We sit here in silence and it’s almost comfortable. The air is almost moving. I can almost smile and crack jokes like old times.

But ‘almost’ doesn’t cut it, and all I can think about is how wrong everything suddenly is. How my best friend looks less like the man I grew up with and more like the beasts I imagined in my closet. And that only makes me wonder how many skeletons he’s kept in his.

But I don’t say that. I almost want to, but when I’m about to try, it’s like my throat glues itself together and I have no hope of tearing the words out.

Vix looks at me. His eyes used to be brown. Now they’re red, like the spatters on the front of his shirt. Like the backs of my eyelids. Like the way I feel right now.

It’s such a tumultuous color. A riotous color. Fire and bombs and passion and lust and fury and alarm and danger and blood.

Certainly blood smeared across his lip. His teeth.

My best friend is a monster.

The thought hits home but misses the door, crashing in through the window instead and tearing up my heart with the jagged shards of glass. Sharp and cutting, like the ivory canines Vix has somehow hidden from me all these years. Maybe my heart is caught between those fangs.

Vix speaks, and his voice sounds every bit as normal as it used to, but somehow it’s the growl of a demon now. “You hate me.”

I don’t say anything. I nod, then shake my head, then open my mouth and try to put my thoughts into words, but they tangle up before I can and all I can do is lean forward and put my face in my hands.

I can’t hate him. But I can’t look at him like I did before. Not now.

I feel his gaze travel away. Raking over me, wind and razorblades. Ripping away little chunks of my soul. I feel like I’m overheating but my body won’t stop shivering, shivering, shivering, and I wonder if I’m about to collapse, a house of sticks in a gale.

I have to say something. I have to, or my head is going to explode.

The first thing that comes out of my mouth sounds harsh and accusatory, even to me.

“You’re a murderer.”

I lift my head, looking into Vix’s red eyes. For all the blood he must’ve consumed over the years, his face is entirely bloodless.

But he doesn’t deny it or rebuke me, and I wish he would, because he looks even more broken than I feel right now.

“. . .Why?” I ask, and I don’t even know what I mean.

Vix puts his face in his hands, hands that are trembling just like me.

“I don’t know,” he says, and his voice is so thick and so strangled that I can barely make out what he’s saying. “. . .Because I’m a coward. Even if it means killing to survive, I. . .”

Suddenly I’m on my feet, held up on shaking legs, and I’m stumbling forward until I fall on my knees in front of him, and my hands are clenched in the sleeves of his vest. He looks at me, just as surprised as I am, and a million urges flicker through my mind. I don’t know if I came over to punch him or to hug him or to strangle him until the life fades from his eyes.

I don’t do any of them. More words spill from my mouth, desperate and flimsy. “But you have to. Right? You have to. You don’t have any choice.”

Whoever I saw back there, it wasn’t you. It wasn’t you.

Vix’s face is all screwed up, smeared with blood and now with tears. The only answer I get is a wet sob.

Something is breaking inside me, but I don’t know what it is or how to fix it. I can’t fix that or this or the man—the thing sitting in front of me, whether it’s a man or a demon or my best friend or some sick form of retribution.

My fingers uncurl, and I’m falling backward, scooting across the floor until my back hits the leg of a table and I stop, and my lungs are being wound up in a meat grinder.

I scream until my voice runs raw and my breath is all spent, and then I sob until everything turns black.

I wake up. Vix is hunched over me, shaking in silent sobs.

I struggle to reconcile the boy I grew up with, and the monster before me.

"Vix?" I carefully ask, my voice, hoarse.

I wince as I push myself up. There is an ache in my chest. I reach my hand up toward his face. That face, memories of our times spent together flood my mind.

Then I remember the bloodied hands. The merlot stained shirt.

He looks at me, and I see the flicker of the boy I grew up with, the one who laughed too loud at the ridiculous stories about monsters under the bed. Then it's gone. Hollowed out by the gaze of someone who has seen too much.

"I didn't want this," he whispers, his voice cracking. "I didn't want this."

I try to inhale deeply, my lungs burn in protest.

"Why didn't you tell me? We could have figured it out together."

His eyes flashed with iridescence, a spark of anger igniting within the depths of that crimson hue of his irises.

"You think you could of helped me?" He spat. "I was protecting you!"

"Protecting me? You're a murderer!" The words slipped out before I could stop them. I sounded more bitter than I felt.

"I'm trying to survive." Vix retorted, desperation, exhaustion, creeping into this voice. "There are... others... who depend on me."

"By becoming a killer?" My heart was racing.

"I'm still me." He whispered, looking down. "Mostly." It was barely audible.

I tried to sit up, but he wasn't moving.

"Vix?" I ask, more tentative now. A cold fear began to travel through my veins.

The world around me blurs into muted colours and shapes.

The air is thick with a metallic scent. Sweet rancidity of drying blood.

"There is no saving me." Vix's tone was laboured, as though it had travelled a great distance to arrive.

"There is no saving anyone."