'But Jesse,' I struggled to operate my voice, 'Why did you get like, all pissed when Paul kissed me, if you hate me so much?' I asked him wildly. He had been coiling a strand of my dark brown hair around his fingers. Now he stopped dead.

He opened his mouth to answer, but his words seemed to be frozen, and nothing came out. He stared at me strangely.

I smiled in spite of everything. 'Answer me, Jesse,' I said softly.

Okay, that was when, with a roar of rage, he THREW my to the side! 'Ah!' I cried, as I skidded across the glass-like ground. I looked up, and Jesse stood over me, glowering. I could feel his evil darkness radiating from him.

'I don't have to answer to you,' he said dangerously. What the hell did he just say?! What did that mean? That he DID have feelings for me, and wouldn't say? Curious . . .

'You're wrong,' he said in response to my suspicious thoughts. I looked at him with what must have been utmost fear, and his look softened slightly.

Only slightly.

'Enough of this shit,' he said, hauling me up by my arm. His fingers wrapped around my arm like cold, bony snakes. 'We have wasted enough time, listening to me explaining,' he hissed at me. His eyes had lost the warmth and mystery they had once held.

I'd lost my Jesse.

In all my most private fantasies, I'd always dreamed of the moment where Jesse and I could be together, but you know, Jesse wasn't supposed to kill me, and I was supposed to, like, love him? Yeah, that thudding, wildly beating of my heart whever I so much as looked at Jesse/ It sure as hell wasn't there any more. Nothing. Zero. Zilch!

'Now, I don't have time for your bravery act, hilarious as it is, so please, for the love of God, come quietly,' he said.

'Like hell!' I shouted, kneeing him in the . . . uh, you know where.

He doubled over, and while he was doing so, I closed my eyes hurriedly, and was thinking all, "I'm back in my room. Visualize . . . visualize, Suze, or God help you . . ."

And I was back in my bedroom . . .

~*~

Now, where was my body? WHOA! I'm a ghost! Have I been exorcised? Oh, God, I-

'Ah, God, Paul!' I yelled in fright, as he grabbed my arm.

'Suze?! What's happened to you?!' he asked wildly.

'I don't know,' I groaned. He was looking rapidly from my spectral self to my unconscious body. Jesse, of course, had no unconscious body, as he was but a ghost.

'Suze, are you just unconscious, or are you dead?' he asked.

'I don't KNOW, Paul!' I shouted in frustration, yanking my arm away from his hands. I was very annoyed with all the touchy-feeliness from the guys by now. That was when I noticed something WAY wrong.

Paul was crying.

HAS THE WORLD BEEN COPLETELY SCREWED UP?!

'Paul, for God's sake, I'm all right!' I said. I mean, sure, I was a ghost, but I'd been one before. I just had to get back into my body, and I would be as right as daisies.

I lay down in my own body.

'See Paul?' I said, standing up, showing him that I could function all areas of my body, 'Fine, now, stop crying. You're freaking me-'

OGH!

~*~

"Yeuch."

That's the sound that a knife makes when it's being withdrawn from human flesh.

'Miss me, Susannah?' asked that sadly familiar voice.

I opened my mouth in a silent, woebegone, agonized scream, clutching my chest. It did no good. Blood seeped from below my pressurizing fingers like water from a leaky tap. The blurry world before my eyes shook dangerously. My chest had seized up against the excruciating throbbing in my chest, and I couldn't breath. I staggered and fell back into Jesse's awaiting arms, my face looking lost and terribly pained.

My life was slipping away.

'I thought I told you to come quietly, Susannah,' Jesse said, looking wistful. 'I didn't want to have to do this. See? You've gotten blood on my shirt,' he said, fingering my hair. I could barely speak. This wasn't happening! Jesse's dark, moonlit face flickered in and out of my vision several times.

He stroked an icy, callused thumb down the side of my face, almost lovingly.

I coughed up a dark red liquid and realized that it was also my own blood. Jesse pushed my face against his chest, rubbing my hair affectionately. He was waiting for me to die!

'W-W-(Cough!) Why Jesse?' I sobbed, choking on the blood that was clogging up my throat, so I sounded very phlegmy.

He rolled his eyes, or at least, I think he did. It was getting harder to see what he was doing, as my eyesight was steadily dimming.

Why was he doing this? I loved him! Why?!

'God, Susannah, after I explained it to you up there, I really didn't feel like repeating myself,' he said, kissing me gently on the forehead. I shivered in shock and pain, like I have been known to do when in a trauma. I clung to his hand tightly. . .

'I have to wait for you to die,' he said sorrowfully, grasping his knife in the other hand.

No, not his knife.

The Ghost Hunter's Knife.

'JESSE!' I spluttered, 'You used that! You used that!' I would have been proud at how clear my words were, if it hadn't have been so desperate.

Jesse frowned. 'Used a knife? Why, of co . . .' He trailed off, looking at his knife that was gleaming with silvery red blood, catching dazzlingly in the moonlight. He realized his mistake. My mouth rounded to a tiny O. I was a goner. I remembered what Paul had said about the knife, that it killed instantly, and erased the victim's existence completely from memory. But why wasn't I dead yet?

'You ass hole!' roared Paul, swinging a violent punch at Jesse's face. It collided with a sickening crunch.

Jesse crashed to the floor. Oh, and on top of me, adding to the pain in my chest where the blood was still surging out. Jesse pushed himself back up with muscular arms, his face frighteningly close to mine. It looked a little bruised from Paul's strike. His eyes sunk into mine sharply.

'I'll kill you!' roared Paul, seizing Jesse by the shoulders turning him over, and punching him again. I coughed up more blood, as a two-man battle raged beside me. Paul was really laying into Jesse, who wasn't taking any of this quietly either, but retaliating with brute force also. Both of them looked as likely for death as the other.

Jesse, of course, having an advantage in this area, seeing that he was, you know, dead.

And there I was, my life flooding away.

The pain was too horrible to imagine. Too horrible to endure.

Absolutely unlike my usual tenacious nature, I gave up.

What was there to hold onto, seriously?

'See ya,' was all I said . . .