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.