(A/N: Here's to less angsty IZ fics and more angsty Jhonen/JtHM fics! I've found a new outlet that was angsty/scary-as-shit to begin with! Somehow I'm actually depressed by this… Ah well…)

He let the small insect travel over his hand, his skin an actual flesh tone instead of the usual blood-stained white gloved in black. "Only you…" he sighed as he watched it slip between his long pianist's fingers and around his bony wrist. "No one else can touch me like this…they're all filthy…but I want to feel nothing, you know? Nothing…" he trailed off again and stared at the brown shine on his arm, his sunken eyes glistening with the thought of tears. He tried to quell it but he wasn't that practiced yet.

They fell down his face in a grim satirical manner - the embodiment of Death cries over a simple insect - how foolish! He raised the back of his coat to wipe away the remnants of emotions from his face and only succeeded in smudging red all over his face (he had forgotten to clean it off before he put it back on), the pigment once dehydrated reinvigorated by his secretions, bringing forth another emotion he wanted to hide—longing. He wanted nothing more, in the deep dark crevasses of his heart, than to go back to the simpleness of morrow days, of the routines passed: go out, kill maim, torture, paint, eat, try to take his own life, TV, repeat. But the smear of red, begot by the tears, begot by the insect brought to life another flame he was trying to quench: fear. What if he didn't lose all that negative-emotion-drain-ness when he woke up from that vivid life-after-death dream (funny that he should have dreams, he never slept)? What if the little one he tried so hard to protect was now in even more danger? What if the voices are still there, not in the form they started in, but there nonetheless? But he steeled himself, he would not fall prey to them any longer! HE was his own master, HE made decisions and it was HIS decision that he leave this place, that he detach himself from these nasty emotions - the stupid chains of humanity - and HE would see them through.

He got up and softly put the bug on the floor, smiling softly as he scuttled off, and then burying the emotion under years of nothing that had suddenly shown themselves in him. "Time to go…" he whispered, not looking back at the broken-down house he had walked out of, "See you in other lives Mr. Samsa…" And then he was gone, off to become an insect - cold and unfeeling in every way. His metamorphosis was in vain.

(A/N: Sometimes I think that if I wasn't certifiably insane, that I might like to be a writer. Then I remember that most writers ARE insane (*cough*LewissCarrolandEdgarAllenPoe*cough*) so I smile and continue to bury these little ideas deep inside the hard-drive of my computer. Three homages to a famous story referenced in JtHM in here. Easy to spot really. Don't have much energy to write snappy R&R threat so…undergo a metamorphosis and actually R&R? Ah…it seems as though I have lied. My deepest apologies. 'Sandria out! Ta~)