“He who fights monsters should look into it that
he himself does not become a monster.
When you gaze long into the Abyss,
the Abyss also gazes into you.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche



Prologue

I screwed up. What more can I say?

Forget that she fucked up in the first place and maybe you might see where I'm coming from. Or, perhaps this is merely the world once more, reminding me of what a thoughtless asshole I am. Indeed, my life seems bent on unraveling me at the seams, stripping me and leaving me naked in the cold and biting wind. Only the situation with Lydia has done more than this, I am afraid. It’s left me standing alone in her room and I am neither naked, nor freezing.

I am holding a blood-soaked knife. And two people are dead.

I slide against the wall and sit involuntarily, my mind spinning as it tries to sort through what all just happened. I walked in on her, this is true. She looked at me and screamed; yes, yes, I remember this as well. But it’s when the other person shot up out of bed and fell to the floor that my memory became obliterated. As I struggle to replay the events that happened directly after this, my head begins to throb and my hands come to my forehead, still gripping the blade I picked up in the kitchen.

The knife. Oh God, I remember this now; I picked up a knife. What the fuck was I doing?

It falls from my hand and hits the ground with a thud. I curl up as though I am a school boy who had just gotten caught scribbling on the blackboard and suddenly it all comes rushing back to me, the dam of shock bursting under the weight of too many images crowding in all at once. Too many images. Like her getting up and screaming, “No, Peter. This isn’t what you think!” and me spitting out the words, “You selfish whore, what did you do? What did you do?” I laugh involuntarily when I remember that bastard she had been fondling not more than thirty seconds prior. He fell to the floor while tripping over his own jeans and only barely came to a stand by the time I rushed upon him.

Tears form in my eyes to compete against the hysterics bursting forth from my mouth. Neither of these actions make me feel anymore sane about what I did next. Rather, my insanity plunges deeper into the abyss as crimson splatters the black and white images in my mind.

Yes, I made him my first victim. I didn’t pause to ask his fucking name. I didn’t give him the forewarning that I knew martial arts and had been trained with a katana. I just charged forward with the kitchen knife and thrust it at him as though I was holding a shortened form of my sword. He clutched his gut and bent over; and when I kicked his head up, I beheld a sight too delicious to resist. One swipe, quick and deep, against the throat. He didn’t scream anymore after that.

Here is where my senses should have been restored, but my lover of five years, the woman I felt was my soul mate, looked up at me and her tears were not for me. They were for him. The soft, delicate lips I once loved to kiss uttered his name, which only served to enrage me further and I did her the quick mercy of making sure she could never utter that name again. The knife plunged deep into her chest. I held it there, steady; almost afraid to remove it in case her black heart would rejuvenate. It wasn’t until her knees began to buckle that I removed the instrument of death and watched her fall to my feet.

I wish that she had fallen merely to kiss my shoes and beg me for forgiveness, but there would be no begging now. No crying. I am left with two dead bodies and a lifetime of remorse. “I have to get out of here,” I whisper to myself, swiping at tears. My fingers leave red smudges across my cheeks and eyelids, resembling tribal war paint. I don’t care, though; in fact, I’m amazed when my weak knees actually support my weight and allow me to pick myself back up and stumble down the hallway to her front door. I don’t have a clue if her neighbors heard me and I couldn’t care less that I might be stepping out to greet a neighborhood lynch mob, assembled with pitchforks and torches, hunting for yours truly. In fact, I wish for it. But when I swing open the apartment door, I see nothing but an empty corridor and a still floor. So, I trudge forward until the images assail me once again.

The look in her eyes when she locked her gaze with mine, her brain not yet dead from the lack of life-giving blood pumping into her veins. “Peter, I’m sorry.” That miserable bitch. How could she say she was sorry, damn it? How could she rob me of a pure lover’s vengeance by staining my actions with her repentance?

My walk becomes a run.

The look of hate that shot from my eyes like flames of wrath. “Burn in hell,” I muttered. How could I say that? Didn’t I realize what I had just done? Even if her love for me was so easily forgotten, mine for her was still strong and now I had destroyed the only thing I had left to live for.

I run for the door to the outside and slam into it, knocking myself violently into the night air and recoiling when the cold finally does hit me. If only I were as naked as I should be.

I continue running out into the street as if trying to escape something from which there is no escape. The mob crowd might not be following me, but my conscience is gaining fast and its feet move much more swiftly than mine. I pass through the upscale apartment buildings, through a park, and run until I come to a patch of Philadelphia asphalt and dart down it without caring one iota for the traffic. One car swerves, then another, but I don’t remain out on the street for long before I turn down an alleyway and continue running from the guilt that wishes to tear me limb from limb. However, I can hear its footsteps. I can feel its breath. I can sense its presence enveloping me, but nothing prepares me for the abrupt way my sprint comes to a halt.

It’s as though my conscience has become personified and obtained corporeal form. Its fingers grab me and stop me from moving, but another set of hands, and then another, join in holding me back and I struggle against its grip while screaming out words that I only distantly hear myself saying. “I was going to marry her,” I yell. “It isn’t my fault. . . oh, God, why did she do this to me? Why did she make me kill her?” The hands continue holding me with nothing but detachedness and apathy, until my attackers stop my rant with a swipe of long fingernails against my throat.

Suddenly, I realize I’m not being held back by my conscience at all. The second clue I’m given is much, much more painful.

I feel the breath milliseconds before I feel the teeth. Blood intermingles with the sweat on my neck and oozes down my chest. I scream almost as an afterthought, but the world becomes fuzzy and my scream fades when an insatiable desire to sleep overrides my mind. A chill envelopes me and causes me to shudder. My head bobs as my attacker moves away, but the hands lift me up and keep me from falling over as I seem want to do.

I don’t hear her slide her fingernail against her skin.

I don’t see her standing there, but I can feel it when she presses her wrist against my lips and sends the first droplets of blood running into my mouth. Her voice issues the command, the first of many I will heed at the call of my new mistress.

“Drink,” she says, her words soothing as though she were a mother caressing a child. “Take it in, Peter. Because, tonight, we shall fulfill your destiny.”


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