“Been black and blue before
There’s no need to explain
I am not the jaded kind
Playback’s such a waste
You’re invisible
Invisible to me
My wish is coming true
Erase the memory of your face”
—“Candles” by Hey Monday

“Damn.” A nearly unintelligible whisper pierced the silence that had hovered over the room for some time.

What the f*** just happened?

The boy buried his head in his hands, his slender fingers pulling golden strands as they frantically combed through his hair.

He stopped himself and became still. Snap the f*** out of it. It was what he wanted, hadn’t he?

He almost smiled at the girl whose body lay on the dining room table. He almost grinned at the pool of blood that had gathered on the linen tablecloth. Her lifeblood.

Yet, at the same time, a pang of sadness singed through his heart.

“My love…my love…I have forsaken thee,” he said weakly. “I have taken from you what is rightfully yours. I shall never forgive myself.”

He soon stood up and erupted into laughter. “I will never forgive myself! Your life was never yours!”

He pulled out a velour chair and climbed atop the seat, fist pumping the stuffy air. “You have ceased to exist, and I have begun to live!”

The boy rejoiced in this manner, whooping and hollering aloud his joy. The pain she had inflicted upon him every time she unknowingly held him like a sick puppy…all gone. The hatred he felt toward himself whenever her spitefulness pierced his soul…disappeared. The lies he told himself when she messed with his head and caused him self-doubt…no longer registered. He felt free for the first time in his life.

Sickeningly free. His eyes once again fell on the lifeless corpse on the table. She was as beautiful as she had been while alive.

Her milky skin glistened in the dark.

I’d caressed that lovely face. I’d held her and told her everything would be okay, even when she was at her lowest. When she held those paradoxical pills.

Her creamy hazelnut eyes, somehow still open, stared blankly into the adjacent wall.

I’d been there when tears had streamed from those eyes. I’d watched those eyes as they smiled, laughed, filled with unrelenting hostility.

The ends of her long ebony hair lay peacefully over her stomach, its numerous waves casting glints of light to the world.

I’d held those lustrous locks as their owner had lay beside me, at rest. The world was perfect in all its simplicity.

“This world is too complicated!” With that, the semiautomatic nine was tossed across the table. A defenseless crystal centerpiece was eliminated, and shards of glass impaled the fruit it held. The fruit it would never hold again.

He grabbed the gun and stormed off toward the hallway, his hands fumbling against the walls for the light switch. Instead, he found he had removed countless photographs from the walls. He knew the story behind every single one.

We were happy, and then we weren’t.

His hand grasped air as it fell through an open doorway. Pivoting into the bathroom, he flipped the switch. Once his eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness, they looked at the manic phantom in the mirror. His blonde hair and tired face were matted with sweat. His clothes were tattered beyond repair. The skin all over his body, from head to toe, shone blemishes of a viscous red.

Who am I? What monster have I become?

Thoughts soared through his only-so-capable mind until everything became an impossible mess.

He pulled the trigger.