Tate woke up in the grass and when he opened his eyes he was sure he must be dreaming. Violet was curled up beside him, turned away from him, her long blonde hair brushing his bare arm. It felt like butterfly kisses on his cold skin. It felt like heaven.

His breath caught in his throat and he didn't dare to hope that he was actually awake. Vaguely, fuzzily, he remembered kissing her, feeling her soft breath on his face as he nuzzled her neck.

Unable to stop himself, he rolled up onto one elbow and brushed her hair away from her face. Violet's hair fell away and Tate stifled a moan of pain when he saw the purple bruises on her throat. He placed a shaking hand over them, softly, and his fingers matched them perfectly. Violet murmured in her sleep and rolled into a tighter fetal position.

It all came rushing back to him, then, and he remembered shoving her to the ground, forcing up her dress, forcing himself on her. He stifled a moan of anguish and sat up, holding his knees. His jeans were still unzipped. Tears burned behind his eyes but he couldn't take his gaze away from Violet, lying there with her arms wrapped around herself, with the bruises he'd made staining her pale skin. He'd hurt her. He'd forced himself on her because he'd been drunk and upset and he'd thought it was the only real way to be what she wanted. It was the only real way to punish himself. There was no worse feeling. There was no worse fate than knowing that he'd hurt her, violated her.

Violet turned in her sleep, rolling onto her back, and her dress rode up, exposing more bruises on her thighs, where he'd forced them open. Tate looked away, grimacing, and a sob caught in his throat.

He felt a blackness growing where his heart should be. Now, more than ever before, he understood what everyone else already seemed to know. He wasn't right. He wasn't human. Maybe he never was. His mother's womb had been cursed, after all. Everything he'd done in his life, good or bad, had been for the wrong reasons. Even when he tried to help, he'd twisted everything with violence and murder.

He heard footsteps coming down the back steps and he faded out to the basement.

He materialized almost on top of Hayden, who was smoking a cigarette and sitting on the basement steps.

She shrieked at him. "Holy shit, kid! Stop doing that!" She caught a glimpse of his face, then, and stopped mid drag on her cigarette. "I'm sorry you saw that last night. I tried to stop you."

Tate shook his head. "It doesn't matter;" he said flatly, almost emotionlessly, "it's over."

"You shouldn't give up, kid," Hayden said, almost cheerily, putting a hand on his shoulder.

Tate shrugged her hand off violently. "It's OVER!" He screamed at her.

Hayden flinched. Tate thought he saw a flash of fear in her eyes.

She's right to be afraid, he thought miserably. I'm a monster.

"I'm sorry, Tate," she said softly.

He didn't speak.

"Maybe you should get out of the house. It's Halloween today, remember?"

He hadn't remembered. He didn't care. Tomorrow he'd be right back here where he started. He guessed it might give him an opportunity to get himself as far away from Violet as possible. She would be safe from him at least for a day.

He couldn't bear to look at Hayden, to say another word to her. She'd been good to him in the past few years. She had been a friend, and he didn't deserve that. He didn't deserve even a sliver of happiness. He faded out and faded back in on the front porch. He had been so depressed, so caught up in missing Violet and worrying about her happiness. The Halloween he'd spent with Violet on the beach was the last time he'd left the house.

It had also been the last time he'd seen those kids he'd killed in cold blood in the high school library.

A warm breeze blew through the trees around the house, but Tate felt cold through to his bones.

He pushed through the gates and began walking down the street. He didn't know where he was going, just put one foot in front of the other. It might have been minutes or hours, but somehow he found himself at his destination.

Westfield High School.

The school buses were still running, so Tate supposed this Halloween fell on a week day.

He had told Violet once that high school was only a blip in the time line. That you shouldn't get stuck there.

Those kids he'd murdered...they were all stuck here.

Without thinking, Tate walked in through the front doors. A teacher, a handsome blonde woman, no one Tate had known, smiled at him as he entered the school. Her name tag read Mrs. Morris.

"You're a bit early, you know. First period doesn't start until 9am. "Where are you headed?"

"The library," Tate said, and memory crushed down on him.

On his way into the school his English teacher had tried to stop him in the hallway. She was older, blonde like Mrs. Morris. She had once scrawled a large A minus on a term paper he'd written.

"Creative!" she'd written. "A bit too much cursing for an A plus, but I like your honesty. Sympathy for the Devil is a great title for an essay about Heathcliff. I think you understand him very well."

Tate had been proud of that grade. He'd hidden it from his mother, kept it in his room underneath the bed.

That day, he could barely focus on her face, his eyes wouldn't focus, his head buzzing with bees from the cocaine.

"Where are you going?" She'd asked, a little concerned, but still smiling at him.

"The library," he'd said, and pulled a pistol from the holster at his waist. The smile had barely faded from her face when he fired a single shot into her chest.

"No!" Tate yelled, slamming his fist against the lockers.

Mrs. Morris looked at him, her eyes widening. Her smile was fading, fading just like the teacher he'd murdered. God, he couldn't remember her name. He'd killed her in cold blood in this very hallway and he couldn't even remember her name. Tate cried out in anguish.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry."

He all but ran past her, toward the library.

She called after him, but he didn't hear. His heart was pounding too hard in his ears, blood rushing to his face.

The library doors were still open, but there were no students sitting at the computers or standing around the book stacks.

Tate remembered that they had barred these double doors. He went around to the back door, just as he had on that day, and turned the handle. It was unlocked, ready for a new school day. The library looked much the same. The carpet had been changed. Probably because of all the blood. Tate's stomach churned.

He'd shot through the door. He'd come through the door and seen that he'd gotten the librarian in the chest, his first library casualty. Then he'd walked slowly around the book shelves, and seen that goth chick that hung around outside, sneaking cigarettes. Tiff or Steph or something. She wore black lipstick and fishnets and was always talking about how dark and cruel the world could be. She was cool. She'd let him bum a cigarette now and again and once they'd done a line of coke together before study hall. She'd snuck around the other side of the books but he pushed the rifle through the stacks. She shrieked, letting him know exactly where she was. She recognized him and her throat worked like she was trying to scream. He'd blown the right side of her skull off. He'd wanted it to be a clean shot but she threw a book at him as soon as she'd seen the rifle's barrel. It hit him in the shoulder and skewed his shot. She slumped to the floor but her body convulsed and shook.

Tate drew a shaking hand toward the bookcase she'd been standing at, picked a book at random. Catcher in the Rye. Tate continued to follow his the path. He breathed in through his nostrils. He could still smell the blood and the fear sweat from those long dead teenagers.

He came around the rows of bookshelves. He could barely remember shooting the kid in the leather jacket who'd played an exceptional Stanley in that year's production of A Streetcar Named Desire or the smart kid, the one up for valedictorian. He hadn't known their names, anyway. The adrenaline had been rushing, then, rushing faster and faster and he'd been breathing hard and not thinking, just letting the rifle become an extension of his arm. Kyle, the quarterback, who'd once laughed so hard at a joke Tate had told in class that he'd nearly pissed himself, came up from under the table with his hands out. Tate put a clean shot through his forehead.

Tate puts his hand on the table. It's probably not the same table that he'd flipped over, hearing Chloe cry out in fear. It's probably not, but he feels the faint line of her fear flowing through the wood nonetheless.

A faint mechanical whirring breaks through his thoughts. Tate's head turns slightly toward the sound.

"Can I help you find anything, son?"

Tate closes his eyes. Tears creep from beneath his eyelids and down into the crease of his lips. He doesn't feel it, but tastes the salt. Tate recognizes the voice.

He doesn't know why he begins speaking out loud. "Chloe was the first girl I ever kissed;" he said, "in the second grade. We didn't run in the same circles after we got older, but she was always so fucking beautiful. She was always nice to me. She always waved at me in the hall, smiled at me even when her friends would snicker. She was nice to everyone. I remember...she screamed at the other cheerleaders for taunting Addie when she came down to walk me home from school. She was crying. It just broke her heart, you know? I remember thinking that the world was just going to break her. Just break her. She'd be beautiful until she graduated, and then she'd get married to some jerk and he'd cheat on her or beat her and then she'd just be sad. She'd get jaded; lose all that sweetness."

"Who are you?" The librarian's voice was shaking.

"She wasn't just afraid, that day. She was sad. Not just for those kids that were bleeding out on the floor. For me." Tate let out a sob. "She was sad for me."

He turned to face his victim. The librarian had gray in his hair and his face was lined with years of hard times. His finger was poised above the button on his electric wheelchair. He was breathing heavily, wheezing, his eyes full of fear.

"I really thought I was taking them away," Tate said, his eyes streaming tears but his voice clear. "I really thought life was the thing that was going to hurt them, all those good kids. I thought that the world was the horror show."

Tate took a step toward the librarian and the man shrieked from his chair. "Please," the man begged. "Please, please don't-"

Tate stopped. He dropped to his knees on the new carpet covering the bloodstains that were surely soaked into the hard wood beneath. He was level with the man he'd crippled, looking into his terrified eyes. "It was me. It was me all along. I'm the horror show."

Then Tate lowered his head and began to cry. He faded out from the school library, leaving the librarian sobbing with fear, alone, sitting in his wheelchair just feet from where he had lain bleeding some twenty years ago.