class presentation.  
Amelia was never punished for any of these acts.  
Amelia was a lonely child with the exception of one or two internet friends that she'd met in almost empty chat rooms. She was too odd to have any others. Her life was a violent display of look-at-me.  
I suppose you get the idea, so I'll cease dithering and return to what's important. We know that Amelia's mentally compromised in some way, although whether the doctor's diagnosis was correct or not cannot be verified.  
To keep some coherence, I'll inform you that what happens next occurred not four hours after Alec's death.  
Four hours after Alec's death, Amelia came home to an empty house, as was usual. There were also some things that weren't as normal. Her hands, for instance, were caked with blood. Her hands were not in the habit of being regularly bloody. A thin crust of red curved around her finger beds and looked like it had melted under her fingernails. Her face was also in an uncharacteristically happy grin, teeth straining against her cheeks.  
Calm down, be normal, she cautioned herself, reigning the smile back into a morbid, little twist of her mouth. She curled her fingers into little fists and then proceeded to the bathroom, turning on the faucet with her clean wrists; the porcelain hurt the bone there as she pressed against it. The blood washed away cleanly down the drain but she poured bleach in after it just to make sure. She dried off her hands and then skipped the way to her room, so giddy that she was tempted to yell.  
She threw herself onto her bed and laughed into her pillow. Oh, that had been something! That had really been something amazing. Amelia drew back and stared at her hands, the pink little pads and wrinkles. There was suddenly something intensely fascinating about them. She curled in her fingers and recalled the hot pulse of _thump thump thump_ against her skin, the frantic swallowing. The sweat, the nose-itching metal smell of blood.  
She sighed happily and pictured the boy's face again, black eyes so round they had looked like billiard balls. The white scratch marks he'd left on her arms had almost faded, a slight raise of skin, red and thin. Her fingers twitched like they were still holding onto the rough handle of the baseball bat (which she had tossed into the river earlier).  
Now, before you become too invested in _why_ she killed a boy—the boy whom we're going to assume at this point was Alec—I'd like to note that not every killer truly has a _reason_ for killing someone. Perhaps it was motivated by stress from her parents' angry divorce or her genetic mental state; perhaps it was not. It's impossible to know, as every event is created by a vast number of actions, and each of those actions is similarly complex in creation. Excuse me, let's resume again.  
Amelia had never felt more alive. Her bones felt lighter under her skin and her muscles thrummed with energy. Her breaths turned shallow and she regarded herself mentally. She was smart enough to not lose her head, she knew. She slipped from the bed onto her feet, admiring herself in her full-length mirror. Her clothes had a fine splattering of blood—mist-like—and her stockings had new holes where her knees were. She rolled them off and shucked them into the trashcan, mulling over what her next course of action should be. She pulled her dress over her head as well—standing in her undershirt and boxers—and tossed it into her closet. Yes, in her 14-year-old mind that seemed like the right course of action. If you've ever read a True Crime novel, her actions might seem naive or even stupid, but rest assured that the reason behind her actions were anything but. Still, she tossed her clothes haphazardly away and decided that a bath would be most enjoyable.  
Her bare feet sunk into the carpet and she shivered when they met the marble of the bathroom. She filled the bath and climbed in, tossing her clothes onto the floor. Her eyes slid shut and she took a breath, then another. _I can pull this off. I can control this,_ she thought, the water was scalding. She didn't turn it off until it felt like her skin was melting off of her bones. The wooden top of the bat meeting the boy's forehead slipped to the forefront of her mind again. The _crack_ of it hitting and splintering bone. Blood had erupted from the wound like food dye had spilled from the paper mache volcano Amelia had made for her last science fair project. (She was only creative in certain areas of expertise.) The blood had been so vivid it looked fake. Almost orange in saturation. She reached for the bottle of soap that balanced on the edge of the bathtub and popped the cap. The container advertised that it smelled of strawberries and was "tear free" while in actually it was neither. She squeezed some into her palm and the bottle deflated in her hand (like a throat, or at least what she envisioned a throat would do. She hadn't been stupid enough to leave fingerprints). She rose from the water and almost slipped because the vision of her curled fist around someone's neck had her so distracted she couldn't think straight.  
Later that night Amelia tugged up her blankets and fell asleep with a soft smile on her face. _Best day ever_ , she thought and her eyes shut. Amelia Eisen, Bat Murderer.

## Chapter Five

Being glad over Alec's death felt dirty, immoral, but Theo couldn't help but be a little happy. He was happy when he woke up to Alec staring at him, fingers trying to touch his face. They went through his forehead and Theo smiled when Alec yanked his hand back, horrified. "I can't feel it," Theo said, and the sad look the other boy gave him made Theo's heart stutter.  
He wasn't sure why that was, but he didn't linger. He was happy when Alec followed him to the breakfast table, an anxious edge to his motions. Theo ate his cereal and felt good. He liked being followed by someone his age.  
For once, Alec was in the pack and Theo was the leader. Theo stepped onto the bus with the secret knowledge that the cause of all the other students' greif was following him. He sat in class and felt gut-twistingly elated when the other students and teacher cried.  
He couldn't reveal these feelings though. No, he could never reveal a lot of the things that bounced their way around his head. Over the years he'd gotten good at disguising these thoughts, turning them into something fake but socially acceptable. So he cried, he looked at his feet to hide his smile, and never said anything to anyone.  
Theo still collected dead bugs, but now he had someone to collect bugs with. They sat together on the playground asphalt and Alec would float just a little off the ground. He liked trying to rest his transparent feet directly on the surface of the basketball court. He said it was a fun challenge. Theo knew that it was just an attempt to remedy a sense of lost normality. He wasn't content with being a ghost. Alec was locked to him with the fear of loneliness—abandonment. At this rate, Alec would just keep diluting himself and never ascend to the other world. This was actually ideal for Theo, so he didn't comment on it. However bad a friend that made him, Theo still considered himself more good than bad.  
Things aren't black and white. There's always a gradient. Always. If Theo were to be analytic, perhaps he would have realized that he craved the companionship as much as Alec did. Perhaps he had figured it out, but was similarly astute in not recognizing his place in the world.   
People like to be the hero, to play the one-dimensional viewer and do-er. Much are less than happy to play the transparent cast. The girl standing on the escalator with three different shopping brands on bags hanging from her wrist like heavy chains. Staring off into the distance with morose, empty eyes that tell the tale of buying for loss. No one cares about the loss, it's just her back story. The man yelling at the tech company's telemarketer on the phone, drowning out broken off "but sir—" "please understand—" "I work on 4 dollars an hour, leave me alone, please. I just want to make it through the day, get paid, and go home to my cat and bed." That all being said, Theo was content in faking his removal from the situation. He was the good guy for helping Alec out. He was the hero and heroes were strong and brave and loyal and that's all.  
That being said, Theo did wish that he'd been landed with a more agreeable damsel in distress.  
He and Alec got along well—well being used as a filler word for something intensely complicated—in the way dogs and cats are sometimes forced to stand each other. The way rainstorms and the sun are sometimes awkwardly paired when clouds forget to intervene. Alec didn't talk much for a relatively angry kid but Theo didn't mind talking enough for two people, so he supposed it was okay. They did talk though, sometimes, when no one else was around and usually when Alec looked like he was on a strange cusp between crying and yelling at someone. It usually ended with both, or something like it, as tears never truly formed although in life they certainly would have.  
Today's argument topic seemed to be about the ever present sense of melancholy Alec had caught when he'd become a ghost. Said ghost was waving his arms, punctuating his sentences with sharp jabs of his index finger. "You don't understand at all, do you? You _say_ you do, just because you can see ghosts, but you don't really. You don't feel all of the loss. You don't get any of it."  
Theo spoke up, "Alec, I'm trying. You know that I'm not good with emotions in general either. Just tell me what I'm supposed to do." Apparently that wasn't the right response either because Alec proceeded to smash his head through the Theo's bedroom wall in a gesture of exasperation. In reality, it just looked rather strange and funny, Alec's ghostly head silently disappearing into the other room. After a second the head reappeared and Alec yelled, "this is exactly my point! You're not able to—" Alec searched for the words he wanted to say "—able to relate with people. It's like you couldn't talk to people if you tried. You're really not the best person to welcome ghosts into the afterlife, just saying." Theo looked affronted, "that's really not my fault, Alec. You know I'd change it if I could. It's just the way I am. I'm sorry if I'm not being the guide you want. It's not like I chose to be bad at talking to people. I didn't even choose to be able to talk to ghosts!"  
Alec groaned and kicked the air, "yeah, well, someone messed up." Theo crossed his arms, "you don't have to take it out on me. It's not like I have to help you or anything." Alec tensed, "maybe I'd be better off without you."   
Theo scowled, "maybe you would. Try it."  
"Maybe I will."  
"Then do it."  
"Fine!" Alec spat and turned around, melting into the wall. Theo watched him leave and just as quickly his anger dissipated into a remorseful drag of sadness. Silence. Tears quickly filled his eyes. His lip quivered. Alec was right; Theo was simply awful at his job. He stared at the spot where Alec had vanished and then ran from his room. He tugged on his sneakers and pulled on his jacket. It was chilly outside but not unbearable, darkness descending steadily over the tree line. Theo wrapped his arms around his chest as he searched the yard. "Alec!" He yelled but no one answered. There were no shimmery edges in his vision. "Alec, I'm sorry! Come back please!"  
He was alone. Lindy was gone and now Alec was too. His track record was not looking very good. He wondered briefly if he could get fired and what that would entail. Perhaps they would suspend his powers, and Theo simply couldn't allow that to happen. Not when his only source of friendship came from a rather dead cohort of animals and people.  
Theo stared into the woods. Although it was still light in his yard, the forest was already gloomy and foreboding. Theo wondered if Alec had gone back to his death spot, as that's what ghosts tended to do. If that were the case, then Theo supposed that he'd have to brave his fear of the dark and find his friend. It was his responsibility to do so. That was his job, wasn't it? Helping the lost become un-lost. Guiding ghosts into the afterlife.  
Quick clarification. The spot where people die is largely called the "death spot" by the global ghost population and various other universally-conscious supernatural beings. Ghosts are tied to their death spots and many consider it their haunting ground until they're transferred to the afterlife, which we will discuss the existence of later. Clarifications have ended.  
Theo paused at the edge of the forest, reminded again that a child had been murdered there not a few days ago, and then set off into the gloom.  
The chill was noticeable while walking in the shade of the trees and the moon was barely visible between the dense leaves that topped the forest.  
"Alec." Theo intended to call but instead it came out quiet, just short of a whisper. The words caught in his throat, choked back at the intense feeling of _danger_. He recognized a large tree and headed south, down the path the policemen had used to get to the scene. Neon yellow tape was still littered among the leaves. _DO NOT ENTER. INVESTIGATION IN PROGRESS.  
_ The body had obviously been moved, but there was still an area cleared of leaves on the forest floor. When Theo squinted, he thought that he could almost make out a few stray blood drops but not quite. He slowly turned around in a circle, watching out for the shimmery edges that ghosts never quite lost. In the side of his peripheral vision, he saw something move. He spun around on his feet so fast it caused his shoes to slip on the damp leaves of the forest floor.  
At the base of a tree with yellow tape tied around it, a girl sat with her head propped up with her small hands. Her complexion was white around the edges and her eyes were large and glassy looking. She watched him but didn't say a thing. Her dark hair was pushed back behind her ears in a way that made them stick out and her eyebrows were dense and angry-looking.  
Theo noticed that her nails were bitten off to their beds when he walked closer to her. At some spots to the point of bleeding. Thumbs edged in a dirty looking red.  
"What are you doing here?" Theo asked, accusation bittering his tone, as she had probably scared off Alec. Her fingers played with the folds of her dress and she said nothing. Theo took another step forward. "You're not supposed to be here," he said with authority, gesturing to the yellow tape. She inclined her head, mouth twitching into a smile which Theo took to mean as _neither are you._ Her eyes held a haunted quality to them that reminded him very much of ghost's eyes; they were flat and plastic-looking.  
Like doll eyes. He was fairly certain she wasn't dead. "I'm looking for a friend." Theo said as he regarded her, confusion replacing his previous certainty. Her eyebrows scrunched but she nodded, eyes flicking to the ground. Goosebumps pricked up Theo's arms. His shoes turned on their own accord. "I don't think he's here. I'm going to go." Her eyes drew back up to his and a scowl drew over her face. Her hand shot out and wrapped around his wrist, cold and damp from resting in the leaves. She was taller than him and theo felt his heart heart hammer under his skin. He yelled.  
His feet sloshed in the wet dirt, scrambling backwards from her hold. She pulled him towards her and he thrashed against her grip, twisting her wrist backwards. She let go with a growl and her hands grabbed at his jacket as Theo ran away. His breath came out in short gasps as he sprinted through the dark forest. Branches raked across his cheeks but he didn't dare to look behind him, a cold terror lining his skin. Her touch lingered like freeze burn and he swore that if he so much as glanced behind him he'd see her there, running after him.  
Theo slammed into the front door of his house and sobbed as he wrenched it open, certain that he'd feel her fingers grabbing at his clothes to pull him back into the forest. He slammed the door behind him and it shook the house so hard he heard the glass in the Tupperware closet rattle in their panes.  
He didn't dare to take a breath. His heart hammered in his ears. The hair on his legs stood on end. There was a thin cut on his cheek from a branch and he only noticed when the blood fell onto his shirt. A stain grew on the fabric and he numbly pushed himself away from the door, his throat dry and hoarse. The yelling he couldn't remember, but he figured that he must have due to the aching feeling when he swallowed. He pushed off his shoes with the edge of the couch and then slowly wandered through the hallway to his room, flicking on every light switch along the way. Tears ran their way down his cheeks, stinging as they dripped over the cut. The jackhammer pounding of his heart in his ears slowly dampened into a slow, repetitious thud. "Lindy," he called into the bright hallway. Nothing. "Alec?" Silence.  
"Mom...Dad...?" Their bedroom was empty.  
He didn't sleep that night and when he did it was in fits, blocks of lights flicking through his blinds and onto his ceiling from night-bound cars. Bar-bound cars. He felt cold, his hands feeling both vulnerable under his covers and draped over them. When they were out, his fingers felt cool in the air, causing the memory of the girl's clammy fist around his wrist to replay once more. When they were under the sheets, he felt confined and vulnerable.  
Theo's eyes were so wide he forgot for some time that they usually blinked.  
A stream of terror-left adrenaline still coursed its way through his body, adamant in telling Theo that he was still in danger, that the girl could come back at any time. Even his insect friends on the counter couldn't help him then, as most of them had ascended at that point, and the ones that remained only reminded him of her ghostly complexion. Her too-pale and blue-veined cheeks. Her glassy eyes. Like a doll's, he was reminded subconsciously. Her eyes hadn't blinked either, too wide and watery. She hadn't looked like a killer, although Theo was convinced that she had to be. Why else had she been wandering in the woods at night but to gloat over what she had done? Take pride in whom she had stolen life from. He thought about it for what seemed to be a long time, cars passing by one at a time, lights and then momentary darkness. Lights. Lights. Darkness.  
He wondered if he was truly one to judge her actions of ending someone's life. Theo himself was similarly guilty when it came to murdering for his own pleasure. He looked at the jars lining his bed and knew that those once contained lives as well, lives that he had decided weren't as important as his happiness (as his desire to not be lonely). It was just the circle of life, dictated out in the black and white pages of his science book at school. Who was he, a ten-year-old, to challenge the food chain, the very thing that kept the world running. Doesn't fright further ambition? The fear of murder causes invention. Perhaps what that ghostly girl was just acting on nature's will. His guilt and her intentions were becoming too muddled in his head.  
Darkness, heavy and infinite. Lights, passing hastily and dying abruptly.  
The sheets were hot and humid against his skin, sweat dripping from his bangs and dampening the space beneath his neck, under his arms, in the soft spots backside of his knees. The cut on his cheek started to harden and it stung when sweat dripped over it on its meandering way down to his chin.  
He tried for sleep but once again came up short, gasping from fear that her hand would kill him, strangle him as he rested.  
He no longer felt like a responsible and thoughtful boy. He no longer felt proud of just being ten.

## Chapter Six

It was the notion of failure that tripped Amelia up the most.  
She'd grown up with her parents expecting it. Expecting her to fail at everything she touched, at every dream and small, timid action, because her brain was different. (They hid behind their medical articles and never even looked at her. They never saw that she could learn, that she could do better.  
She was trying to get better.) She never failed. It was an extension of her rebellion, a movement called I'll Care Because You Don't. Even in school, with her minimal effort and half-hearted participation, she never failed. Her math papers were all red ink and one-hundred percents. Perfect. She had achieved success. She was used to it.  
It could explain the reason why, curling into herself at the center of her bed, she was so upset. She'd failed to kill him, that boy in the forest. He hadn't been anything special—not like the first boy. This one had been all too-black eyes and a timid way of holding himself that was sickeningly bland—but he had been _hers_.  
Hers to kill, hers to play with and take apart.  
She'd wanted to dissect those wide, jittering eyes of his (they'd always strayed just left of meeting her own) and watch the breath fade from his chest, fade into stillness. Stillness. The tragedy was that by her own merit she had lost something she'd wanted, a fear of hers; it was the fear of not being able to sustain herself. She was a contained system (she didn't need anyone else). This was an error in functionality.  
It was always dark in Amelia's room. Her shades had been broken since winter last year and nobody had thought it was important enough to draw them up.  
She'd flourished after the first boy's death, and missing a chance at a second repeat of the event turned Amelia's previous joy into a flash flood of irritation. She turned desperate for a second catch. As a child, she'd once heard a tale about a dog being put down because it bit off a dead man's pinky. The fear was that it had developed a taste for human blood. Amelia had never seen much merit in that statement until that night, shaking in her bed because she _needed_ to feel that soft-stretch touch of flesh again.  
The blood beneath her skin just reminded her of what she was missing out on, what _could have been_ that night had she not let the boy go. He'd just twisted his arm in a way just _so_ that she'd lost her grip. Her heart seized at the memory. His small hand had just slipped out of hers like gas. Elusive.  
That's why Amelia needed to find him, needed to get him back for putting a dent her pride, for denting her self-confidence.  
Reflections and loathing aside, Amelia had to wonder what that boy had been doing at the scene of the crime. Her crime. Panic brushed her lightly, just a quick tap on the shoulder, and the thought of being caught crossed her mind fully for the first time. Just once, before she shut her eyes and decided that being angry was easier than being scared. Vulnerability was only attractive from far away. A body's length far away. Fear was fine as long as it wasn't her own.  
She just had to find that boy again.

## Chapter Seven

Alec stared in silence at his mother's face.  
In particular he inspected the folds around her mouth and eyes, the ones she tried to erase and plaster over with cosmetics and small caps of paint-like fluids. They didn't look any deeper, any sadder than they had before, unseating Alec's last hope that perhaps after his death she'd begin to care.  
Hadn't that been the case with Va Gogh? He'd imagined that perhaps his mother and father had reconciled in shared mourning and gone on to start some kind of campaign. "Make our forests safer," "Keep our neighborhood murder-free" or something of the sort. They'd done it with the stop sign next to the cross. Yet there his mother sat, arms crossed around her chest as she sat on the expensive couch in the living room (the one Alec had never been allowed to sit on in unfounded fear of it getting dirty). A glass of white wine sat unassuming on the table by her knee, a plate of flat crackers and prunes—the sweet, gummy kind Alec's father hated—stood next to a stack of legalities. It was business as usual then. Her fingers went _tap tap tap_ with her pen and blue veins stuck to the inside of her palm and down her wrists.  
Alec wasn't sure why he'd gone to his mother's house instead of his father's. It reminded him of his of his childhood. Getting hurt and toddling back to his mother. Getting in fights and crying to his mother. Constantly searching for some kind of reaction, some kind of feeling. His mother, a woman in her mid-thirties, was a successful lawyer. She had brown, knowl-edgeable eyes and a smile that spoke both of unease and power. She always said that in order to make it as a female in the job industry—especially as someone great—you had to "act like a man" because it was mostly men who owned the offices next to hers and men whom she knocked elbows with in the commons. Whether her policy was universally good, Alec didn't know, but it had definitely helped her career.  
Bosses don't like babies and bosses don't like pregnant women who take time off. Alec's mother did neither. She and his father had adopted Alec from an orphanage in the outskirts of Tokyo, where he'd been dropped off when he was four. A five-year-old was easier to stuff into daycare than an infant was. Did Alec remember anything from his previous family? No, not really, he just figured his parents had been druggies.  
It would explain his temper.  
He'd grown up mostly alone, wandering tight-packed rooms (nothing like the mansion his mother had now. More alike to his dad's apartment in the city). Four rooms, to be exact. The bedroom, the kitchen, the bathroom, and the small laundry room that took up the only closet they had. Japan was crowded in general. The too-bright streets, traffic stops with hundreds of crossers, school grounds with tireless chatter and shoving.  
America was different, it was bigger. When he'd first stepped off of the plane in Washington, he'd felt so afraid. The fear was echoed in the large hallways of his mother's house in the countryside. Everything was too big. The cars, the people, the skyscrapers, the dreams. America's entire atmosphere set Alec off, set him on edge.  
Looking at his mother, Alec wondered if it was all just a manifestation of his fear of a simple emotion called "loneliness." His parents' divorce had been traumatizing not because of the split, but because of the distance.  
After the divorce neither of his parents had cared about him. Even his biological parents had abandoned him when he just a few years old. Fear of abandonment.  
He didn't blame his mother though. She obviously had some problems too if she'd decided to marry the drunk SOB of a lawyer that his father was.  
It was hard to blame a victim. Especially since bruises linger and fear is forever. Actually maybe that explained his temper.  
Nurture over nature, right?  
Alec shook his head, as if that would dislodge the thoughts. It shook them up into an awful mess that even he couldn't follow, which was a start.  
His mother paused writing for a second and stretched, extending her arms over and back behind her head, before she stood up and walked into the kitchen. Alec was tempted to follow her, trail behind her like a stray.  
He paused and watched her retreating back. Her back had always looked so wide, so tall and poised. His dad's was always curved and "complained" a lot, or so he said.  
He blinked. Once, twice, desperate in habit, and then floated from the house. He looked out over the clipped lawns and almost perfect rows of white, triangular-peaked fences. If you looked close enough you could see wood beneath the peeling paint. The air was silent with night. "I'm here." Alec said, quietly, to himself. He thought back on his life and thought that it was sad that he hadn't done anything. Hadn't left his mark. He, a ghost, slowly moved backwards towards where he'd come from. He wondered if Theo was looking for him. The thought was heartening, peculiar boy that Theo was. At least he didn't mind sharing space with Theo. When both of them sat on the sidewalk, sharing one block of cement, Alec felt something comforting. He wondered why he could feel emotionally but not physically now that he was a ghost when in life it'd always felt the inverse.  
He stopped outside of a familiar house squashed between two fences on either side of the lawn. Back of the house the woods grew above the roof, reaching into the night. The lawn was flattened with wind and little dots of lights (fireflies, he remembered his mother explaining their first night in America) blinked in and out of existence. For a second Alec thought he saw the shimmery body of a girl outside of Theo's window. Long hair, childish face. Then she too was gone in the night.  
Theo's window was the second left of the door.  
Alec wavered in hesitant approach, eyes on the dark shadows of Theo's window, blinds drawn in the dark. He considered the door but proceeded to step through the window, a glassy figure sinking in from the night. He drifted into the room, eyes finding their way to the hill of blankets on Theo's bed, wrapped around the young boy. There were more than usual, as though Theo had dragged some of the sheets from the closet down the hall. Alec wondered if it was cold.  
He debated over whether or not to wake Theo. _He'd want to know,_ Alec selfishly thought as he moved closer to the bed. Theo had missed him. Theo was as lonely as he was. Alec sighed, not appreciating how much he had to talk himself up. His self-confidence had flagged significantly since his death. As he drew closer, Alec noticed with confusion that Theo's hands were clenched in his pillow, skin a sickly pale. Sweat plastered Theo's hair to his forehead, teeth chattering in the boy's jaw. Alec's confusion progressed into panic.  
"Theo," Alec rushed, hands sinking through his friend's shoulder. He couldn't shake him. "Theo." Alec yelled with a sting of desperation that hadn't tainted his voice since his father left his mom and him. Or maybe it had been the other way around. He didn't care either way, not right then.  
"Wake up, wake up! Theo!" For the first time Alec truly felt like a ghost. Powerless. Then Theo's eyes snapped open and he screamed.  
Screamed.  
Alec stumbled back on air in surprised. Theo sat up in one swift jolt of adrenaline and he stared with wide, scared eyes at Alec. Headlight eyes.  
His right hand flew to his wrist. His posture collapsed inwards on itself. Tense. "Don't kill me," Theo whispered and Alec heard the wet click of Theo swallowing. "Don't kill me." Theo whispered again, shaking on the bed, relief and fear contrasting each other. The shaking escalated into a full-body jitter and the haunted look in Theo's eyes didn't leave. They appeared to be looking through Alec, staring at something behind him.  
"Theo." Alec started, slowly drifting closer again. "Are you okay?"  
Wet blinking.  
"Sorry. I thought you were her." Theo whispered hoarsely, a tremor affecting his voice so strongly that the words shook off into silence. There was something there in that absence. Something frightening and darker than the sky between the window blinds.  
"Who is she?" Alec asked.  
"No one," Theo said.  
"Who is she?"  
"I don't know."

## Chapter Eight

It was 3:47 AM and Oscar Nile was cold. This wasn't an uncommon occurrence, and it struck him as foolish to repetitively forget a coat or blanket.  
The common sense of the situation just evaded him when he got caught up in the excitement of a new job. They didn't give out blankets in Afghanistan, he thought as he polished a 7.62x51mm M40 rifle. The wet rag was black and he wiped his forehead again. Cold sweat. He looked down briefly to make sure that his hand wasn't shaking—it wasn't—and then focused back on his target. The rooftop was a long sheet of gray cement that made his knees burn and lock in uncomfortable positions. Maybe his inability to cope with a future of maid's knee was what got him kicked out of the corps. No, that hadn't been it.  
It'd been those darn captain-sergeants always bossing him around. Do this, don't do that. They didn't even have military backgrounds, most of them. They just had rich fathers and a sense of entitled power and control.  
Damn those sons of bitches. They were. Their mothers were all 20-year-old drop outs from fancy law schools with no interest in the field but a hankering for the rich men in it. They'd get hitched and have a wedding before the damn baby came out—customary Republican practice—and live in comfort for the rest of their lives. Oscar didn't fault them; if he could have married rich and avoided this hell hole he would've too. Maybe he'd just lacked the charm and good looks because no woman seemed to put up with him for long.  
At first they all thought he was just a stoic man, reliable and hardened by war. They later found out that the stoicism was a cold, distrustful exterior and the hardening was a new-found lack of empathy towards other living creatures. He saw them as sub-human, him being the only real one left. It was a painfully obvious self-preservation tactic that many soldiers used to justify their often baseless killing.  
He rolled his arm back and exhaled through his teeth. Damn, Autumn didn't fuck around in Washington. In Texas they didn't have to wear jackets until the dead of winter. He felt his back start to stiffen up from the position and cursed. The problem with being 42 and still wanting to have the thrill of a kill was that your body wasn't up to it any more. Luckily, for most of the general population, having a dream wasn't a problem because they no longer saw past ambitions of trips to Florida and Saturday golf. The woman inside the apartment moved behind the drawn curtains. Her shadow showed various stages of sizes and feathering. He waited. He'd wait until she went outside. That's what he'd been taught to do. Never look away from your target, they're the prize, the saying went. He licked his chapped lips and spit out a wad of tasteless gum that had gone stale a few hours ago. His eyes watered, cold tears leaking down the sides of his face.  
He coughed once, twice. The woman was in the kitchen, hair visible from above the drapes. The room was bathed in an orange light that made the skin of her ears look pink and warm. After a few minutes the lights went dark and Oscar no longer saw her figure wandering about the apartment.  
He was left into the darkness of the night sky. He lay there and wondered what she could have done to have someone like him come after her. She looked homely, like a mother. There were soft wrinkles at the far corners of her eyes, suggesting that she had laughed a lot in her life. She was going to die and she acted like she didn't know it. He lit a cigarette and curled his fingers into red fists. Now his hands were shaking with the cold. He coughed once, and took another drag from the stick.  
Oscar Nile was cold.

## Chapter Nine

Sometimes when the day was brighter, with light coming through the glass in a soft layer of white, she could forget the hate. That deep residing hurt that lingered under her skin. Something akin to fear. Something too scarce to truly capture. The tight feeling in her throat, the tears that fell soundlessly and it seemed as though she could no longer feel. Just an empty vessel to stand and be emotionless until the next onslaught of sadness. There was truly nothing as awful as that fear. The fear of not being good enough, of disappointing, of letting go. It's a hateful feeling, to not be good enough.  
Never knowing what she did to make them think she was better than what she was. perhaps there was nothing she could have done. Days of being sad with herself led to the development of a hate so internal and rooted that she herself could not find the start nor end of it. It just grew like a living skeleton. It consumed her bones, her lungs, her stomach. Hate fueled by insecurity. And yet, curiously, she did not hate herself. No, for it was not she who put the tears in her head and ruined her potential for some reality.  
The feeling always came back.  
Perhaps the recurrence was purely beneficial for the fueling of the rage.  
It was there for the sake of permitting fate its course. There are things like this in life.   
And sometimes life was best when it was escaped.

The rosemary grew over the white walls that were flaking paint, wet wood exposed beneath the green leaves. There was a gray feeling in the air, something humid and heavy but not warm. The after rain smell lingered by the cool of the windows. It was a little sad, a little too peaceful. Loneliness Collapsed into the atmosphere of the garden. Quiet and too lovely for just one dead moment.  
A shovel rested on the shed, the blade coated with mud and embedded with rocks. Stringy roots fell off the edges. Amelia's hands smelled of rust and the too-fresh taint of grass. Her fingers ached at their joints. Her hair stuck to the back of her neck with sweat. Breath clogged her throat as the skin there constricted like a plastic bag. What had she done? She stared at the body lying in the grass. A thin spread of glass droplets coated the leaves there, like a light hand had tossed them ever so carefully. The pale face of her mother was cold in the dirt, soft nose blue with death. Stiffening with time. _Breathe,_ she told herself, _you aren't dead._ She also said it aloud, as she wasn't sure whom she was speaking to. It must have been to herself, as she knew the woman in front of her was dead. The red gash across that slim neck testified that. The blood always looked too red, like it wasn't real. Like it was fake and a film producer would walk in any second with a second-rate clapperboard and yell "cut! Add some more enthusiasm. Make it feel real." Reality did not feel very real at all. In the dim light of day the body was stark and boring in its stillness. The red a bright but dulling reminder of what Amelia had done.  
She had killed her parents.  
Amelia's mother had come home at a standard 2 am and stumbled, tired, into the bathroom. She had dropped a coffee-stained copy of the Times on the floor with her bag. Splashed water onto her face and blindly reached out for the white towel hanging off the side of the counter. She'd picked it up and then screamed when the brown-red of old blood strained back at her in contrast with the white surrounding it. Too big for a period spot. Amelia had been up first, followed by her father running up the stairs. He never made it all the way up the stairs.  
If there was one thing no serial killer was supposed to do it was kill relatives. Those were always so easy to track. _Just follow the blood._ She resisted a shiver. The kitchen knife was still teetering on the side of the sink inside. The plastic handle had left a bruise on her hand. The joints in her wrist ached again. Her father's slumped body hung over the staircase railing. His tie waved lightly in the AC draft. This wasn't like her previous kills. This one felt heavy, like a weight had settled over her shoulders and chest. There was no fun in messing up. Two mess ups in one day. That was bad. A frog croaked in the bushes. She could see that the pale orange light was still on in her upstairs bedroom. She stood in her nightdress and wondered what she was supposed to do next.  
Her toes dug into the soft earth beneath her and the voices in her head seemed to spill out of her ears. She could hear them seep into the air. _you_ _could run._ "But how far?" _You could hide them._ "For how long?" _You could_ _die.  
_ Silence again.  
She studied the soft sway of the trees above her. _What does it mean to_ _be alive?_ She was neither angry nor scared at the prospect of dying. A little disappointed, yes. Perhaps she was a little lonely, then, for the first time.  
It was the slight chill in the air, that drowsy pull at her skin. The stick of her lips. Life stuck. _Can't breathe  
_ She felt the tears come from that place deep inside the well of her heart, that carved out cave that was barely explored. Rarely tested or viewed or loved. She felt it crack like that one china vase when it hit the back of her chair that time when she was eight. She remembered the push of her feet off the kitchen floor just a little too hard. The shock of falling backwards.  
The contact. The crash. The fall. She could almost remember it all. The vase had shattered into thousands of silvery shards. They'd scattered like water across the linoleum tiles. Slivers of white and blue slipping into the crack under the counter and between the grooves in the floor. "Amelia, don't just stand there! Grab the dustpan from the closet." Mother yelling, father looking red-faced mad. Bare feet, no shoes. Scared. Run, run. Sobbing.  
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Her parents glued it back together. Every single piece. Until it was whole again and the blue and white looked neat in their little flowers and wreaths of cranes. breathe. The glue had dried slightly yellow. She'd cried and cried because they'd loved that vase.  
They'd loved that vase.  
It had been the size of Amelia when she was eight. The lip of the jar just above her eye-level. Just a little too tall. Deep, so deep. Like her heart.  
Her heart was that vase.  
The same.  
If only she had been a little taller. Then she'd have been able to peer inside.  
What would she have found? What would have been there? She tried to imagine it. Would it have been as dark as she expected it to be? She wondered what she wanted to see in there. At eight she had believed there to be something very special in there. Yet when it broke there had been nothing in it. She shivered in the garden for a very long time before she bent down and opened the sack of mulch by her feet. She brought it above her mother's body and dumped the contents out. Slowly the body sunk into the ground. Gone. Amelia dropped the empty sack on the pile of earth and walked back inside, trekking mud across the WELCOME carpet.  
You could die.  
She walked up the stairs and ignored the dead body of her father as she passed. His tie was on backwards. He'd probably gone through the whole day at work without anybody pointing that out to him. Had come and gone without anybody caring. She swallowed pity. She wished that she could vomit it. The house felt empty in a way it had never been. Her parents had been at work more than not and yet the chill only set in then. The feeling of true abandonment. She dragged her shoulder against the wall.  
Let's pause for a moment.  
Think of peace. Pure happiness. Everybody has their own place of peace.  
Something ideal in the sense that it would put all their anxieties and worries to rest. Free them. It's often a place of imagination. Something hidden from the world. An escape. Something worth living for and cultivating from the surrounding darkness.  
I'll tell you mine although you might not particularly care to hear it. I saw "it" for the first time in a dream I had as a child. I woke up on one of those late Saturday mornings with the sun shinning though the window. My tongue was heavy. I was warm even though it was the middle of October. I woke. I blinked. Then I almost forgot the dream—I did for a few days—until I had it again. I've remembered it ever since.  
It was a green castle.  
It was vivid green, like a palm tree leaf. The walls were semi-translucent and made of something akin to glass. They were cold. I remember leaning against one with my cheek. At first I thought that I was outside of the place, looking at it from a hill like a brave knight about to charge its towers. It looked old, like it had been there a while. Then, suddenly, I was inside on the marble floor. I don't remember if it really was marble, but it sounded like it. That echoing sound my shoes made when I took a step reminded me of the ones my shoes make in fancy banks. In the center of the first green room I looked at a wall and saw an infinite number of walls extending in that direction. I could see through every one of them, off into the distance.  
It looked like a labyrinth. I turned around and it was the same. Each wall had a door cut into the glass. I walked through the nearest door and was in another identical room. I went through another door. The same room.  
Another door. Same room. Another. The same. I stopped and looked up. Above me was a high ceiling made out of the same green glass except there was a circular opening cut out of the top. I could see clouds pass overhead. It was bright but there was no sun. I didn't remember noticing a light before. I lay down on the floor. I stared into the sky and the green glistened like the smooth pieces of sea glass my father used to collect. Soft around the edges. Hazy light. I remember thinking how beautiful it was.  
How I could lay there forever and never be found.  
Then I slowly woke up.  
The people whom I've told this dream to have all said that it sounds like a nightmare. Lost in a labyrinth, no escape. The torture of being able to see an open sky but never being able to reach it. I hadn't looked at it that way. Then again, I was a very introverted child. A very solitary person in general. Then again, I feel as though many of the writers I have like lived on the outskirts of society their entire lives. It feels as though in order to be able to describe the world one has to be looking at it from a distance. When you're inside you don't need to describe the world because you're already living it.  
I remember the dream as comforting in the respect that it was so sheltered (caged, some might say). I liked that I had countless walls protecting me. A solitary castle all to myself. I could see out but was not vulnerable.  
I could walk forever and never run into anybody else. I was not limited. I was protected. I could always see up into my own circle of sky. That one spot that nobody else looked at as closely as I did.  
It was my haven. Nothing mattered in that castle. Nothing had time. There were no mornings and there were no nights. It was always light and it was always a little sad in a nostalgic way.  
Nostalgia is my favorite feeling. That's because it's the truest, most personal emotion of them all. I won't argue with people about this, but I know it to be true. Happiness and anger are fleeting whereas nostalgia is forever slowly bleeding out into all of our veins. Take a breath and then another. You know that one toy you used to have? That one friend you missed because they moved away? All those fun times you had? What would have happened if they'd stayed? Missed lives. Perhaps nostalgia is the collective sum of all our missed opportunities and that's why it hits us so strongly. It's a paradox of being happy and so sad at the same time.  
Forget singularity, think of the whole bouquet of emotions.  
Why talk of nostalgia? It's because I know the feeling too well. I miss the dead. I miss certain smiles and the crinkles in their foreheads and the flash of their teeth and their shinning irises about to close and go to bed.  
I miss some voices; the memorable shrill and low and heavy and hoarse.  
Those conversations and all those that could have been. The nervous ticks and peculiarities. Certain questions have been left unanswered like empty lines on a survey. Memorabilia stuffed into grieving hands as though that would offer consolation. A will is not a certificate. Those who have died don't need to give out thank you bags. Patches of I Loved You Most. I've had too many good lives slip through my hands and in comparison to others I'm still a child.  
There is no starting age for sadness.  
This melancholy happiness certainly wasn't a new feeling for Amelia only she had forgotten what that feeling was called. It wasn't sadness. It was constant. That loss of something irretrievable. That frantic search for anything to stuff that gap full with. The way a mother bird builds her nest, so too did Amelia attempt to mend her heart. Perhaps her attempts at completeness were destined to fail from the start. Her birthright—that defining biology—too messed up to come clean with. Ever since she was a child she had been weird. Wasn't that what the trail of teacher and doctor notes said? Individuality had never been a choice for her. She was not a part of the collection. Stop looking at the wall, there's nothing there.  
Her room was the same as it had always been except now it was empty.  
The books stacked on her desk and at the foot of her bed were just papers and bindings. The emotion had been striped from the pages. The meaning those had once held for her was now gone. She felt gummy with guilt and sore with grief. The numbness in her fingers didn't recede. If anything they grew colder and sweaty with fear. Fear is a temporary madness. There had been something in the wall. Three eyes in the wall of the hotel bathroom, hidden among st the swirling brown and white marble. They'd stared at her and she had stared back, heels pressed against the cool underside of the toilet. The pupils had spun and spun in lazy circles like a drain. She had been scared then but not because of the eyes. She'd been afraid because she knew they weren't real. Her mother couldn't see them. Hadn't when Amelia dragged her into the small room with the corner tub and dingy sink and toilet set. Stop looking at the wall, there's nothing there.  
But who gets to dictate what reality is?  
Dry-eyed Amelia stared at her bed. A place of comfort. A place of infinite and sleepless nights. The breeding spot of dreams and ideas too grand to speak of in daylight. Dreams tended to wash the colors out of real life. _When do people start to regret life more than liking it? What_ _is the evolutionary benefit in feeling regret?  
_ A lot of questions bounced around in Amelia's head as she stood in her room that morning. She hadn't had breakfast. The mailman had already left the news and adverts in the mailbox and left without understanding what had occurred that morning.  
Later, when he saw the incident on the evening news he sat, flabbergasted, on his sofa before taking another drink from the beer can on the table. He would have told somebody about it, perhaps—"I knew that girl! I used to see her all the time. Who'd have thought? That family was weird though, the dad was always sneaking around, ya'know?"—if he had somebody to tell.  
As it was, he didn't. He was 36 and living alone in a small apartment where the floor was made of wet concrete (the AC was always leaking) and only the landlady knew his name. She was nice, the landlady, with her pudgy face and small, wrinkled hands. He wanted to give her something when he died but had nothing of value. In fact, having to move out all of his possessions from the room was probably going to be a hassle for her. She always complained about her back and then subsequently about her chiropractitioner. The mailman was always more trouble than he was worth, he knew this. That's why he wanted to alleviate the world of his presence.  
"It's about time," he said morosely, looking at the television but not really looking. The lights from the set were a blur of colors in the back of his head. He wasn't thinking about the drama that was playing on the set.  
He was thinking about death. He usually thought about death that time of day. Only it seemed sadder then. The thought of that young, raven-eyed girl murdering her parents had re-wired him. Changed something. _She should_ _have killed me_ , he thought as the show cut to ads. _What difference would it_ _make if I had died?_ For the first time, the notion of death felt tangible. It whispered to him, "you could have me too."  
That night the mailman killed himself.  
There were no investigations. No "I wonder if this is connected to that murder. It was on the same day"s. He was creamated and then burried and then rarely thought of ever again. His life was sad, it's true, but sadder because he ended it. In some other reality he lived past that night. He got drunk and passed out on the couch until noon the next day when the doorbell rang. He shook awake, heart and head pounding. The doorbell rang again and he answered the door in the clothes he'd worn the night before. "Good morning," the landlady said. "You haven't paid your rent yet." The mailman said "I'm sorry, I'm a little short this month. I'll get it to you...tomorrow." The landlady gave him a look of pity and then smiled slightly and left him alone again. He closed the door and cried. Then he knocked over some empty beer bottles on the way to his laptop. He cursed, then cried again and sat on the floor before he saw that he was bleeding from his foot. A shard of broken bottle glass had embedded itself in the pad of his foot. The pain didn't set in for another 20 seconds, an odd hot-fuzzy numbness traveling up his leg. He called the hospital from his cellphone (he typed 911 because he didn't know what the hospital number was, or if they were just joined numbers somehow) and an ambulance picked him up and carried him into the van on a stretcher. The device felt dirty under his fingers—the cloth was rough and smelled like sickness—and he wondered if someone had ever died right there where he was lying because he'd stepped on a broken beer bottle. He was given stitches and then he was left alone until he tried to roll out of the hospital bed because he remembered that medical services cost a lot of money. The mailman did not have a good insurance plan.  
The mailman was tied to his hospital bed and brought lunch by a young male nurse who had to feed him by hand. "Been having a rough time lately?"  
The nurse asked. He had grey eyes and a wrinkly smile that made him look like an agelessly kind person despite his youth. The doctor look. That was when the mailman started to ramble about how broke and sad he was and about how the bathroom lights in his apartment flickered and how his fridge smelled weird and he didn't know why. He'd cleaned it, like, three times already. It made all the food inside of it less enjoyable but he couldn't afford to buy a new one. Then he told the nurse about that young girl, Amelia, whom he'd known and who had killed her family. He was excited to have someone to tell that story to. "I walk by that house everyday and never even suspected a thing. She looks like a normal little girl, you know? Real surprise." The nurse nodded and smiled at all the right times and his posture was relaxed and the mailman wondered how long it had been since someone had actually listened. Since someone had said something to him other than "good morning", "nice weather we're having", or "do I just sign here?" He hated pleasantries. He hated meaningless chats and faked smiles and forced waves.  
The nurse came again after their first talk.  
He was always dressed in a white coat with a dress shirt underneath. He carried a clipboard and a pen in his too-large pockets. His shoes looked small and his pants weren't ironed. There was no ring on his finger. The mailman was pretty sure that the nurse was a very good person because he looked a little like his old kindergarten teacher. They went out for dinner after the mailman got his stitches out. The mailman stuttered when he talked to the nurse. A jittered, embarrassed tumble-halt of speech. They ignored it.  
Then they didn't. The nurse must have known why. The mailman waited in his nicest shirt and dress jacket in front of the restaurant and wondered if he was being stood up. He wasn't.  
They kissed and then didn't for a while. Then they did again in the back of the Nurse's car while they pulled at each other's clothes and the mailman pushed off that white coat and his fingers eventually met skin. In the neon bright lights of the strip mall parking lot they kissed a long time, their bodies bent awkwardly under the roof. His neck hurt by the end of it but the mailman didn't notice until he was at home in the shower. He rubbed it, then smiled, because it didn't hurt that bad and he'd had a very good time. They went out again after that. Then again after that too. After their fourth date they stood with ice cream cones in the park and the nurse asked, quite nervously but nicely, "are we dating?" The mailman said, "yes, if you want to be." The nurse did. They dated for a few months and then moved in together. The mailman quit being a mailman and got a job at the local wildlife preserve. He did not think about killing himself. He never did after that.  
But that's not what happened. No, the mailman died.  
The apartment was empty for a few weeks and then it was rented and the landlady didn't mention the man who had hung himself from the rafters and no one cared to ask. The people who he'd delivered letters and packages to for the last six years never even knew his name and few realized that he was no longer the mailman who came by. He was just the dead mailman guy. Nobody likes suicide. Nobody likes talking about suicide. They let him die in their minds and nobody remembered or ever thought about him.  
C'est la vie.  
That's how someone truly dies.  
Amelia, standing in in her bedroom, had to decide. Should she choose to die then there was the possibility of being forgotten, of having died for nothing. If you weren't remembered then what was the point of living? She wanted to be in textbooks and bold printed on newspapers. She wanted to be feared, she wanted to be awed, she wanted to be debated over and analyzed and taken apart. Her every move broken down and deciphered. Her very thoughts and intentions theorized and speculated. She then realized that it would be pointless to die. Nobody knew her. Nobody did. Not yet. She swallowed grief and amped logic. She had to get out of the house. She had to grab her emergency backpack (packed with water bottles and 2-year-old trail mix) and run. Run as far away as possible into the woods and hide.  
Run and hide.  
Her cellphone vibrated.  
She'd have to cut her hair and catch a ride to a different city. She'd have to change her name and identity. Live off the streets. Or not. She slung her backpack over her shoulder and ran down the stairs. She paused at her father's body and pulled out his wallet. She sifted through its contents and pulled out the bills. The big money. She wished that she'd have done the same with her mother (she'd always kept her wallet in her dress pants pocket. Always. Consistency had pleased her mother) but now it was too late. She pulled on a jacket and pulled on the hood. She shut the back door quietly and walked down her street, leaving the white picket fences and well-groomed front lawns behind her. She swallowed thickly and hummed something vaguely religious. She wanted to cry.  
Her eyes stayed ever dry.

## Chapter Ten

She walked outside onto the balcony with a green watering can. Her eyes were covered by a sun hat and her rings glinted in the sun.  
He shot her, muttering a prayer before his finger went inwards and her body fell against the railing. She didn't make a sound, just hung across the metal like a wet mattress. He looked at her through the eyepiece—counted to 90—before he took apart and packed his rifle and removed the silencer.  
He knew nobody would find her for another day. Not in this part of town.  
Nobody dared to call the police. He cracked his back as he stood up, feeling the tension ebb away. It was early morning, 6 am, and the sky was a dull gray around the edges in a way that was strangely serene and beautiful for a moment before the feeling passed over Oscar.  
I'm alive,  he thought, _and she isn't_. He felt the high that came after a successful mission. It had been a perfect shot, clean and quiet. It had entered through her right eye and gone through the back of her head. Blood pooled through her hair, sticky and drying brown as it ran down her neck.  
Oscar walked through the building as just another ordinary middle-aged man. A tan suitcase wheeled behind him, looking professional and not at all like it concealed a heavy artillery weapon. He looked tired, but so did everyone else. He took a disposable cellphone out from his pocket and looked through the recent contacts until he found the number labeled MIS67. MIS  
for Mission and 67 for the kill. He liked to be organized, categorized. He pressed the call button and waited for the phone to ring four times. Then he hung up. He put the phone back in his pocket.  
He needed a new pack of cigarettes. That, and some food. The cigarettes first though. He went to his store, bought his shit, then took the bus home.  
There was a lady in front of him who was reading the Times. She looked up at him, clearly disinterested, just a passing glance. Oscar got those a lot.  
It meant he was doing his job at being unassuming. He gave her a pressed, practiced smile and she looked away. Her brown hair looked put together, as did her pressed clothes, but she had on dirty sneakers. The bus stopped at his station and he got up, looking at the lady one more time before he stepped off.  
He rang his apartment doorbell four times before he gave up and angrily rummaged around in his bag for the key. The door clicked open and he cursed as he wheeled his little bag inside. He turned on the lights. Then he turned them off. On. Off. On. Off. On.  
"Open the door when I ring." He shouted into the flat. Nobody answered.  
He stomped off his shoes and marched into the living room.  
"Didn't you hear me!"  
The boy on the couch looked up from a laptop as he entered and shrugged, "no. Sorry."  
Oscar grabbed the boy's shirt and smacked the palm of his hand against the boy's face. "You open the door when you hear me, got it?"  
"Yeah."  
"What was that?"  
"I said yeah, okay!" The boy yanked himself out of Oscar's grasp and angrily stared back at his laptop. Tears formed in his left eye above where he'd been hit. Oscar stared and smirked, "That's what I thought, ya wimp."  
Then, refreshed, he went into the kitchen to get a beer. He needed a beer.  
He took a drink and then lit a cigarette, watching the air around him grow heavy with smoke.  
"Kid. Did you do the laundry?"  
The boy walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge—empty—and shook his head.  
"I told you to do the laundry."  
"Yeah, and I decided that I didn't want to touch your dirty boxers again."  
Oscar felt the tin beer can start to collapse under his fist and the other one banged against the table, "what was that? What was that! You don't speak to your elders like that you little bastard!"  
He felt his fingers wrap around the closest sharp object they could find; it was a butter knife. He stood up, wielding his weapon. "I'll kill you, kid. Watch your step. I'll slice your throat!"  
There was a moment of panic in the boy's eyes where he looked at the phone hanging on the wall. It was the only phone in the house, and Oscar was the only one who owned a pay phone. Oscar stared at it too, as if goading the boy. _I dare you to call the police. I dare you.  
_ "Fine. I'll do it. I'll do the wash." The boy said, backing out of the room. Oscar waited until he was out of sight before he lowered the knife onto the table. Stupid kid. He took another swig of his beer and coughed as he inhaled the smoke. It was a fit of ugly, retching sounds. He coughed up something that sounded liquid and cleared his throat with more beer.  
Beer fixes everything, he thought. He was about to get another can when the boy re-entered the room. In his hand was Oscar's handgun. The boy's finger trembled around the trigger. Oscar wondered through the haze if the safety was off and then remembered that of course it was off. He never put it on.  
"Whoa there boy. Put the gun down."   
"Sit down. Sit down!" The boy yelled and pointed the barrel at Oscar.  
It quivered around his chest. His eyes motioned to the seat Oscar had just gotten up from.  
"Okay kid, look, I'm sitting down." He put the empty can on the table and slowly lowered himself onto his chair. "now put the gun dow—"  
The boy's finger pulled the trigger but the aim was off and three shots fired into the wall behind Oscar's head. Three black holes against the white of the plaster.  
"what the Hell!?" Oscar broke out in sweat, neck straining as he looked around at the bullet holes.  
"I miss shot, I miss shot." The boy apologized frantically, hands still clasped and tight against the metal body of the gun.  
"Holy shit." Oscar trembled in cold sweat and looked at the other with wide, white eyes, "Jesus, You almost shot me!"  
"That's w-what. That's what was supposed to happen." The boy re-aimed the gun, "I have a name."  
"Yea, yeah. Cole, look, Cole. There I said it. We good?"  
The boy's eyes were concentrated on the fat of Oscar's chest. One eye squinted while the gun stopped flopping around and the boy stopped trembling. "We've never been good."  
Another shot. This time Oscar felt it and gasped. His hand clutched his stomach and felt wet. It hurt. It hurt like hell's blazes. He was screaming, screaming his bloody head off. He felt it in his throat rather than heard it.  
It was a low sound running high. He looked down and removed his hand, watching as the blood soaked through his shirt and looked like their mother's red food dye on his skin. "You idiot." He tried to think of something worse to say, something crueler. He'd be damned if he left without saying something utterly stupid. Something that would send him straight to hell. He was blanking. He panicked. "You son of a bitch! I hope you die you coward. I hope you die. You faggot! Yeah, I know! I saw!" His vision faded to black for a second before reappearing. _I'm dying,_ he thought. He stood up and wavered around like a car dealer blow up doll. The chair toppled over and he ran against the kitchen counter. He heard the slap of blood against the floor. He looked around for the boy, his eyes a blurry, unfocused mess. He jutted out a finger, "they'll catch you. They will."  
The boy glared at him, "no, they won't."  
Oscar wheeled around a couple times, fingers clutching the counter top but slipping. He fell to the floor, an ache dragging him down to his knees.  
He squirmed around on the tiles for a few minutes, spasms ripping through the pain and bursting it to life again. The boy pulled out a chair from the table and sat down, watching Oscar's writhing form. He took one of the cigarettes from the carton on the table and lit it with a plastic lighter.  
Oscar opened his eyes a crack and whispered, "give me one." The boy blew out smoke in his face and said nothing. There was a cracking noise, accompanied by spasms that moved Oscar's whole body and then they stopped suddenly. His muscles stiffened and his mouth hung open mid-agony but slack like a rubber band hanging off a finger. _Shh shh shhhh.  
_ Oscar Nile was dead.  
The boy, Cole, finished the cigarette and picked up the overturned chair.  
He stepped over Oscar's dead body and picked up a rag and a bottle of bleach from under the sink. He poured some on Oscar's body and then some on to the rag and began wiping up the blood from the floor tiles and counter. It was oxygen based Bleach. _I'm smart_ , the kid assured himself.  
He disabled the fire alarms, took off his shirt and pants, then burned them in the sink with a lighter and flushed the ashes down the toilet. The body wasn't moved and the boy left it as he walked from the kitchen back into the living room. He sat down on the couch in nothing but his underwear and rebooted his computer.

CN: Sorry, I had to take of something.  
AE: It's ok. I was busy too.  
CN: What are you doing?  
AE: I have to get out of town for a while.  
CN: So do I. Meet up?

Cole waited for a response until it became clear that his friend was done chatting and he put his cellphone down on the couch cushion next to him.  
He saw a fly in the corner of his vision. It landed on the wall, it's freakishly large eyes staring at nothing in particular, and then flew away. Cole curled his legs in. He could see Oscar's midsection in the kitchen entryway. He rocked back and forth on the couch. _What have you done, kid. What have_ _you done_. His hands were still sweaty. His head felt like it was stuffed with cotton from the noxious combination of bleach and charred clothes. Cole stood up and walked over to his backpack, unzipping the top so that he could pull out a plastic bag that held a thin syringe and a sealed tube of liquid. He eyed it for a moment—desire and reservations battling out his actions—before he drew it closer to his chest and carried it back over to the couch.  
It was a painful escape, as far as escapes went. He'd never liked needles.  
Not as a kid at the doctor's office, not as a teenager. He didn't like the way they were long and had to go into to his bloodstream to work. But sacrifices had to made. Everybody has a way of dealing with the pain.  
Which pain? Any pain. The world is filled with all sorts of pain. Cole clenched his eyes and his head head fell back against the wall. He depressed the syringe and blood shot into the barrel. A red plume spiraled upwards like a flower—perhaps like an atomic explosion—before it was shot back.  
He heard himself sigh somewhere far away. A cracked, shaky noise. He floated above it all. Above his worries—they looked so small—away from his crowded, fucked up head. It stopped it all. He orbited around reality like a satellite. From the corner of his vision he saw the hazy shape of his brother on the kitchen floor.  
Hey, look at that,  he thought. Just look at that. His head felt heavy and fell away again, a shapeless smile slipping onto his face. He remembered something akin to revulsion rise and then sink back down from where it came.  
"You're a sick bastard, aren't you," he said, the words slurred to a mumble, "yes you are."  
He'd dreamt about it before. This. Saw the red haze over his eyes and his brain stop as it tumbled into overdrive. When his brother hit him until he cried. Those chocked back sobs he'd almost learned to conceal but not quite. Cole knew that his brother had actually liked it when he cried. Or when he bled from his nose and was told to stop being a "wuss" about it. "I think it's broken," he'd sobbed. He wasn't given an ice pack and he'd worried that it wouldn't heal back right. Or those times when his brother got drunk and shoved Cole against the door and whispered sins into his ears and rutted against him. _I want to die_ , cole would think. He'd thought it so many times.  
Because more than the beatings were the words. The constant reminders that he would never accomplish anything. A constant disappointment. Cole would get mad. He felt contained and small and unwanted. He'd been waiting for revenge for years and now it had happened.   
But now, after everything, he still felt the strings of empathy through the fog. _Don't wuss out now._ He needed more. Cole felt whiplash as he tried to move, legs unwilling to cooperate with his brain. His arm groped around the fabric of the sofa for where the needle had slipped from inside of his arm. "More." He grunted, "I need more." He willed his fingers to curl around the cylinder but half of his fingers didn't close right and he watched them fall off to the side and the needle roll from his palm. "Shit." He tried again, shaking his chest in order to move the heavy limb. It jutted forward, to the side. Came against the cushion and stuck. The soporific effects of the drug made his body numb but his mind was clearing, leaving him comatose and dead-like. Just mind. It had always just been just him and his mind.  
Usually he welcomed the numb sensation, it made him feel like he was rid of his body. Now though, he had to sit with the reality of what he'd done.  
When he was younger he'd more rational. He just knew it. Now that he was older he was all awkward movements and feelings and hormones and chemical instabilities. It would be so much easier if he didn't have a body to distract him. No having to eat, no having to sleep, no having to keep clean. Bodies limited humans, and the ultimate goal for humans was to create something that could function infinity with unbounded limits. Pure logic. That was the ultimate goal. That's what he strived for. The present didn't matter, only the logic that accompanied it. But even that didn't matter since humankind would die out. It was a matter of time. Just a matter. Time. His thoughts lifted a few feet off the ground before falling back to reality again. He was tormented. He didn't really feel bad. Did he?  
No, no. The man had it coming to him. He'd always had it coming for him. Cole came down and stared up at the ceiling. The feeling was insistent.  
He had to run.

## Chapter Eleven

It was noon when he woke up, hands sweating and cold above the covers.  
Theo slowly sat up, lethargic as his body resisted moving. Outside was the fierce hum of a lawnmower. His dad was home. Theo's knees ached when he moved them, as did the rest of his body. He blinked his eyes, gross with sleep, and rubbed his palms over them. Tired, tired.  
"Hey," a voice to his right said.  
Fear, then remembrance. Alec. Theo breathed out and turned on his side, cheek dragging across his pillow. The burn in his arm made him wince at the slow turn. Alec's glassy body lay on the edge of the bed, observing Theo as though he were somehow foreign. As though he was the broken one. Wasn't Theo the hero? Theo wondered when Alec had decided to stop blinking. He wondered about many things then. Wondered about the odd look of worry in Alec's eyes, their proximity on the bed, perhaps he even wondered about how long Alec had been there, watching him. Theo hoped it hadn't been long because he drooled in his sleep. His mother told him it was unattractive. He shifted his palms over the pillow covers. They were thankfully dry. He looked back at Alec, daring him to break the silence again. The room slanted with light, silent except for the lawnmower outside.  
Alec bit.  
"How are you feeling?"  
"I don't know. Bad."  
"Do you want to—" Alec faltered—"do you want to talk about it?"  
The lawnmower got closer, outside of the window, and then turned and faded again.  
"No." Theo said and stood up.  
No catch.

## Chapter Twelve

_"and I never loved her, I lie because it's easier than to say that she never_ _loved me"_

Pretty boys had always been Amelia's type, hadn't they. The ones with glass faces and eyes so wide they looked like they could shatter. Hands so small and weak it looked like their skin would slip right off if given a reason to. Amelia always had reasons. Whispered bloody promises like prayers into her victim's ear. Married for ten seconds before her hands sealed the deal and twisted their little necks like a bottle cap. Elastic and perfect dolls, slumped like toothpaste. Lindy had never liked those boys. Never liked the easy prey. She considered herself a connoisseur of the harder catch.  
A mouse hunting cats. That had probably been her fault, always going after the next big monster. She liked to box them up and hold them in her arms forever. Small arms, weak bones, just ready to be killed but not quite—never then. She, herself, had been perfect prey. All baby eyes and easy, soft smiles. The fake kind, but present nonetheless. She had stepped in front of a murderer—two—without thinking of the consequences.  
I'm your friend. We'll work together. It's nice to find people like me.  
All those empty sentiments, all those hours on internet forums hiding behind proxies like a coward. All those times she wished she could just kill them.   
Lure out the monsters, let them taste their own medicine, perfect irony.  
She was the one who died. Shame, yet not uncalled for. Lindy knew that she had been beat fairly, in the manner which she always knew she would be. All bloodied up and dressed in a white nightgown. Ears bleeding rivers, limp like a comatose doll. She was a pretty boy, dead and sinfully pure looking. In fairy tales heros never died. Another plastic lie.  
Purity isn't necessarily the opposite of sin, just the illusion that it is.  
Toddlers with vague concepts of everything and nothing. Elementary kids with red cheeks and freckles, endearing, no matter how sullied their skin might be. _But what about the children?_ Screw your ignorance. Attractive vases with no content. Drop them, watch them break, swear to never again ruin something so lovely. Satan always loved the unassuming devil. Lindy wasn't religious but she'd always hoped she'd see the three sixes one day.   
They—the priest, the sad man at the church, and the people in uncomfortable benches—said that dying was light. Light like a cloud. And you'd float up and up and up until you sunk into the sun and met God. He'd chuckle, smile, offer you a hand the size of boat and then walk with you across the pure white sky into the infinite bliss beyond. Lindy was dead proof that they had no idea what they were talking about. She hadn't been taken into the arms of hell or heaven. Alive, she had sworn that she'd go down into the lava-crusted depths of Hell. Yet she stayed on earth, lonely, lovely, not in the agonizing eternity that she had expected, even hoped for.  
Needless to say, she had not been happy. Earth bored her, normal and relatively okay, the same ok-ness that had driven her to murderous insanity when she was alive.  
Theo had been a needed distraction. The boy who could see ghosts.  
How abnormal. How new. Boring nonetheless. That would always be her problem though, wouldn't it? That nothing would ever be enough to satisfy her need for novelty. Not death, not friends, not escaping from authorities.  
She had spent her whole life trying to get into hell (eternal and constantly horrific damnation) only to be rebuffed and kept on earth. Maybe that was hell by its own rite, to her.  
Now though, now something interesting was happening. Amelia was back to killing and Theo was part of it and everything was falling into place so perfectly that Lindy felt like breaking to pieces. The two most interesting people in her world, meeting, possibly. She'd stopped by Amelia's house and had seen the scene herself. So refreshing. She had to make it happen. Push them together and watch them destroy each other. Theo was just Amelia's type, and she was the bad guy Theo needed to give purpose to his life. They would tear each other apart if Lindy played her cards right. They would suffer so beautifully at the hands of the other, Lindy was sure of it. She could almost remember the salty, heavy taste of blood in the air. Metallic on her tongue, red-brown under her nails like dirt. Dirty. Awful. She lived off of that smell. It was sick. That made it better.  
There was something utterly sane beneath it all.  
It was a defense. _Destroy what destroyed you._ Did your daddy touch you?  
Kill the older men. Did your mother hit you? Strangle the condescending yet subservient housewives. Were you born with it? Yes? Then does it matter? No. You're just a mess up, but isn't everyone. Show me your guts, the cliche killer says. No, no, show me your brain. Struggle, hit, yell, plead, smile, show what you've got. The collective sum of all your years dangling by a single night. The game of life is not merciful.  
Kiss me, kiss me hard enough to bruise so that I have proof. I'm justified.  
It's not insanity officer, I swear, it was self-defense. I'm standing my ground.  
On the grave. It's alright, I'm not crazy, just trigger-happy. Trigger-nervous.  
Trigger-angry. Touch me again, I dare you. I dare you so hard. Pinky promise to never trust another person again. I'd say rot in Hell but I never want to see your face ever again. You're overreacting, little girl. Blame me. The loser of life, you crib robber. Child-beater. Life-ruiner. I love it when you suffer.  
They were all dead now, so why was she still so angry.  
Lindy started to hum quietly as she floated down the street towards the city. The night was still and noiseless save for the symphonic insects. The consistent chirps of crickets in the wet grass lining the road. The lonesome owls were always somewhere off in the distance, not quite forgotten. It was a beautiful night, calm and comforting. Familiar in its surprising warmness.  
Fall evenings were sometimes pleasant, despite them trying so hard not to be. Like rainy June mornings. She wondered how Amelia looked now, after a long year.  
Perhaps the same. Wide, crazy eyes and no smile. All dry humor, scary humor, un-funny humor. Lindy had hated that girl with emotion. Still did.  
It was probably the closest she had ever gotten to loving someone. She loved little, but enough. Surprisingly much considering her psychopathic tendencies. Even before, she'd been young but old enough to imagine pulling Amelia in for a kiss, the way the big men did on TV. Those men that she hated. The men that treated women like lessers, like pretty objects. She'd swoop an arm under Amelia and then lean in. Kiss her dark, dark lips.  
Eyes open because she didn't trust that girl the tiniest bit. She'd drop her off a building. Or drag her to the pavement and claw at her hair, eyes, bite her, and love her. And Lindy would plead for it, bargain for the pain.  
Bargain with her words and skin and life. Amelia's touch would feel like death. The physical embodiment of the devil's number on speed dial. Her lips would be chapped and her skin would be flawed and real. Lindy wanted to wear that skin, parade it like a cape. Be warm and snug beneath the pain.  
Crawl through Amelia's throat and love the way it fit around her like a glove. Mad, frenzied daydreams. All of her dreams were fever dreams. Emboldened puberty with all the wrong influences. Unhospitalized necrophilia. In the flesh. _Teddy, Teddy, teach me your ways!  
_ Show me how to seduce and love her to death.  
Lindy had always been jealous of Amelia's pretty boys before she became one of them. Then she had felt all of her, all the ruthless, merciless love of her loveless crush. Her favorite memory from her time alive was the moment Amelia looked her in the eye and twisted her arms so gracefully around Lindy's neck. _It was a kiss, almost._ Maybe Lindy had hoped that it would be. Maybe for a second she'd forgotten whom she was and what she was meant to be doing. _Did I fall in love?_ Nonsense. That would go against every survival instinct she had. Scattered thoughts left a trail behind her like severed limbs.  
Grasping at her with skinny fingers and bitten nails. They twisted uselessly against the flat pavement because her ideas had never been very good at rationalizing. At moving forward. They only contorted themselves into grotesque actions and festered, sprawled out and vulnerable, like an untreated wound. They begged and pleaded. Were coercive and tempting. Long fingers, elegant and slim and breakable. Lindy had broken almost all of her fingers in her lifetime. _I'm touching me. He's_ _touching me. I'm touching him. He's no longer touching me._ Necks were harder to break than one would think. The satisfying _pop_ and _crunch_ at the end was worth it though. Every time. She wasn't the bad guy though, oh no! She was the hero, naturally. The victim and shameless civilian.  
Take pity on me, I'm a broken child! Do mental injuries count? Should I fake a bad knee? Be nice to me, I warrant kindness as medicine for my violent madness. They'd say she's crazy.  
Crazy.  
The word "crazy" makes me a little angry. Crazy is an umbrella term. It's more than that. It's a too-wide term. A too-wide-to-find-anything-in term. When someone says "crazy" what are they referring to? The anxiety, the anger problems, the paranoia, the schizophrenia, the sexual sadism? The pedophilia, narcissism, manipulation, phobias? If so then every single person I've ever met is completely crazy. The overly-friendly-to-the-cheerleaders gym teacher in middle school. The friend who had BPD and confessed her love to me three times while she had a boyfriend. The other less-forward friend who was depressed and poetic and loved to laugh over sad things.  
The art teacher in elementary school who was a lesbian and would always get high in her office. The soccer kid who was happy and popular but biked an hour to school everyday and cried a lot. The girl I used to love who dressed her eyes black like a funeral and wore collared shirts with sweaters as if that would keep her warm from the cruelty of her poverty. She was the person who taught me that imperfection was more beautiful than my mother's OCD world. She smelled like couch cushions and used bed sheets.  
She was lovely. She was also often very ugly. She tried to kill herself by slipping out a blade from a pink 6 dollar woman's leg shaver and sliding it against her wrist. She was bullied in middle school. She loved a girl in LA and cried over her a lot. She thought boys were cute and kissed them in movie theaters. She was asexual and loved drawn pornography. She lost hair over stress and plastic nails. She told people that they were cute a lot and held her hands together in front of her like she was always slightly unsure. Always. She liked writing and I know that she'll make a book one day. And I'll read it. I think I'll like it because it will be just like her. All books are just extensions of a writer. Whoever loves me is a sick soul, I'm afraid to say. She said that she loved me one night in the dark as we listened to classical music. She wrote it on a piece of paper. I love you. Drew a little picture with hearts. _I love you too.  
_ Maybe you would love her too. A lot of people did. But that was a while ago. More people used to love me too.  
A lot of people I know love quickly. They say yes to someone only hours after meeting them. Pour time and energy into someone they barely know. Allow themselves to love and become vulnerable too quickly. That's not love, that's desperation. That's frantically continuing humanity. That's scratching at someone else's heart and hoping that it'll be beautiful on the inside. That's breaking the shelter of your ribs to present your everything and hoping that they'll do the same. That's naive. That's dangerous. Then again, I suppose it would be foolish of you to take my advice as well. I'm not conventional when it comes to love. I'm distrustful and hard to like. It takes me years to trust another person. Gender doesn't matter in theory, but usually only girls pass the trustworthy test. Media likes to portray girls as liars and unfaithful little back stabbers but in reality a guy can't keep his damn mouth shut. Unless he has no other friends, he will tell a secret and he will tell it well. Usually add something in order to spice the story up a little more. Boys tell too quickly and fall in love too fast with people they cannot have. It's detrimental. An upset boy is a temperamental plan. Girls will take your secret to hell. You just have to find a good one. A good little bad girl. Yes, I'm generalizing, but so does everyone. Once bitten, twice shy, right?  
I might have rabies from how often I've been caught by surprise. No, don't look at his shy, sweet face. He's like the rest of them. Learned that in second grade when Henry found out that I thought he was cute. Made me cry, called me names. Girls though, girls are smart and soft and wonderful.  
Their hands aren't sweaty and hard. Their fingers are soft like lotion, tender like blankets. Kiss me again, dark lady. You don't need a man. Poets aren't as honest as I am, aren't as scared as I am. Bones brittle like ice and afraid and sore with paranoia. I've tried but I'm repelled. Trauma, let's call it. Disgust. I never want to touch another man again, sore losers, mean abusers.  
They've done nothing but try to love me.  
Love is flimsy and shallow like an empty eye socket. It looks deep but it's not; it's a hole the size of a coin. You could go blind with love. Think it's lovely when really you're bleeding out. No, don't love me. Inspire, excite, interest, confuse, chase, catch, leave me alone. But please never love me. It's better to love from afar, where imagination makes up for what reality cannot give you. Never be disappointed again. Realistic pessimists are actually the happiest people. You make living—something so difficult—look easy. Don't you know how many times I've daydreamed about that moment we almost kissed? I've lived it one hundred times and all of them were better inside of my head. You don't get them because they're mine and mine alone. Don't give me those sad eyes, you didn't even love me. You red lobster. Mean-eyed monster.  
You're the reason I'm scared of the dark.  
No, that's the lie I always tell, isn't it? You were, at one point, the only light in my sky. The one thing that kept me from wheeling off the street.  
The night is scary without you. It always was. Don't you know what lurks in the forest and in the garage and under the bed? Under the sheets, big and heavy and wet with sweat. No? Aren't you just a lucky one. Nobody tells sad stories anymore. sadness only inhabits freaks. "It's good that I got over it," I say. "It's good that it never meant anything, that fear. That it didn't change me." Twist the world like shoelace ties. I've never liked the face of a child. Photos are like rocks and ice. Tell me that you were pretty one last time. I look like you too, right? Those eyes, that frail, mature smile. They got you too. I'm always right.  
I'm the evil inside. Never hide. Not anymore. It's confusing, I'm sure. Happy-faced suicide. Put the book down, you're not getting anywhere in life. Think hard about why you're real, when I'm not. You dirty narcissist.  
That's what I thought. You've learned too much, been stuffed and tied like a boy scout's knot. Tell me again about your mother. I talk aloud to myself more in the mornings because voices already follow me at night. I'm too preoccupied watching people eat each other alive on hotel sheets and against rustic couches. Shove my hand under the covers and pretend that I too could be that guileless. The selfish innocence of their sex charms me.  
Haunts me and burns me alive. Hot, hot, ice cold over my stomach and thighs. Vomit like a fountain all over my clothes. Get up and pretend that this hasn't happened again. Wipe it off my chin like a child that's fallen off their bike. Blood is too sweet for me at night.  
Sinful hemophiliac. You'd be in heaven if you died.  
No, no. pry my hands from my trembling body. I'm too scared to die, I'm too scared to die. The night brings up a self-destructive pit of insecurity.  
Why, why, why?  I had it worse as a child. Always certain that I would die every time I got sick. Pick up my limbs up and turn them over. Don't you know that you're touching a corpse? I never knew a girl who wasn't into a pet and play attempt at necrophilia. Too pretty too soon. Society stop lying. No pre-teen likes a man who's ninety-five. Lotion up those eyes and maybe you'll still be around when he dies. An old man blames dementia when he forgets his anorexic model doll. She vomited her ambitions up in a fire-brown bowl. Too pretty too soon, that never ends well. "How much?" a man asks. _A billion bucks_. I've never met a prostitute who respected herself too much. I love them every night. Long, dark silhouettes under the dusty moonlight. A cab stops like a neon sign. Legs like California beaches. Smell like a grandmother's medicine cabinet. I don't trust those cops who watch them every night. Rapists in shady, self-absorbed cosplay. Don't touch those girls officer. I've seen what you do. A rapist with the government's badge of approval. You don't even pay, do you? Don't think you've got us fooled.  
Beware anyone who isn't white, this officer isn't color blind. (He just says he is.) Don't call for help, that's aggression. No white man has fooled you yet. The innocent middle-class stands to the side, horror a facade on their doe eyes. Please, don't even pull out those alligator eyes. Tears have always been too sweet for me.  
Happy sadist, you masochist disguised. You're spouting all your wishful lies.  
Don't you think they see you between the wolf's eyes? That costume is too big for you, little lamb. Sew your stomach back up again. Only geniuses can read between the lines and know what's a metaphor. You're the child, not the grandmother. Dead. Depending on the version. Speak a little louder, scream it at the top of your lungs, their ears can't hear you.  
Your terror's unsung. Cry like a fountain angel. Drip like a nose. You never make any sense, the English teacher said. I make the images up in my head.  
All five, ticking off fingers on just one hand. Tell me again how the apple in Adam and Eve isn't a metaphor. I dare you, sure, like the hands on a clock.  
Can't you even say the word sex?  
Dirty, dirty adultress. You loved yourself more than him, didn't you?  
That's why I cried, right? Didn't want his dirty, impure, not-me, hands on my skin. It was too lovely, stop, you're going to ruin it and pollute my veins. Choke my lungs. Disguise my youthful face. I didn't know. I didn't know that dignity could be stripped like wall paint. Didn't think it'd hurt so much, like pushing nails into a soft plane of stomach. Shove jewels into my eyes and I'll cry diamonds. I'll never love you, sour bear. Your honey is gone. I'm glad she divorced you. She was getting too old anyway. Stalk out into the world looking for a new cub. Have you resorted to the playgrounds yet, big mummy? "Mummy, mummy!" the children all cry, snot-nosed, red-eyed. Nobody told them about you, distant acquaintance. Don't mothers know that murders happen overwhelmingly within a family?  
I just remembered. Dad owns a gun.

## Chapter Thirteen

Cole could never get over how chapped her lips were. Ice-hard teeth little cubes in his mouth. Tic tac light. Angry fists clutching at his hair like barbed wire. Slow kisses until he was drooling. The drooling may just have been another unfortunate symptom of his substance abuse though, when he thought about it. Fifty-fifty chance. Amelia pushed his shoulders back against the hotel bed and his eyes crossed to look up at her pale face. Her hair was greasy with the travel and Cole thought it felt like a river stone in his hands. She was ugly with her stark cheeks and too-large, too-veined eyes but she was attractive in her rawness. He was lovely with spit-wet lips and freckles that bespoke of summer play and health. She was crack. Meth.  
They held each other still like statues, hands pulling at hair, at skin. _Grab_ _a dog behind his neck to show dominance._ Her nails bit into his flesh. He'd give. He'd give her all of him. Roll over and act dead, speak when she told him. Moan like the little bitch he'd always been. _Amelia_. Cole loved her name like that one song. The one with the piano and the crying woman in the back of the theater. He was the shot man on stage, whispering his last words before dying in the arms of his pretty lady. He was misplaced talent.  
Thousand dollar model.  
"Okay?" Amelia asked quietly, like poetry. She always spoke like an ice cream truck.  
"Yes," he said unthinkingly, blinking up to look into her glass eyes. They were merciless and hurt his heart with their brilliance. They hurt wonderfully, like burning skin. She handled his body like he was her doll, all joints and limbs. Twisted them backwards and forwards, like she was testing if they worked.  
"You're the only one who lets me do this," she disclosed, stroking a thumb up his thigh. He nodded, heart caught in his throat. He felt special.  
She slowly stood up, dragging her fingertips over his clothes like she was reluctant to leave him. She did though, she always did. Amelia straightened and walked over to her bag by the door. Cole watched her from the hotel bed, resting on his elbows. The cheap sheets scratched at his bare back.  
His pulse beat in his ears, his hands shook like an electric toothbrush. He could almost hear the buzzing. The clock on the wall ticked its repetitive, dry spiel. The zip of the bag opening caused another shiver to crawl up Cole's back. Involuntary action. She pulled out a small knife and wiped the flat metal side with her thumb. It gleamed in the dimmed lights. His fingers curled in the bed sheets, white in his fist. He'd have to be quiet.  
He'd always been good at that, whether with the aid of his hand or just a pillow. He could keep his mouth shut. Nobody, not even the person in the room next to theirs, would know. The receptionist downstairs would not find out about what happened until a day later when the cleaning lady found the white bed sheet stuffed into the closet. Covered in blood. The two teenagers that had walked into their establishment had looked a little suspicious, but in an underage sex kind of way. Not like this. Never like this.  
Amelia walked back to the bed and sat in front of Cole, between his legs.  
He had to tilt his head back to look up at her. His throat felt vulnerable in her stare.  
She smiled for the first time that night— _what a beautiful_ _baby-faced killer_ —and moved the blade to his shoulder, to his chest. The tip of the blade skimmed over his skin like she was mapping out a path.  
A bloody Mona Lisa. The art of a psychopath. Cole had never liked to give himself labels but objectively he supposed that he was a psychopath himself. Perhaps more of a masochist. Did that make sense? He sucked in a breath when the knife skimmed above his stomach, causing the muscles there to constrict and jump under the cold blade. It hurt, trying to keep them still, tensed and sweating in an underfurnished room. Amelia liked to keep him waiting. It was worse this way. It was better this way. She pressed the flat of the blade against his hip bone, pushed hard enough to hurt, and he whimpered like a broken faucet. He rarely left without crying.  
That was perhaps the best part. The catharsis of the whole ordeal. The justification. Her fingers soothed down his arm, trailing over needle holes and spots of dried blood. People were usually disgusted by blood. That was a healthy mentality. Blood is dirty. Dirty and messy and unkind. Cole himself didn't like the blood itself, just liked the kill. That sudden and blunt loss of life. The knife sunk into his leg—just above his knee—and he had to bite his knuckles to stifle the yell that built itself in his throat. It had gone in straight, a thin line cracked with blood. It was the new kind, the bright red, liquid kind. Fresh blood flows fast. Faucet. Amelia smiled again, muttering a soft "oh" as she collected the beading blood with her fingers. It dripped from her fingers and onto the bed. Cole winced as her fingers pressed against the cut. She pulled at the skin, knife still lodged inside shallowly. The first tears blurred at Cole's eyes. She removed the knife and rubbed the flat side against the wound, collecting the red on the metal and she watched as it wouldn't stay put. Metal doesn't like blood; people like blood. His knuckles bled, several teeth imprints embedded on his skin. He breathed wheezily around the fingers in his mouth, pain desperate to make itself known. "Shh, you're doing well," Amelia comforted sweetly, like a preschool teacher. Niceties curtaining the darker disinterest. She didn't care, she loved him for his skin. His submissiveness, his soft face, small body like a child's, and blood. He didn't care. He let her play daddy.  
Natural-born sadist. She wasn't like him. She hadn't been used and hurt and warped and loved in all the broken and wrong ways. She was only herself, not mottled with the fingerprints of too-large hands. She pushed him down against the covers. A cold, heavy body. The knife cut against his stomach, the soft part. He yelled, muscles straining as her palm pressed against his mouth. When she pulled her hand back her knuckles were wet with his tears and his mouth tasted like coins and hospitals.  
She landscaped his skin to her vision. One red cut after another. It was hard for her stop once she started. it was easy to imagine her killing him.   
It would be Cole's own fault if she did. He'd stuck his head into the lion's mouth. _I know better than to tempt death like this_. Yet there he was, under her blade. He'd seen what happened before. To Lindy. Lindy didn't even cry like he did. Maybe that was why. Maybe she had stopped being fun.  
Cole swallowed hard, lightheaded. The ceiling swiveled like a spinning top. Round and round. He felt sick and euphoric. The clock ticked life.  
Time slipped as her hands became steadily red. He couldn't stop her even if he tried; his arms felt like Styrofoam. "Just a few more," She always said. She was greedy. All sadists are. There was never just "one more" or "once more." Manipulative bastard. Cole was drawn to them apparently.  
There was something Freudian going on, he could feel it. The messed up thing about that kind of mentality was that it was impossible to change.  
If you got messed up as a kid you were basically screwed for life. There are no replacements for broken brains. Maybe whiskey. Whiskey and meth.  
Whiskey and crack and meth and cocaine and getting cut up in a 50 dollars-a-night hotel. That was all he needed, he supposed. His stomach went from sick to fire hot as the light-headedness progressed into a full-body numbness.  
"I'm going to faint," he said. He didn't say it to ask her stop but just as a sort of heads-up. She nodded, wiping absently at a cut as she paused, "that's okay. Sleep well." Her voice was all sardonic irony.  
He was happy at her approval, seconds before he fainted. The world went black to red. Dreams, when a person is hurt, are extremely fascinating in a gruesome, awful way. The world looked like it was shaking, wobbling like a glow stick. People's faces where transparent and screaming. Long, old faces painted like Van Gogh. He was running, running. Breath like foggy whales coming out his mouth. Screams? No, no. There was no sound. Just the static of silence. He looked at his feet, miles beneath him, tiny on black asphalt. The world cracked like eggshells overhead, the sky fell to the ground in wallpaper peels. Cole kept running, running. Red, red, red. Warning, abandon ship. You're dying. Screaming. It grew repetitive, boring. Cole stopped running. He stopped and then sat down on the broken ground.  
He watched as his dream collapsed upon itself; he'd already resolved to die anyway, so why try to hide. He looked up at the sun, a square of white midst the now black, void sky. For once it looked nice. For once it didn't hurt his eyes. He wished he'd just die. After all this time he deserved a good death. He closed his eyes and counted to ten.  
When he opened them he was still alive.  
He'd never been more disappointed in his life.  
Pain racked his body and it was worse this time than the last. The last time had been months ago but he was certain that this time his skin felt worse. His skin felt like it was trying to claw itself off of his body and undress his muscles. He hesitated to open his eyes. Partially because he feared that he wouldn't be able to but also because he didn't want to accept his life again. When he opened his eyes he'd see the world. He'd see it and have to accept it once again. His illusions of death flew out the door. In the end he did open his eyes. The curtains were closed so the room was mostly cast in a dark shadow. It took a few times to get his eyes to stay open and when they finally did things were still unfocused. Beside him he saw the blurry outline of Amelia pushing her hands under her skirt, her fingers moving up and down erratically. She didn't make a sound. He waited until she was down and by then his eyes had mostly focused again. She pulled her hand from out of her underwear and it came out bloody. Then she looked over at him and smiled, "happy?"  
"I wished I'd died," he said, voice barely there like a vinyl scratch. She nodded understandably as she wiped her fingers on the mattress. "That's why I keep you around, you know. If I ever don't have somebody to kill I know that you'll be willing."  
"So I'm the last resort."  
"You're the safety net."  
She got off the bed and Cole winced when his ribs jostled. He wheezed.  
Amelia smiled. She didn't attempt to move him and instead walked into the small, adjoining bathroom, flicking on the lights. Cole heard the faucet run and closed his eyes. He counted the seconds it took her to get back, just to distract him from the overwhelming pain. He hadn't even looked at himself yet. Didn't know how bad it was. It felt worse than anything his brother had ever done. Realistically, he knew that he was punishing himself by letting Amelia hurt him. Punishing himself for killing his brother. Daddy issues and all that. On the other hand, his masochistic soul didn't really care.  
His masochism had always been hand-in-hand with his suicidal tendencies.  
He needed a good dose of something strong, he knew that at least. Amelia came back with three rolled up hotel-provided towels and a water bottle.  
She undid the plastic lid and poured the water over his body like it was gasoline. Cole knew that this was all for her enjoyment and not his. The sheets went limp and cold beneath him. The cuts bled more, a red, watery mess. His tongue tasted sour in his mouth. His body burned. Amelia smiled like a match.  
He clicked his tongue in nervous habit. "Are you done?" That's what he always asked. Wheezed monotonously between his strained ribs. Had to make sure. It was only polite. He was always a good little boy. The words hurt in his head. Loud, like his brother. With his voice. Molesting him again from the grave. Tongue like marmalade. Time had melted over his eyelids. She watched him until the uncontrollable jitters had stopped wracking his body and said nicely, "you're very pretty." He knew. "I know," he snapped, sour now that she had stopped hurting him. Now he just ached.  
The sing-song sting was gone.  
She let him have his defiance. She was strong enough to let him. "I have to kill someone. Unfinished business." She said lightly, as though she were talking about a birthday, "do you want to come with me?" Cole looked down at his body and wondered if he'd be healed enough. "No," he decided and lifted up the sheets with a bit-off yell. He stretched his leg and clenched his teeth, hands grabbing at his hair. To distract himself, of course. It turned his knuckles white. He knew he was mostly putting on a show. He didn't mind; he was as submissive as a dog. Dogs don't learn new tricks. He had to apologize to her, after all. His pain was enough, he decided. He didn't make it off the bed. Amelia was on him in a second, pinning him back to the pillows. Her hand curled around his neck and he groaned, arousal betraying his body. As it always did. He needed it, needed it, needed it. He shuttered, a full-body shake. Sobbed her name like the pitiful mess he was. He was rewarded with a rough "shut the hell up."   
Afterwards he shook for thirty minutes. She found her shoes by the door and left him on that bed. He'd have to clean up before the check out time.  
He couldn't have the room looking like a crime scene. He needed water, food. Needed to replenish the blood he'd lost. It felt like a waste. After an hour of trying and immense pain on his part he managed to sit up on the bed, clutching at his stomach. He panted, chin resting against his chest.  
He felt like his bones were moving—loose—in their sockets. She definitely hadn't been gentle with him. With another push of motivation he was off the bed, stumbling against the wall as he made his way to the bathroom.  
His shoulder scrapped against the wallpaper but it was nothing compared to his other pain. The marble of the bathroom was cold and the shower was hard to operate. His fingers kept falling off the knobs, too tired to hold on to it properly. Eventually, with the use of all of his body weight, the water rushed out against the dirty marble of the tub and began to fill it. The water was cool at first but Cole didn't care. He slipped on the bathtub floor into the water, half-submerged, breathing carefully. Aftercare had become a specialty of his. He sighed with relief when the warm finally kicked in and let his eyes shut slowly.  
Neither he nor Amelia had seen the ghost in the corner of the hotel room.  
How could they? Lindy wasn't even alive. She knew that she was going to kill Amelia though, after that. Cole didn't deserve what those other men did. He was small and broken and already so close to dying. His pale limbs were bruised black and white like china porcelain and his face was red and pained as he lay in the water. Perhaps she really was too sentimental for her own good. He'd probably grow up cruel and ugly like the rest of them once his delicate features outgrew him. When those doll cheeks of his finally cracked. His face was the only thing keeping him in her good graces, wasn't it? Yes, no. Cole was her with all the self-destruction and emotional instability that she had never had. Lindy had never been so weak. Perhaps that's why Amelia let Cole live instead of her. A loyal skeleton on working legs. He was so thin. So thin that perhaps he was actually already dead.  
Amelia didn't need to kill him.  
Lindy watched as Cole's hands opened a plastic bag of soap and poured it into his cupped hands. The act caused him to become sick and vomit off the side of the tub, arms hanging limply over the white walls. That was another fright the cleaning lady discovered later. He washed the white soap off his hands without further incident and then just lay there until his skin went wrinkled and red. He carefully ran his hand over his stomach, as far as the ache allowed him to. There were a few cuts there, rough beneath his finger pads. Alone, he moaned as he pressed against the cuts, teeth biting into his lip. His breathing went high and hot. _Gross_. Lindy left through the door, not keen on watching another gore fest. Blood was fun but not as an ignored voyeurism. She'd seen enough already anyway.  
She left the building and was disappointed when Amelia was no where in sight. She hated herself for getting distracted. It had taken a while to find them in the first place. Luckily she had found Cole on his way out of his apartment. She had no idea where Amelia was going. She was her real target, but Lindy figured that Amelia would probably be back for Cole, as he was in no condition to travel. Amelia was generally quite possessive so she wouldn't leave him for long. All Lindy had to do was bring Theo to Cole and Amelia would follow. She smiled and only felt slightly bad that Cole would most likely have to be sacrificed for her plan to work. That boy was an angel on a wait list anyway. Too sad for hell. He'd done nothing but live and life had brought him down. To his knees. To his hands.  
Lindy made her way back home.

## Chapter Fourteen

Alec had enough, enough of everything.  
Maybe that's how people felt right before they jumped off of a building.  
The overwhelming feeling of _I don't want to be here_. He wanted to get away, to leave. Too bad he was already dead.  
He had enough of sitting around being ignored. He had enough of not having a purpose or meaning and living when he shouldn't. He had enough of Theo being mad at him and his mother being happy that he was gone.  
"We're going to find her," Alec said loudly because Theo wouldn't look at him, wouldn't look at anyone. Hadn't since that day. Alec had gotten out parts of the story. A girl, white-faced, claws and hands so small they hardly looked capable of killing. It was her, the killer, Alec was sure of it. He hadn't seen her before he'd died but she seemed like the most likely candidate. He didn't think that their city had a very active serial killer population. They would find her and get revenge. Then he'd be able to ascend and Theo wouldn't be so quiet and scared anymore. Theo didn't say anything to Alec's suggestion, which was about what Alec had predicted.  
He went around to float in front of Theo's face. Theo didn't appreciate the action and said so with a grumbled, "Alec, leave me alone."  
"No, come on. We have to find that girl. She might kill other people."  
Still nothing. "We have to find her. She might come back to get you."  
Nothing. "I'm sorry I wasn't there. I wish I was. Then maybe you wouldn't have felt so alone and scared."  
"I was worried that you'd left me too," Theo said quietly.  
"I know," Alec said.  
"Where did you go?" Theo asked. Alec paused.  
"I went to see my mom. She didn't see me of course. She also wasn't...very sad, I think. I don't know, it was weird. I guess I just kind of want to leave now, you know? Since there's nothing for me here." Theo nodded slowly and then wiped his eyes with his sleeve. "Where would we start?" Theo asked and Alec shrugged. "She can't be very far. You said that she was about our age so she can't live very far from here. It's not like she has a car." Theo hesitated before rolling over on the bed into a sitting position. He looked at his hands for a second and then gazed up to where the sun was fracturing off his glass bug jars near the ceiling. He was quiet for a long moment and then nodded.  
"Yeah, we should do that." Theo paused, then quietly asked, "will we kill her?"  
Alec frowned, "what? No. Why would we do that?"  
Theo looked at his jars of bugs and went silent again. Alec followed his gaze and felt his heart sink. There had always been something off about Theo but sometimes it was more obvious than others. He decided to ignore it. After a moment Theo got up and got dressed, pulling on a blue sweater before walking to the door to put his shoes on. He propped the tongue of his sneaker up and edged his foot inside. Theo's fingers were small and white in the too-large sleeves. Alec pretended to hold those hands sometimes at night when he was lonely. He'd never admit it, never easily. His gentleness was just a symptom of his loneliness. A placebo to mend his dusty heart. He breathed out, wondering if he was too close to his friend. It shouldn't matter since he was a ghost, yet it did. He'd never been so self-conscious about someone else's personal space before. He hadn't been like this before he'd died but now he felt dependent and clingy. He wanted to touch something, someone, so bad it hurt. He wanted to meld his fingers to someone's skin, sink into their bones. Hot and heavy. Temperature was about as real to him as a picture in a chemistry book. He knew what it was, how it worked, but he didn't experience it. Alec could stick his head into Theo's body and wouldn't feel a thing. Disappointing erotica. Darkness. There was no sunlight inside of a person unless they were cut open. Then the reds and the yellows showed. Alec wondered absently how Theo's body looked in the inside; that morbid second of curiosity died quickly but it left a lingering feeling. A mental aftertaste. The afternoon was bright but wetness gleamed on the broad street. The air smelled like grass. An allergy smell.  
"Are we just going to walk?" Theo asked and kicked a small rock on the ground. It skidded a few feet then skipped then stopped. _Kick_. Alec looked at the parallel lines of white, middle class houses. Each looked deceivingly different despite not being a step different. "We can always ask some kids if they know of a young girl or something." _Kick_. The stone scuttled off the road into the grass and Theo slowly followed after it. The sloped, grassy ravine trailed down to a sewage collector—a long half-circle basin that collected water and brought it to a black tunnel opening. There was trash stacked down there. A few dusty cans and orange peels. Red plastic bags and brown, soaked papers. Theo stepped on the broken remains of a glass bottle in his journey to retrieve his rock from where it had tucked itself at the base of a rotting telephone pole. The wood had staples embedded into it. Fragments of posters and ads. A ripped, glossy club invitation said _HEN PLAY WITH US TONIGHT_. Half the date was missing and Alec was disappointed. He'd always wanted to go to a night club. Buy a cute girl some drinks and turn some heads. It sounded so generic but he supposed all his ideas had been standard American dreams. Theo toed the rock from a clump of dirt and grass and kicked it back onto the street where it jumped awkwardly into the air like a gray ballerina.  
"Hey," Theo said and Alec turned his head. Theo was looking at a poser stapled to the pole, drawing his finger up to the paper. It looked like one of those _MISSING_ signs; it was white and black with large red font.  
Almost intimidating to look at, but template-looking enough for it to not catch anyone's eye unless they were looking for it. When Alec looked closer though it did look slightly different. Instead of a lovingly placed run away cat or dog there was a young girl's face in the black lined frame. Her face was ashen and shockingly odd looking. The white of her face was enunciated by her wide, black eyes; Alec swore he could count the veins in her corneas.  
Her mouth was small and stubborn looking, grossly neutral and unflattering.  
Her hair was tight in braids plastered to her forehead and behind her ears in what might have been braids or oil. It looked very shiny, Alec thought.  
There was something very off-putting about the way she looked. Like stuffed dead animals. Theo stabbed at the picture again with is finger, pressing it against the center of her forehead.  
"It's her," he spat, arms shaking like the barren trees above them. _What_ _a coincidence_ Alec thought almost humorously. Surprise momentarily held him from reacting and Theo planted his hand over the girl's face like he wanted to suffocate her. "It's her." He said again more resolutely, as though he were confirming it for himself again. His short nails raked over the skin of her face. Underneath the girl's face was a bold IF SEEN CONTACT then a few numbers. Below that was a line that said _considered dangerous. If_ _seen do not try to apprehend by yourself_. Alec was almost impressed. Theo looked plain angry as he kicked the telephone pole so hard birds flew from it.  
"They're looking for her. That's a good thing." Alec reasoned. Theo looked volatile in his sweatshirt that sagged to his knees. Childish in his anger. It was odd to see Theo be the mad one. His peaceful, sleepy looking face didn't lend itself to frowning very well. His soft features looked wrong and bent out of shape.  
"You don't understand, do you? What if they find her before we do?  
You won't kill her and you don't get to ascend. A murdered ghost can only ascend once the person that murdered them dies." Well, probably. The rule made sense in his head at least.  
Alec felt his face stiffen, "and you didn't think of telling me that before! God, I'm just trying to be optimistic here."  
"You shouldn't be optimistic. You're dead." Theo grumbled and Alec wanted more than ever to be flesh and bones again so that he could punch Theo square in the face. Bruise that naive, childish cheek. There was his own anger problem again. He could feel another one of their spats coming on when Theo went unexpectedly quiet. His mouth fell open in an 'o' and his hands lost their tightness as he stared someplace just behind Alec. Alec turned around, almost scared of what he'd see behind him. Perhaps it would be her, the girl, standing behind him in her black dress with a white collar.  
Theo stared to run not away, but run towards the person he saw. Alec almost couldn't see her but there she was, a white blur against the sun. She was lonely but lovely there in the street and Theo smiled, eyes brightening as he yelled her name, "Lindy!" She looked at him and smiled, for once, a small little grin like the kind in old photographs. Sit still, mouth straight across like an iron edge. Except it was different because it was Lindy. It was different because she never smiled and that made this smile all the more exceptionally beautiful.  
"You gave me such a scare!"  
"I know. I'm sorry. I wanted to find the killer for you. I was worried that she would come after you next."  
Alec was surprised at how young she sounded—at how young she actually was. So this was the ghost Theo always talked about. He was surprised by how jealous he was. She and Theo obviously got along well. Alec's hands curled into fists. Somehow he always became the third wheel. The third wheel in his family, the third wheel in society, the third wheel in friendship.  
He was a ghost now! That the third wheel on a date with life and death. He just hadn't ever been good enough, had he? Had he been cruel to kids like Theo just in order to be part of a group? Part of a fake rough-tough bunch of bullies. Was he really as desperate as that? He was probably better off dead since he'd obviously not put his life to any good use. All those years wasted on trying to be better than himself had amounted to nothing but an aching, mean, shell. Hell, he probably would have shot himself anyway, after a few years. End that constant look of disappointment from his mother and father. Black and cold in his veins like old hands. If you eat glass it'll cut your insides open. _How painful would that be?_ He couldn't imagine what it would feel like to be cut open by glass. He figured it would be worse than death. His mind wandered like an estranged husband before coming back to reality (back to the house, to torture the wife and kids). It had been his father's fault. It's always the parents. It's always the spouse. It's always, it's always, it's always...  
"—So did you find her?" Theo asked, that angry edge seeping onto his words again. Like blood melting over a dead dog's body.  
"I did. This way we can bring that other ghost to the afterlife." She waved a hand in Alec's direction dismissively and he bristled.  
"It's Alec." Alec corrected snidely and hated how he sounded like a sulk-ing child who had just been forced to share his favorite toy with another kid.  
He hated it. Damn her and her cool, fancy laughs. Damn Theo who was about to throw him in the sewage like one of the bags he was standing on.  
He'd just used him because he'd been lonely without his no.1 ghost friend.  
Coming in second was worse in most ways than coming in third. In third you're happy because you made it into the top three but didn't really have a chance at being first. In second you're just the middleman again, so close to being the best that it hurts. Pain, there's something that Alec thought he wouldn't feel again. Unfortunately, pain is purely mental. You could hurt your thumb but if you didn't have a brain then it wouldn't hurt. It's in a person's best interest for that cut to hurt though. How messed up is that?  
Perhaps what all of those Get Happy TV commercials are missing is that it is better to feel when something is bad than to ignore it. It's better to feel.  
Alec hadn't. He'd stuffed all his true feelings down, down, down in order to become the person he wasn't. He'd thought that those emotions would get in the way. Maybe there was some irony in that. A little, like dim candlelight. No electricity.  
Hello, miss? You forgot your kid at the supermarket.  
Always left. Always unwanted.  
Not even death really wanted him. How much of a mess did he have to be so that even death didn't want him? Alec signed and wondered if he should just leave before Theo left him.  
"Thank you so much Lindy. We were just looking for her."  
"She's dangerous, you know. She killed her family. She kills people for fun. She could even kill you, if she wanted." She sounded strangely unconcerned.  
"I know. I met her. She tried to, I think."  
"Follow me."  
The cashier lady hadn't even looked at him.

## Chapter Fifteen

So tired. Cole was so, so very tired. He wasn't even just sleep-tired. He was body-tired, life-tired. The white of his eyes burned and lit up red when he closed his eyes. Danger, danger, you're doing something wrong. He felt a rhythm in his ear, a ticking. When he'd been younger that ticking had kept him awake at night. It had been in his brain, real quiet, and only when he'd squeezed his hands to his ears and closed his eyes had he been able to clearly hear it. _Tick, tick, tick_. It had scared him then. _You only have one life_ _and you're wasting it lying in a bed._ Now he just ignored it, the way people ignore a lawnmower or AC. After a while it becomes static. He lay in bed often. (No, not heavy with guilt. Never. Never guilty. Please.) At his school he knew some kids who drew ribbons of blood off of their arms and paraded them around like sashes. Took pictures of the thin razor blade lines in the bathroom. He wondered if he was only one who didn't find crusted scars on a girl's thighs attractive. They weren't supposed to be attractive. You're such a hypocrite, he chided himself. He poked himself full of holes and then wondered why he felt like he was losing himself. Losing air like a balloon.  
Some day he'd be nothing but skin. He stared up at the ceiling, watching the fan go round and round and round. His lip had slowly stopped bleeding and was now just a raised bump. He couldn't stop running his tongue over it. He scrapped at it with his teeth just to taste the blood again.  
From the neighboring room he heard a song drift through the adorned, thin walls.  
"...Have you stopped screaming at the sun yet? You're not the most _lovely anymore...Maybe lady love forgot your name..."  
_ "Maybe you weren't made for love, June-bathed babe. You're skin was too soft for hands anyway."  
A chill ran up Cole's spine but he didn't have the energy to pull the blanket up his torso from where it had slipped. _Unfriendly lover._ The blanket had been there in between the sweat and blood and pain and pleasure. A physical party. He didn't hear the steps by the door until the handle rattled like a cow bell. It jiggled like it was in a horror movie. Within two seconds he knew two things: 1. the person trying to get into the room wasn't Amelia and 2. he wouldn't be able to escape whoever was at the door. Not in his current state. He squeezed his eyes shut and curled in his legs. He felt like a child, squirming around in a cradle, ignorant of how to even move his limbs. There was the grating, terrifying sound of something distinctly not key-like being jammed into the lock and it rattled around before a clear _click_ sounded Cole's demise. _It's the CIA, isn't it? They've already found_ _his body, found me. I'm going to die, I'm going to die, I'm going to die.  _ _Shit. Move. Move. Move. I'm going to die._ He was too young to die, he was sure. Maybe not so much anymore.   
He wondered why his thighs were always so wet.  
The door opened like a heart attack. There in the brown frame he saw a little kid. Maybe not too much younger than Cole was, but he looked it.  
He felt a wave of shame flush through him. He was sure that he looked like a mess. Bleeding, bruised to hell, pale as a dead man laid out on the bed.  
Cole's face flushed red, as did the younger boy's. Cole wondered briefly who exactly was the victim in this situation.  
"Oh." The boy said quite simply, with surprisingly sophisticated dic-tion for a child his age. Just "Oh." Cole took it that a naked, beaten boy wasn't what this kid had expected. "Who are you?" The boy asked, almost accusatory. Cole hesitated, confused for a moment because he was almost certain that he was the one who was meant to be asking that question in this situation. The boy looked harmless enough but one could never be too sure.  
He thought of Amelia's pretty, crow eyes and hands you could suffocate in.  
"Never mind. Where's the girl who did this to you? Do you know where she went. We're looking for her."  
We're?  The boy's voice was filled with so much naive determination that Cole felt sick to his stomach. The child was so blissfully ignorant that it hurt to listen to him. To look at him. Cole felt judged and vulnerable in the boy's eyes. What if Cole admitted that he'd _asked_ Amelia to do this to him? Would that ruin some part of the boy? He hoped in a twisted way that it would. What if he ripped open one of the cuts and yelled, "see this, this is what's inside. This. It's not lovely, it's not godly, it's flesh and blood.  
It's ugly. We're all so ugly." Then what? No, Cole would cry then, and that would be even worse. Then he would maybe actually want to die.  
The child cautiously approached the bed, careful to keep his distance.  
Cole supposed he would too, were he in the boy's shoes. The boy's eyes traced the scars on Cole's skin and he felt like curling up and turning away.  
He closed his eyes for the darkness. He wished the sun would turn off. Leave them blind. He felt so open, so open, like his skin was spinning off his body and leaving just gore-encased bone. Strung along by tendons and cartilage.  
The boy outstretched his hand, fingers inching towards a slowly bleeding wound. So young and yet so captivated by blood. _Aren't we all_.  
"Stop," Cole whispered and, for once in his life, someone listened to the shaky command. It had been barely a breath, yet the small fingers stopped and recoiled back into a fist. Cole didn't know how many times he'd screamed those two letters at the top of his lungs without any success.  
He didn't know where he'd even found the hope to say them. Yet here, at his most vulnerable, someone had listened. He knew Amelia would have happily sliced him open. His brother—may he rest in hell—would have taken full advantage of the situation. Maybe the boy was too young to be so evil yet.  
Maybe the years would still taint him. _Maybe this is why good people die_ _young. If they grew any older they would be soiled by the world. Filled with_ _all its crap_.  
"Where is she?" The boy asked again. A persistent questioner. Youthful adventurer. Cole wondered what the boy planned to do with Amelia. Maybe he would kill her. Cole wondered if he wanted that. She would eventually kill him, he was sure of that, but wasn't that what he wanted? It was.  
Perhaps this would put him on the wrong side of the moral conundrum but he was already residing there anyway. Broken like Lucifer. He'd always been the most beautifully wicked. As a child he'd had a romantic attraction to the Bible.  
—There is little backlash in burning a book. I bet the paper here would burn beautifully. Ought to try it. With this. When you're done. No need for these words to end up in a public library where unsuspecting folks might find it. Might grab the spine and think, "this will be a fine, casual book."  
No, I do not wish to startle innocent minds with my mind. Burn this book and remember that you are a keeper of these words and that they are a secret cradled in your mind alone. Perhaps even a dozen minds. Frankly, more than that is a little unlikely. But it will just be you few, and you will be keepers of this content—  
"I don't know where she went," Cole lied easily.  
He looked up into the boy's eyes but the boy was no longer staring at him. He was looking somewhere to his side.  
"Liar." The boy accused. "You're with her aren't you? You _let_ her do this to you."  
There was a new disgust in the boy's voice. An almost tangible horror.  
Yes, I'm revolting, Cole thought wryly. Hadn't he always known that? He allowed himself to close again, like melded glass. Hate was easier to deal with than sympathy.  
"Maybe. That's right. What are you going to do, kid? Obviously I'm not going to tell you where she went."  
Cole wasn't sure what he expected. Maybe for the boy to hit him. It wasn't like he could do anything about it. He would have just had to lay there and take it, the way he'd always had to. Instead the boy shook his head once, then twice, and reluctantly sat down on the bed. The mattress sank and for a second Cole was sure he was going to slip but didn't. The room tilted again, its maddening swirl. He thought the sick-feeling had faded. _You thought wrong_.  
"I'm Theo." The boy said after a second of deliberation. Cole snorted.  
He couldn't help it. It was just so funny. He was being forced to make small talk bruised and naked on a bed. Theo gave him an offended look and that caused a full, broken-ribbed laugh. Cole wheezed but the incredulous smile still lingered above the wince of his eyes. "Okay? I don't see why I need to know your name."  
Theo looked relatively offended and sullenly said, "I'm just trying to be friendly."  
"Right. And I'm just trying to regain feeling in my toes. This would be a lot less awkward if you got me my clothes or maybe just left."  
"I'm not leaving until you tell me where she is."  
"I told you that I don't know where she is." Cole snapped. Patience had never been one of his fortes. Obedience, yes. Patience, no. "Maybe a little weirdo like you should keep out of other peoples' affairs. You don't even know who you're trying to find."  
"I know who I'm trying to find," Theo assured him. "She's the person who killed a friend of mine. I have to find her."  
Cole swallowed. He looked the kid over again. Small, mousy, with bent shoulders and a passive calm to him. He looked mature for his age but was still distinctly childish. "So that you can kill her?"  
Theo met his eyes and looked quite solemn for the first time. Cole was torn between finding the situation entirely laughable and feeling pity for the poor kid. Perhaps Amelia had killed his friend. She'd killed one of Cole's friends as well. Yet that didn't mean that he tried to kill her. He wasn't that noble. He wasn't that brave. He wasn't that vengeful or evil or depraved.  
His mouth tasted like a swing set. "How are you going to kill her?" He couldn't help it. He was curious. He was excited. He didn't know. Wasn't sure. His heart was beating in his chest but he felt like he wasn't sitting in his body. He knew that he looked completely calm. Inside he smiled. Theo shrugged and his hands awkwardly felt along the bed sheet, fingers curling and touching the cloth only lightly. Dirty. He was too clean. He wouldn't be able to do it.   
Cole turned the idea of telling Theo where Amelia was over in his head. On one hand, it wasn't the most moral thing to do. On the other, he was bleeding out on a hotel bed. He didn't owe Amelia anything. They weren't even friends. Not really. Not since Lindy showed him just how much Amelia valued her "friends." Cole licked his lip. Even if he did find her, Theo probably wouldn't be able to kill her.  
She would be mad of course. Maybe mad enough to finally put Cole out of his misery. Really, he was sending Theo and himself to their deathbeds if he told. Perfect.  
"I'll tell you. But only if you tell her that I was the one who told you where she is." Theo looked understandably confuse but Cole decided it was a waste of time trying to explain things. He shifted in the bed, a warm-uncomfortable feeling seeped through his skin. "She went to back to the east side suburbs to finish off some kid." He laughed bitterly. "She's stupid like that sometimes. The police are going to be turning the place upside down." Cole wanted to laugh until his face fell off. She could be so stupid. So stupid. God, how could he have ever...  
Theo nodded and slid off the bed. He looked over to his right for a second and then looked back at Cole a little shyly. It was an odd look on him. Made him look even more meek. That was the kind of look that made Cole want to kill someone. Love someone. He wasn't entirely sure. Wouldn't be for the rest of his life. He was like that. Too nervous-angry-scared to ever be anything. It was a cycle.  
"Have you ever killed anyone?" Theo asked almost quietly. Maybe the kid had some idea of what constituted as an awkward question after all.  
"I mean, since you're with her I'm going to say you have but...actually, nevermind. It doesn't really matter."  
Cole raised an eyebrow. His throat felt like it was sticking together. Too tight to swallow.  
"You're just...a sad person." Theo finished and started to walk away from the bed. He looked back at Cole once, when he reached the door, and looked a little pitying. Cole felt hot. Angry. He didn't need some sick kid's sympathy. "Get the fuck out already," he muttered, chest full of Styrofoam.  
Then, just to spite himself and everything, he yelled, "I did. Have. Killed someone." It wasn't really a yell because it sounded wet and hurt and blurred around the edges but it counted. Cole couldn't breathe right. Air seemed to stick to the back of his throat. His stomach hurt like Hell. Theo stared at him.  
"You didn't kill just because you could. Because you liked it."  
Cole didn't need his actions to be justified. He'd killed someone. Why couldn't Theo understand that? It didn't matter if he'd been hurt, that didn't make killing someone right. Didn't make someone less dead. For once, he was the moral one. How ironic.  
"I liked it."  
"Maybe. But you're a victim." _Since when?_ Cole wanted to hurt Theo right there and then just to show him that he wasn't that weak. He wasn't a victim. He was the one who killed...  
"Goodbye." The door closed. Cole was left on the bed feeling empty.  
Victim, hah. things weren't that black or white. There was always a gradient. When he'd shot his brother he hadn't been a victim. He'd been adrenaline-soaked and elated. Theo was too naive. It was almost comforting that Amelia would kill him. It would prove to Cole once again that innocence was always crushed by the world. He'd missed his chance to pull Theo in and scare him the way he needed to be scared. Touch him the way he'd been touched. Cole's stomach churned at the idea and in a surprising rebellion forced Cole to quickly turn his head so that he could vomit off the side of the bed. _Fuck_. He tried to find the energy to get up but couldn't. His arms felt weak and numb. Boneless. The bile in his throat burned. Tears slowly rolled over his nose and down his cheeks.  
Theo would realize.  
Everyone is a victim to life.

## Chapter Sixteen

People think too much. Everybody does. Listen.  
Maybe at the heart of all artistic endeavors lies pain. It is pain that drives me to create something to mend my soul and body. Try to create something to fit in all those holes. It takes a while to find something that fits. Even just a little. Sometimes what you make just cuts into you like glass. Tears you up inside but that, too, is bitter-sweet in a sense. Because you're the creator and you're the helpless mess. Sometimes you have to take power where you can find it, even if it means destroying yourself. I've never bled intentionally but I have bled and I've bled well. There was this time in the shower when I dropped my razor. It slipped out of my soapy fingers and I wasn't afraid. I didn't care at the second it happened. I simply thought, oh, it'll fall to the ground. It did. But it also sliced the extruding skin of my ankle off as well. It bled and bled and bled like a red faucet. Down the drain it swirled. Circled it like a ring-around-the-rosie. I watched it, fascinated, and not the least bit scared. It didn't hurt, although I could see where the white of bone faintly surfaced from the cut. I was in shock, I reasoned (ironically), and step-hopped on one foot out of the shower. The world was shower drops—blurred. I clambered down the stairs to where my mother was in the kitchen and showed her the wound. She yelled at me in her fear, I think. She rubbed antiseptic onto the red and got me a bandaid. Pressed it to the skin gently. I think I forgave her then. The cut didn't hurt until the next morning when I accidentally pulled dead skin off (where the razor hadn't gone all the way through and had left a hanging, limb flap) when I put on my shoes. It didn't bleed; it just burned an angry red, glistening.  
My ankle didn't heal for a while. I felt it every time I took a step.  
Pressed against it relentlessly with the toes on my other foot.  
Another time I dropped an exacto knife into my leg. It stood straight up, like a pelecan beak. Held up by the blade embedded in my thigh. Again, I think I was shocked, because I did not react. The moment felt surreal. I saw my hand reach for the blade—not even just the handle—and pull it out.  
The place where the blade had sliced into was just a dot at first. Red and small like a pin. Then it blossomed. I can't describe it, but all the cracks in my leg ran wet with blood. It bubbled up from that small hole and slipped down my leg so fast that I had to cup my hands under the wound to keep it from staining the carpet. I did my hop-hop down the hallway again to the bathroom. Took a white towel and ruined it.  
I still feel those wounds sometimes like a phantom limb. My stomach with clench and clench on nothing. Tense.  
I think everybody would be a lot happier if they just masturbated more.  
Maybe they'd be less productive, but happier nonetheless. I don't mean just boys though, no, I mean everybody. Maybe even moreso girls because they can just masturbate as many times as they want until they're happy. Boys have to wait a lot more, which isn't really fun because the more you wait, the more you find inaccuracies in porn. The more boring it becomes. Oh, she's giving a blowjob? Wasn't that what the last girl did? And the girl before that...  
There should be some more creativity in porn. Some really freaky stuff. Some heartfelt and raw and emotional stuff. Fuck or die kind of deals. Possession. Hypnosis. C'mon America, get creative. Capitalism isn't doing the right thing. Or maybe it's just that the masses are satisfied by what they're given already. How boring. A person should never be satisfied. Wait. Is that really true? Who knows, my mother told me it once. Or maybe it was a teacher. Or a dream. I always come back to dreams I suppose. If it's surreal then it should be.  
I took a life and named it. Took a sorry face and pulled at it until it became red and lovely. Took seven hearts and claimed them, just to be the only one left breathing. Ate my own tongue just to kiss myself within. It's difficult to love so fully that you crack your own ribs. My dried skin, that taste against my lips. Peel off my body and leave all that is within. You say I'm filled with acid. I say I'm filled with beauty. I've never needed anything but my own mind and eyes to be imaginative. See the being within. So bright I'll burn your soul out. Come up and take a peek; dip inside of my mouth as we speak. Maybe you'll see down to where the gold lies. Don't mock my beauty; my beauty can't handle those lies. It's shy, like a shooting star across the ink of my blood. Why do people cage their minds in reality?  
Why limit yourself to other people's ideas? Why be afraid of what you have to say? I'm constantly afraid. I constantly speak. There's a correlation, maybe.  
People are slowly painted gray until they die. Don't let them paint you boring. Color yourself. _Ink poisoning_. Why did my teachers always get so mad? They suspected I was covering up something. Suicide, most likely. Nothing could have been further from the truth. I was up above heaven, prancing on God's roof. I fell from the sky and slipped into a cloud. Lay and stared at the round globe. I caught a star in my fist and swallowed it. Exploded into dust and rained down to the ground. So many people blow themselves out too early and never fix the leak. Come on show me a little passion. Why does society favor the boring and neat? Time goes by so fast and I waste it so slowly. Death is such a satirical notion. Life drives nothing, death drives everything. Without death there would be no motivation in anybody. I'm fifteen and already frantic about how much I can fit into the remaining four-fifths of my life.  
Oh, I feel sick in my lungs. Pneumonia always decides to play with me this time of year. The game of Who Will Die. Will it be you or me? I've won every game so far, I'm glad to say. Let's see how long this winning streak goes on for. People don't like talking about mortality, especially someone else's. Pain is only fascinating when it's erotic. This is about pain. This is about pleasure. It's about a whole slew of things that make humans the weirdest creatures on the planet. Yes, I'll take pain over feeling nothing any day because to feel pain is to feel pleasure. Without pain there are no nice sensations.  
I'm pulling at my skin trying to be perfect, aren't I? Holding all the cracks together until they finally crush into place and fit. My thoughts are aborted and awful and beautiful and hot like a frying pan. Nothing is ever just right though, and that is one of the tragedies of life. No matter how much someone plans, no matter how much they think they know what they're doing, they actually know nothing.  
Oh God. Nothing.  
And maybe these thoughts—constant and misunderstanding—drive us insane.

## Chapter Seventeen

"That kid was kind of weird, wasn't he?" Alec said to break the tense silence.  
Theo shrugged and continued walking. He had an oddly determined look on his face, one that didn't look safe. It was the dark, quiet look that had maybe scared other children off from wanting to be friends with him. Alec was once again reminded that Theo _was_ fairly odd. There was a reason Alec had decided to pick on him back when he was alive. He wouldn't _kill_ someone though, right?  
"So, do you think that we should trust him? I mean, he might just be leading us into a trap or something."  
Theo shook his head, "no. It would make sense that Amelia is going back. She's going back to kill me." Theo stuffed his hands into his pockets.  
The air was chilly now. The nonchalance in Theo's voice put Alec on edge. He always got kind of quiet like that when something bad was going to happen. The calm before the storm.  
"Okay, but, we're not going to kill her, right? That would be...that would be wrong."  
Theo laughed, "like what she's done isn't wrong. She's a bad person. She has to be stopped." The chuckle faded off and it was quiet again. Lindy was a little bit in front of them, barely visible in the cool sunlight. "That's not really right though," Alec commented a little softly and Theo scoffed a bitterly. "Like _you're_ one to talk about what's right. You beat up kids for fun just because they weren't normal and boring like you." Alec stopped.  
Theo didn't. _Normal and boring._ Normal. Alec didn't consider himself to have been very important but he'd never seen himself as normal. He'd been the leader of his group. He'd been...important. In the school at least.  
He'd been _somebody_ whereas Theo was nobody. The freak. Alec felt angry, defensive. It was true though, his morals weren't anything to look up to. It was better that he was dead, honestly. Probably. He hadn't made a positive impact on anyone's life. Even his group had resented him. They tagged along for the fake connection, the inclusiveness. The power that came with being with other people. It was pathetic. They were. And Alec was the most pathetic for being their leader. The head of a body of idiots. Why had he done it? To feel like he was in charge. Like he couldn't be abandoned, forgotten. None of the kids he kicked in the guts would ever forget him. Never. Pain is one of those things that sticks with you. Touches and lingers with the skin. The bruise may heal, but a person will still flinch.  
Alec looked back at Theo, now a few feet in front of him. Theo could abandon him. Easily. He didn't have any reason to help Alec. None. He slipped back next to him.  
"Why do you help me?" Alec asked, watching Theo's face intently. He wanted a reaction. Something palpable. Something normal and understandable. Theo's face scrunched up a little, around his eyebrows. What was that look? Theo looked disgusted for a moment and then the look softened like all the force had drained from the boy's face. Slack. He looked at Alec, eyes meeting his easily, the way normal eye contact never happened. It took Alec back. Made him feel like he had to glance away. Like it was wrong to stare for too long. He looked briefly to the side and then back, eyes flickering under his eyelashes. Theo looked fairly calm, a look that was starting to get on Alec's nerves.  
"When you used to push me," Theo started, comfortably, as though he were talking to himself, "I liked it when I scrapped my hands or knee. It bleeds like crazy, you know? And then the gravel looks like it's sticking into your skin but it's really not. But there's that second when you think it is.  
That moment of fear is longer. It's like time slows down."  
Oh,  Alec thought, _he's just totally insane_.  
Theo continued, "and you and your friends always looked so proud, you know? Just laughing. What was so funny? Really, I'm kind of curious. The whole time I'd be on the ground staring at your shoes or your white socks and I'd think about why you liked to hurt me and I thought about what it would be like to hurt you. Make you bleed too. But I didn't want to hurt you. I wanted to kiss you. I found you attractive." Theo shrugged and kicked a soda can off of the road. "I suppose that's just one more 'weird' thing about me." A sad, slanted smile. "So, are you grossed out yet?"  
Alec didn't know what he felt. Predominantly he was confused. It didn't make any sense. Nobody in their right mind would want to kiss their bully.  
That was self-destructive. Stupid. Alec almost laughed but couldn't. He was disturbed. Not "grossed out" per se, but so utterly jarred that he couldn't make sense of his thoughts. He wanted to say "boys don't kiss boys" or "you're a freak" but those cliche phrases didn't feel right. They'd been what he'd been told to say, but irrelevant in the present scenario. Theo looked so calm that it was hard to justify his own shakiness. Besides, on some level Alec knew that he was pleased. Nobody had ever liked him. Nobody had ever complimented him. It was an odd compliment but that didn't make it any less touching. Perhaps even moreso, because Theo didn't compliment many people.  
"You should be," Theo smiled, as though he were telling a joke, "I've thought about you before. It's wrong, isn't it." His voice sounded too level. Like he was just saying what he'd heard someone else say before. The sky is blue, fire is hot, jacking off to your friends is bad. Alarmingly, Alec found it almost charming. Nobody was blunt, honest. It was nice. Nice to know that someone like Theo existed. Even though Alec couldn't do anything about it now. Theo wasn't like the cute redhead who'd sat in front of him in English class. The one who had dimples and braces and a nice smile. She'd been talkative, a little mean sometimes, but he'd liked her. Hadn't he? Yes, he'd liked her a lot. She hadn't liked him. But that hadn't mattered so much.  
He'd liked the way she grinned like someone was on fire. A little evil. Theo was maybe a little evil too. At least he didn't try to hide it. He'd never gone and played along with what society wanted. Hadn't caught the ball. Hadn't even raised his hands. Theo didn't fit in because he just didn't _try_ to. He was attractive enough. The world was shallow.  
"You should be. Anybody would be," Theo said with another little shrug.  
A little up and down. The acceptance. There was something extremely mature about how Theo acted. Alec was always on the edge of being impressed.  
"I'm not," Alec said. Theo laughed and it was all air. Disbelief. That was something universal.  
"Sure."  
Alec frowned, "well, it's true. I don't really have a reason to lie to you. Besides, you're already so weird that this isn't even...surprising." The words were meant to sound mean, but came out dragged instead. They didn't have their usual heat and Alec wondered if that made them more or less emotional. Perhaps more, because it was different. Perhaps less, because it sounded ingenuine. Theo didn't seem to care.  
"Well. I mean, you're right. I only told you now because it doesn't really matter." That hurt a little. So what? It was true. It didn't matter now. Theo's secret couldn't be spread, or laughed at. It was like he'd never said it because Alec was...no longer real. He didn't matter any more. He wasn't even matter anymore. It stopped him for a second. _Why am I still_ _even here? I have no purpose._ The thought was fleeting though because he quickly reasoned that even alive he'd never really had much of a purpose either. Being dead really wasn't so different. At least now someone kind of listened to him. Acknowledged him. Kind of. Never completely, but that attention was more than anything he'd ever received. More than his mother's aborted looks and his father's sad, alcoholic ramblings. More than the his teacher's pity-sighs and his lackies' thoughtless obedience. To pay attention to someone you have to know them. Know them past the thin skin.  
So many people never care about what lies beneath. They never even try to scratch open somebody else. That brave face is so shallow it's impressive it even tries. That's the selfish human condition. Don't bleed into someone elses' life. Self-preservation?   
"Maybe you should have told me. Just because." Theo smiled, then mused, "why? So that you'd have another reason to beat me up?"  
"No. I might not have."  
Theo glanced over at him. A long, cool look. Sure. It looked like it saw deep into Alec. Found the lie. "You would have." That was probably true.  
Alec's fault had been his need to fit in. The need to be noticed and loved.  
He would have picked on Theo more, just because that was what he did.  
It's what he was. Theo was always so right, so blunt, pure. Alec wondered if that's how angels were. He wondered if angels existed. What would it be like to kiss an angel? Theo wasn't an angel though. It'd be different to kiss him. Angels didn't make mass graves in their bedrooms. Perhaps he was more akin to death, or whatever helpers death used.  
"You could try it now," Alec said, surprising himself. Was he really that desperate for someone to touch him? Theo didn't even look back at him.  
The conversation came to an end after that. It had stopped more peacefully than most of their conversations. No yelling. No bitterness. Just silence.  
"We're not going to kill her though."  
Theo didn't answer. That seemed to be the new norm.

## Chapter Eighteen

The fresh taste of betrayal, hard on the heart every time and yet it always feels unexpected although you already knew it was going to happen. And so you wind up crying in the backseat of the car, staring out of the window while the driver and the passenger talk, ignoring you actively. Staring, just staring, with blurry eyes out the window to try to forget that you are there, that you have to feel something in that moment and perhaps if you could be outside then your body would stop collapsing under your self. It doesn't help that the crying is never lovely. It's never the single round-drop shimmering tears you see on television. They are not just one and there is snot involved.  
There he sits, in the passenger seat, the one you thought you loved, smiling at the driver, forgetting your existence. there's a reason people forget, and there is a reason why oftentimes they don't forgive. If he wants forgiveness he has to get on his knees and lick at my pussy this time like it's only for me and not like it's some glove for his dick. He better rub my thighs and cry all over my pussy thanking it and praising it if he thinks there's even the smallest chance of redemption. He can take his twink-ass dick, saw it off, and slap it until he's so sore he can't get it up for a week.  
But anger passes too, and then there is no punishment for making you cry.  
The room was rather childish. The walls were light blue like _it's a baby_ _boy!_ paraphernalia and Amelia wondered if he'd had the same room since birth. The closets were tidy. The ground was covered by one circular rug that looked soft from use if not a bit dirty. A desk was crammed into the corner of the room. Overall, it was fairly normal. The one oddity seemed to be the row of glass jars lined up on a shelf next to the bed. Each seemed to contain an insect, usually dead, and a leaf or a handful of dirt. A ladybug slowly crawled up the side of a glass jar, heading towards where the top of the jar had collected beads of precipitation. A dead grasshopper lay on the bedspread, the legs detached from the body, grotesque and hairy in death.  
She viewed this all and then wondered where he was, once again. He hadn't seemed like a very sociable kid. She remembered his drawn face that be-spoke of low self-confidence and ostracization. Perhaps she looked a little bit like that as well; displaced from society; odd. She ran her hand along the dirty row of jars and then walked from the room out into the hall. The house was empty and surprisingly clean, like one of those fancy dollhouses at craft stores. With all of the tiny desks and chairs and perfectly lined pictures on the wall. The wooden floors where shiny beneath her feet, as though it had just been cleaned, or as though nobody had ever walked them.  
She'd broken the bedroom window to get in, and she could feel the draft creep down the hall. It slowly caught up to her, pressing against her neck.   
It gave her the chills. She walked faster, into the perfect kitchen. A little porcelain bowl of fruit lay on the table, fake in its uselessness. It gave way to nothing. Everything in the home was a facade, a disguise. It was hiding something, stubbornly refusing to give hints. The boy's room was the one imperfection, the one gross blemish. _Who collects dead bugs?_ She could imagine the weird stares. If it were possible perhaps she would have pitied him, having been in a similar position her whole life. She'd never been vulnerable though. He was weaker than her. There had been no sign of his parents. The knife in her left hand was humid in her palm, encased in sweat. If they came, she'd kill them. There wasn't much to stop her now. It would be too difficult to resist the temptation. _Hurry up_.  
The world was ice between her teeth. Perhaps this time she would be noticed. Perhaps this time she wouldn't be pitied anymore. She didn't need fake love. Didn't need shiny, sterile, fruits set in a bowl or vacant "I love you"s. She'd never needed any love. She remembered Lindy, then. Her pale face red and hot with sweat, blotched like watercolors. Her wide, dark eyes, staring at her. The pull of her lip, the brushes, the part. The scrape down her back, not caring if it hurt. If it left red, welting skin peeling off her back.  
Lindy had been the closest thing to a regret Amelia ever had. It had been a once-in-a-lifetime kind of relationship. Her suicidal tendencies had only made her better. There was nothing to lose if there was nothing to live for. Dangerous. Amelia had loved it. _It's me or you._ They'd been well-matched.  
When they'd kissed, all of their teeth kissed too, like mouthfuls of broken glass. Amelia remembered the exact moment her admiration of Lindy ended.  
I'd do anything for you.   
Lindy had gotten sentimental.  
That was all wrong. So wrong that Amelia could hardly fathom what had made her say it. Feelings were a liability. How had Lindy not seen that? Love was a liability. Amelia supposed she'd learned her lesson. It was such a shame though, such an utter waste. She should have convinced Lindy, made her see. Lust wasn't love, it was pure self-interest. Impossible to confuse. She remembered the first time they'd met. In the dim flicker of yellow subway lights, Lindy had been leaning against the dirty concrete wall. Her arms had been crossed and her eyes had been staring off into the empty track, like she was used to being dead. There were no other people waiting for the train. It was a cool October evening. The lights were dim and old, swaying back and forth above them. Amelia had walked over to her and she hadn't even looked. Lindy had been weird like that.  
"Are you waiting for me?" Amelia asked.  
"Depends on who you are."  
Amelia laughed aloud in the empty house. A short, monotone sound. Lindy had been as blunt as molars. Teeth-grittingly witty. Too beautiful for the world. Too ugly as well. She'd had plain, infantile features. She'd always had a sad droop in her eyes, a sullen lock in her jaw. Her hair could never be tamed. Tiny mouth. She'd been almost incapable of smiling truly.  
When she had really smiled, it'd looked painful. She was a master of lies though. Yes, perhaps Amelia had found her interesting in her blemishes.  
Fascinating in all those unnormal ways. Too odd to be loved. Weren't they all? No. Cole was the type of person who was easy to love. Too easy to love. He was all soft features and a vulnerable core. The type of person who could be easily used until they were gone. One whispered lie and he was yours to do with what you pleased.  
It depends on who you are.  
She'd kill him soon enough. Put him down. She supposed he deserved one act of kindness. It's merciful to put down pets who are in pain. That's what Mrs. Nancy had done to her twelve-year-old cat because his legs gave out. She'd cried but she'd still killed him. Amelia didn't know what she thought about that. Society thought it was alright. Perhaps there were just more accepted acts of cruelty. Ones that were needed. It's alright, as long as it helps. Cole's death would be like that. Kind. He'd thank her. God knows how often he'd already tried to end it himself.  
"You have to go down the road, not across it."  
That's what one of my friends always said. The inside of his arm was so pale. This only made it more obvious. He said that people always messed it up when they tried to commit suicide. "You have to go down the road," he'd say, and drag his thumb down his arm, "not across it." The faded, red marks seemed to stretch all the way down. He hadn't known the rule at first. He'd gone across the road. Now he only went down. He let me touch them sometimes, rough under my fingers. He usually covered them with strategically placed band-aids. They fell off a lot. He wasn't careful, yet nobody seemed to care. The marks didn't really fade all the way. There were always there. Thin lines receding into the background for newer, redder ones. He cut close to his vein one time, the large one on the inside of his wrist. The one that's serious. Didn't go to the hospital, just hung it over the trashcan as he fell asleep.  
He woke up and acted like nothing had happened. "It looks really bad."  
It did. I went with him to buy foundation at the supermarket. The color was a little off.  
"I love you."  
"I love you."  
I meant it. I'd always loved this boy. He'd always been a little more feminine, a little smarter, a little more unstable, a little more aware. He stopped cutting a little while after that day. Love is an altering experience.  
It can be good and bad. Usually both. Who defines extremes? I don't trust infinities. You never get anywhere. He slipped up on habits when we got in fights and walked on air when things were okay. The highest highs, the lowest lows. I don't trust infinities. He did. Perhaps i would have liked to lose myself in that daydream. He woke up happy or sad, the flip of a dime.  
What is it today? "Today is beautiful."  
Happiness is created, not inherent. Not rational. Just beautiful.  
Amelia looked at the soft skin of her palm, desperate for something in the folds. The character of life, mortality, something could perhaps be found.  
Yet there was only ever skin and salt and an uncomfortable pounding in her head that constricted all of her thoughts to one image at a time. Dozy red eyes and cheeks framed with a summer hair haze, lovely, distinct. The sun will always rise, the moon with always unfold, such is the cycle. She was rotting from the inside. You feel it curl up your intestines and up into your stomach and lungs. She'd vomit it all soon. She felt a chill, Lindy's dead arms wrapped sweetly around her neck. _It depends on who you are._ She'd wait. She'd wait until the boy arrived.

## Chapter Nineteen

A few houses over the police were baffled. Three murders in a month, that was unheard of. That was bad publicity. Officer Smith stood in the paved driveway, a flimsy paper cup bending in his hands. The coffee inside had long since gone cold and its sole purpose was now to offer a tacit kind of comfort. It was cold again and the wind whipped at the flashy crime tape that had been wrapped around the surrounding trees.  
Smith looked at his cold coffee once more, churlish and unsatisfying, and decided it was time for him to check up on what was happening inside. He had not seen the bodies yet and he had the upsetting notion that perhaps his supervisor no longer trusted him after the incident in the woods. No suspects had been found except for the boy who had called in and it was more than a little suspicious that the same kid had gone missing that afternoon. They hadn't even had time to bring him in for questioning. Theodoros Terrell.  
That was not a common name. That was the kind of name pretentious parents thought were unique. His mother had called the station that afternoon after the school informed her that Theodoros had not been in class. She had not sounded too worried, simply annoyed, stating that she was missing an important meeting. Perhaps her son was simply rebelling in ways that teenagers often do. That was a possibility, of course, but to the police department it was too much of a coincidence that his disappearance coincided with the murder of the Eisens. Same street. Mr. and Mrs. Eisen had been murdered some time that morning, estimated between 2 and 3 am. Their daughter, Amelia, was still missing. At first it was suspected that Amelia had been killed and dumped somewhere else but it was now clear that she had murdered or been an aid in the murder of her parents. Amelia's fingerprints had been found on the shovel used to bury the mother's body and on the knife in the kitchen. Amelia and Theodoros seemed to share no connection other than the fact that they lived in the same neighborhood.  
Perhaps they were working together. Perhaps she had killed him. The dead boy's body in the forest came back to Smith and he felt a twinge of unease standing alone.  
He looked down the street and knew that it was still as vacant as it had been all morning. Middle-income suburbs were generally lazy, calm places.  
Cars drove the standard 20 mph and most of them had left for work. The remaining residents—predominantly bored housewives—gossiped quietly on their phones inside. A mailman bicycled past, staring at the yellow tape with curious fascination. He was simply an observer though. Curious but indifferent. Smith looked at him irritably and the mailman quickly looked away, paddling off down the sidewalk. Smith considered it at least a little insulting that he was forced to sit like a duck in the middle of the driveway while the rest of his team was actually earning their paycheck. He wouldn't generally be complaining about not doing much but given the circumstances Smith felt left out. He peered down the empty street again as a precaution before downing the rest of his coffee. The empty cup would serve as a reason to head into the house; "just throwing this paper cup away. Littering's killing our planet, don't you know..." With a conclusive sniff, Smith left his post and walked up to the welcome mat sitting skewed outside of the door. He contemplated knocking before he remembered that the owners of the house were, in fact, dead. He belonged inside. _It's okay._ Perhaps he'd be able to see a dead body. If he was lucky, that was. Very little actually happened in their little, countryside town. Even robberies were an uncommon event perpetrated by bored and often ineffective teenagers. It was boring being a cop in a good town. Smith almost wished that more would happen so that there'd be a little more job security. If they started to lay people off, the overweight man with a heart condition was certainly going to be one of the first to go. He was a mediocre cop through to the core. His looks made old women decide to cross the street alone rather than trouble him for help and with a name like Smith he was hardly someone anyone truly remembered as an individual. Yes, he'd be one of—if not the—first ones to be layed off. Discarding that dark though—he always disregarded dark thoughts—Smith walked into the house with purpose.  
Paper cup safely secured in his left hand, his eyes shone with determination as he stepped onto the foyer rug. The decor inside of the house was standard for a middle-income household and wasn't sprayed with blood or anything exciting. In fact, it looked alarmingly tidy. There was a closet full of winter coats and jackets to the side of the door. Shoes were placed in straight rows in a rack against the wall. A clock nailed into the plaster swung ominously back and forth at the end of the entry hallway; it was remarkably unsettling.  
The father's body had been lifted from the stairway and Smith could hear the faint chatter of the rest of his squad out in the garden. The hallway led to the kitchen, which bent around and ended at a glass sliding door that opened up to the small garden out back. It was almost peaceful inside; a quiet nostalgia hung on the walls in the form of faded family pictures and a child's drawings. A hand sanitizer smell seemed to soak the walls. Smith was cautious as he stepped into the kitchen, eyes catching on the bronze pans that hung above the stove. They glinted like a tiger's eyes. The kitchen itself was clean with no snacks or dirty dishes to be seen. When he checked, even the fridge was only scarcely filled with an overripe box of strawberries, a half-filled carton of milk, and a few frozen food boxes were shoved into the upper freezer compartment. The selection was worse than Smith's own at home, and he considered this to be rather unexpected—alarming, even—given the home's wealthy furnishing and other abundances. He closed the fridge door and decided to walk up the stairs, bypassing the rest of the officers who were crowded around in the garden. There was tape on the landing platform of at the top of the stairs and he edged around it, sure that nobody would notice traces of his particular footsteps midst all of the others. Mob mentality, police mentality. Too dumb to act of their own. Yet he was deviating.  
Smith gained a feeling of superiority from this thought and continued with a little more gusto up the stairs. The upper floor of the house was a little more humid than it had been downstairs and there only seemed to be a bathroom, a bedroom, and a few closets on this floor. Amelia's bedroom was at the end of the hall. The door was opened enough to already see the light coming in from the large window opposite of the door. As he walked towards it, the floorboards under his feet creaked in protest.  
He stepped into the room and the light was almost heavenly in contrast with the rest of the house. The sun seemed to be shining directly into this window in particular, enveloping it in a rare kind of white light. Smith felt some forgotten emotion rise up inside of his chest. Something spiritual in nature, but not Christian. Christianity had never made him happy in his life. Catching the priest fucking a nun in the church bathroom had been the best thing to come out of Sundays. Oh how she'd begged him for it, the priest had said. She'd gravely stood by the sink wringing her hands like she wanted him dead. A real beaut though, Smith remembered, and jerked off to the memory every so often. Porn had became monotonous and glaringly fake a long time ago. Sometime in his late teens. Hentai came next, shady image forums with bad reps, even the deep web. It was no use. The dressed up up girls caught his fancy and then lost it the minute they dropped to their knees. Wasn't there a livestream or a chatroom where he could just speak to them? Just ask them how their lives were? He realized the notion was sad even within his own head. He wanted something a little more real, a little more girly, perhaps, as his fellow men would say. It was optimistic to think that he'd ever get a girlfriend, much less a wife. Much less someone who could love him when there was nothing about him to love. He knew this. He had anger problems, a bigoted upbringing, excess fat, no romance, none of that ambition his father had always talked about. They had no reason to like him, yet he felt entitled to the promised dream of a pretty blonde with big boobs waiting for him when he got home every night. Ugly girls were left to die alone but even ugly guys got girls.  
He worked hard, he deserved something sweet and beautiful in his life.  
Some _one_ , his sister would have corrected. She had grown up to be one of those liberals, combating the supposed dangers of sexism and racism and what not. Of course his father didn't approve, but that was to be expected.  
That man only liked a particular set of things and everything outside of the box was detested. Smith had become a policeman partially to please his father. Of course it was no use to try and make the old man happy though, not when his standards were so impossible. A pretty wife was a must, so was a respectable job, the house and car had to be expensive but nothing too flashy, one boy and one girl born three years apart. He'd failed every one of those criteria except for the job, and even there he was lacking. He was a policeman. One of the criteria for getting hired was basically being stupid. They didn't want any of their men to start questioning the hierarchy or what they were doing.  
Smith blinked and the room focused again. There was still a sway to the room, something light, like stepping on the hills of a cloud. He dragged his feet on the carpet, stumbling to the window. Hands outstretched, he grabbed the air, wanting to hold onto the tangible brightness that somehow turned the room white. The window ledge was a thin line of wood behind a small, oak desk. He climbed onto the table and pressed his palms to the glass. The world was water in his hot hands. The heat from his breath fogged the pane. Yet there, walking down the street, he saw an angel. And for a second he thought he saw the devil next to him. A darkness above the angel's head, like a shadow. Smith smeared his hand across the cloud and the world went clear again. It wasn't an angel; it was a young boy. It was the boy, Theodoros Terrell. Now, a sense of purpose nested itself inside of Smith. It was his duty to go downstairs and tell his superior officer what he'd seen. Let him take the glory for capturing the suspect. Get ignored again and passed off to the side. That's what he was supposed to do, trained to do. He wasn't a dog though. He wasn't going to be his father's failure forever. At least his sister had married a lawyer and had had kids. He was still single, poor, and getting up into his 40's. It was time for something to change. And he was the thing that had to change. _One_ , his sister corrected.  
Smith was going to redeem himself. He crawled off the table and with an abundance of energy strided from the room. He practically skipped down the stairs, swinging from the handrail. That kid was his. As he passed the kitchen he silently flipped off the other officers in the garden before ascending into the chilly Autumn air. His fate was sealed and shipped off to God. Into nothingness. He twirled like a mad-man down the street. The world cheered him on, louder and louder in his ears. A cat watched him from atop a sunny concrete doorstep. His jacket flapped in the wind, shocking neighbors who stopped their plant watering to go inside lest something bad happen. Smith remembered the boy's house from the first visit. It looked a little cheaper than Amelia's, but it was still pretty average. There was no car in the driveway which probably meant that Theodoros's parents were still at work. The chronic workaholics. It was like a movie scene as Smith drew closer to the screen door. He could see himself, hand extended, as he turned the handle. The netted screen opened and he pushed the wooden door open too. His breathing was loud in his ears as his eyes focused in the dark room. His vision seemed to be narrowed, with the edges of his sight turning fuzzy and black. There was nobody in the hallway, just a faint feeling of unease. The human intuition is an odd thing and far too accurate for its unscientific ways. The first room—which appeared to be a living room—looked normal enough. He wandered into the kitchen, which was similarly clean. It was almost unnaturally so, with a shinning, silver fridge and a fancy bowl of fruits on the table. The entire room looked so unnaturally polished that Smith wondered if it was ever actually used. He only later saw the empty slit in the knife rack afterwards.  
After all of it. He wandered from the kitchen and into the hallway. All previous energy was sapped now and there was only a creeping feeling of dread as he walked towards the room at the end of the hall. the one with the open door. The one that had a strange noise coming from it. His hands began to shake as he drew closer. He suddenly wondered what significance doors played in his life. Did they mean something? Were they important?  
He shook the thought and continued. He slowly neared, hand traveling to the gun fastened to his belt. A scream was what sent him running into the room. He was just fast enough to witness Amelia stab a large kitchen knife through Theodoros's throat. Not even a partial cut. All the way through.  
There was glass shattered on the floor but Smith didn't care. He was shaking all over. Amelia let go of the knife, her hands red and angry, and turned to face him.  
Her pale face was bruised with a intense flush of what seemed to be pure delight. A personal ecstasy of sorts. She turned around and she smiled almost graciously at him. Opened up her arms and jumped off the bed.  
She strode towards him, head up, hair falling backwards like a shooting star. And the gun went off in his hands. It just went off like a rocket.  
Smith didn't even remember pulling it. It wasn't his fault, he'd later tell the investigators. She'd been threatening him. Coming at him. But she was just a falling cross. Blissful in her descent. When he thought about it later, he wondered if perhaps he'd imagined her smile. Why would she have had a reason to smile? She landed on the floor amid the sun-reflected glass, hair loose, bullet through her head. The one shot Smith actually landed in his career, despite the shaking of his hands. She died within seconds, brain filling with blood, and Smith saw perhaps the last bit of god leave the world.  
"It happened so quickly," he'd later tell. It happened so quickly. He'd have another beer. Theodoros and Amelia were dead. Both were not largely missed by anybody. The headlines ran red with all of the odd murders and they sold well, but it was just a freak show. Nothing anybody cared about outside of its shock factor. Both of their funerals were held in the same week though there was some mild debate over whether or not Amelia even deserved a funeral. She ended up having one in the family room of the funeral center.  
Her mother and father showed up in a rented black suit and dress. Cheap ass academics. Theo's mother only took off of work because her boss paid for her day off. His father stood like a shadow in the pew next to her. Some of his schoolmates showed up and didn't cry during the reception save a few.  
And they only did because the prospect of death terrified them. Death is a concept most people have to grow into. Hah. There were a smattering of reporters as well who were looking for some heartstring pulling photos for the papers.  
In short, both of them died fairly simply. Theo's mother mourned by pouring all of her energy into work, not unlike what she had already been doing. His father committed suicide the next year and nobody was really surprised. He'd been a reclusive, chronically average person. Amelia's parents moved to Switzerland, where they took up mountain climbing. Their relationship seemed to have healed magically within a few weeks. Some people accused them of running away or—dare they say it—of having a nice time. Things seemed to work out quite well for them overall.  
Cole, poor kid that he was, was, oddly enough, never prosecuted for the murder of his brother. Or perhaps it wasn't so odd, given the man's line of work. Cole went on to the prostitution scene downtown and gained a fair amount of success in that. A rich man from New York fancied him enough to take him back when his business trip was over. From there he had the relatively easy job of being something akin to a housewife to a more than wealthy lawyer. Eventually he grew wary of his lover's anger tantrums and undeserved sense of superiority and dumped him. Well, he dumped him off in a deserted junk yard after stabbing him a few times with a broken plate and some heroin needles (for good measure). After this he went on the run for a few years and ended up in Beijing after applying online for a modeling job in China. He lived decently after that, although the gay scene was limited and oftentimes the men he met were either self-loathing or sex-obsessed perverts. The money he got from modeling was enough to sustain himself with and he eventually saved up enough to rent an apartment and move out of the hotel he'd been staying at.  
The lives of the living continued to meander along their ways. Knowing humans though, I suppose you're curious about what happened in Theo's room, and how exactly he and Amelia died.   
What had happened in that bedroom was this: Theo had walked into his front yard and noticed that the curtains were flowing into his room. The pane had been shut when he left, signifying that somebody was inside of the house. He proceeded with caution, stopping only to take off his shoes as he got inside. He didn't want to make much noise.  
The house was silent but that didn't fool him. Alec hovered behind him, wondering whether or not Theo wanted him to search the house for Amelia. It turned out not to be needed, because Theo walked into the kitchen and found her there. Her braids were tied back and she had a very large kitchen knife in her hand. It was dull in the dark kitchen. She'd gotten up, staring at him with a tiny frown, and had run towards him, flourishing the knife in her left hand. It waved in the air, a mad, feverish hail before the end.  
Theo's eyes widened and he turned on his heels and ran down the hallway to his room, toes slipping on the wood, and Amelia lunged after him, mouth open, panting with delight for the hunt. She felt like a fury, spraying lashes of blood from her mouth. Her eyes were spirals of red, blue, and yellow. Her teeth were rows of canines. It was as though she were transformed, chasing her prey down the narrow hallway. She bumped her elbows on the walls, desperate to feel his soft head between her claws. Theo rammed into the side of his door but was too high on adrenaline to notice. His eyes darted around frantically, searching for something to protect himself with. He sprang up on his bed and grabbed an arm full of his glass jars. As Amelia entered the room he threw them at her, some exploding into glass shards as they landed on the wooden floor. Some of them hit her and then fell as well with a resounding thud. She wasn't stopped though.  
She continued towards the bed, brandishing the knife in a death grip.  
Theo ran out of jars and pulled the wooden shelf from off the wall and threw it at her. It landed square on her jaw and a _crack_ echoed throughout the room. For a second her head just hung awkwardly in what seemed to be a 90 degree angle. Then it slowly rose again and her nose began to bleed as she dragged herself forward. Her small hands grasped for him in the air.  
Too greedy in their ascent. Theo started to panic, hands reaching against the walls, fingernails scraping down the wood. He knew then that he was going to die and so he accepted that fate, realizing that if he did not pass peacefully then he was bound to the world until Amelia died. Amelia knew that he was defeated and took her time climbing onto the bed, rising up and pulling her knife under his throat. He was right there, in front of her, eyes wide like an open mouth. Screaming. Someone's coming. She didn't slit his throat; she stabbed it. She forced the knife deep into his throat so it stuck out at her. She pushed all of her weight on that knife, used her body weight. She heard someone walk into the room behind her and turned around. There was a police officer pointing his gun at her. And she was satisfied.

## Chapter Twenty

I sped through Theo's and Amelia's final moments because the end of a human's life is really the least important part of a human life. Everyone always asks, "how did she/he die?" That's not the important part. Death.  
It's like a period at the end of an intricate sentence. Nobody lingers on the period, just on what the sentence before it said. Perhaps I'm not cut out for this job, but nobody truly is. I'm just a simple person.  
I am just the simple death.  
It is simple to live, and simpler to die. Perhaps that fragile state of existence is what brings people to madness. Yet I am the judge of the content of a person's life, and I am the end of a being unlike any other. Did they deserve to die? Die he? So young? That is not what's important.  
Every person will one day die for that is the nature of progress. However, I will now take the dead from their lives and judge them for what they did in their lives. The death before me judged people based on a moral scale (how "good" or "bad" a person was in their lives) but in my opinion that's naive. There are no straight truths and no person is one or the other.  
His system was flawed but did improve global crime for a few years from 1993 to the 2000's. His method, however, failed to introduce certain types of people back into the population and so would have ultimately stunted human diversity overall. In a world without drug dealers, murderers, and psychopaths money is left in the hands of those with old money. Money is left in rich countries with little ways of escaping to struggling economies.  
Money is less likely to trade hands and get introduced to those of people who have little. It's not a lie that most power positions are filled by people with psychopathic and narcissistic tendencies. Every type of person serves their purpose in the world. That's why I don't really judge people who come through here. It is not my duty to dictate nature nor shift human culture.  
Somewhere another person will be born with the mental predispositions that Amelia had. However, that person will be born in a different place, in a different time. They will have an entirely different childhood, and an entirely different life. This may be a question of free will, or of nature vs nurture, but in the end this person will just be one person among a growing population of billions. As will Theo and Alec and Lindy and everyone else who dies while I'm here. Of course, I'm not sure how long I have either. Each of us are bound by a limit, and we can only live until we die. Simple, I know.

We are simply humans. So focused on self hate that we forget that there _is love as well_.

The End is what People Call It

