"Why don't you love me?"

Breathless. Raw. Burning.

"I'm so much better than him..."

The knife twisted its way into my hand. Bone scraping. Palm bleeding. Mouth screaming.

"The choice is so... so... simple."

Agony peaking. Heart pounding. Wrists throbbing. Tears streaming. Darkness closing...

There was the sharp retort of flesh against flesh as the back of his hand connected with my face. The noise of my skull rattling against the brick behind me was deafening. His eyes flared crimson in the black before me.

"Don't go to sleep."

His breath was hot on my neck. The blade was cold against my throat. There was the sensation of his tongue on my face. He loved tasting me.

"It's not bedtime yet."

Then his mouth was flush with mine. Fangs biting. Lips bleeding. Temperature rising. His tongue travelled the circumference of my mouth, running along my dry, cracked lips. Then he smiled a wicked smile that gleamed hellishly white in the abyss of his basement.

"Wh-..." I struggled to speak. To scream. To tell my friend to stop whatever the hell he was doing. "Why are y-you... doing this?"

He looked at me like it should have been obvious. Like it should have made so much sense to me. Like it was easy to figure out why he was torturing me.

"Because I love you."

I couldn't hold back the tears anymore. Sobbing. Weeping relentlessly. Eyes charred from lack of light. Throat singed from dehydration. Heart broken by the man I might have once called friend.

His fingertips brushed my chin lightly, tilting my head up to face him. I couldn't bear to look him in the eyes, but he forced me to gaze in his direction anyway. For a split-second, I thought I saw his face flicker.

Regret. Pity. Sanity.

But it quickly warped back into the twisted, sadistic grin I had come to know and fear.

Pleasure. Bloodlust. Insanity.

Then he leaned close to my ear. His lips brushed the lobe softly, sending chills down my spine and shivers through my soul. A goodnight kiss.

"Hushabye, Rose. Hushabye."

I closed the door behind me, sealing her within the bleeding darkness. My hands were drenched with blood, I noted sourly as I watched the wet substance drip loudly onto the tile below. Red on seafoam. Nauseating.

I marched to the kitchen sink and turned the faucet on. The echoing ring of water splashing against the plastic bowl rang in my ears and, for a moment, tuned me out of reality.

What the hell am I doing?

I gazed down at my bloodstained arms, carefully examining each scarlet fingertip. My heart thudded quietly in my chest, pounding in my brain. Tongue extended. Mouth followed. Without thinking, I methodically began to lick my fingers clean of her precious juices.

What the hell am I doing?

"S-..."

My ears twitched at the sound of her angelic voice. Tired and frail.

"Sonikku..."

Temper flared. Muscles tensed. Blood pounded.

She was here! With me! Didn't she get it? I was her everything now. I alone carved this realm for her and I, and I purposefully excluded that blue bastard she called a hero.

My fingers trembled when I unwittingly picked up the knife. Still coated in a thick layer of her blood. I lapped it up and cleaned its surface to perfection.

The door flew open and crashed against the wall. His silhouette glowered down at me from the top of the stairs. The god of my hell.

The blade glinted in the dim, amber light of his kitchen lamp, casting ghastly beams of orange into my sensitive eyes. My heart dropped abruptly into my stomach and my legs and arms went cold. He heard me.

The dagger twirled gracefully in his fingers as he approached my helpless form. His eyes scanned my body and ravaged every square inch, raping whatever he had not yet cut.

"Bedtime was supposed to be... God, fifteen minutes ago."

I whimpered softly and pleaded for mercy as he kissed me forcefully. The edge of the knife ran gently along the curves of my breasts.

"But we can stay up late. If you really want to."