7:10 P.M

When Shane woke up, the sun had set. The nothingness of true darkness had fallen upon him as the rain clouds from earlier masked the stars above. He felt the weight of Mars' body on him first. Not the pain, but a fainting feeling worse than death, like he was in a never ending cycle of falling. Had what had happened just been a dream? Mars? The forest? His suicide? No, it had all been real, but why was he awake? Still breathing?

As he came too, the falling sensation ceased, and the crunching of unkempt grass rubbing against his soaked jacket became more prevalent. Then the searing heat oozed from his neck. The fright came all at once, he felt the dreadful gnawing of sharp fangs going into his jugular. Confused but able to put two and two together, he pushed Mars off him before kicking away and putting a few inches between them. His fingers went to his neck, but failed to stop the bleeding.

Mars tried to crawl towards him, but Shane flailed in horror, flinging his free arm and legs, screaming for the monster to not come any closer.

"So, your thing that killed our animals, took Linus…" Shane uttered weakly. ?It was becoming harder to cover the wound on his neck. The clouds moved just right and the moon, and lit up Mars' feral form. Those eyes were no longer the gray Shane had come to love, but the same tint of the gore running down his chin and shirt - the same gore that he had been messily sucking out of his lover's circulatory system. Inhuman sounds escape from Mars' throat as he inched closer towards Shane. Those fangs that dripped red reminded Shane of the snakes that would try to get into the coops to eat the chicks. Was this the horror they experienced before being devoured? His name felt foreign coming from the mouth of the creature.

"Shane, I need you to calm down. It's okay," Mars' voice said, coming from the beast while it stretched out its long clawed hand. "It's going to be okay."

He wasn't sure if it was his own fright keeping him on the ground or the major blood loss that made his limbs not work properly, but Shane couldn't stand up to save his soul. All he could do was scream and try to kick away the predator hunting him down. A spell of vertigo hit along with uncoordinated weak movements. He was done for. He could no longer fight back in a way that meant anything. As the monster slowly crawled forward, Shane began to sob, knowing he was watching his own gruesome death approach.

He expected the thing to immediately latch back onto his throat and continue to suck him dry of all the blood left in his system, but that didn't happen. Familiar arms wrapped themselves around Shane and on the unpunctured side of his neck he felt Mars nuzzle against him.

"It's still me, please just stop."

"I thought you loved me," he whimpered over and over again through tears.

"I do love you. That's why I'm doing this…it's not going to be over quick, but I promise, I'm not going to leave you," Mars said, continuing to repeat "I love you" before being able to re-clasp himself on Shane, who laid there, too dizzy and dying to fight back.

It felt as if his fluids were being replaced with oil and then set ablaze. Shane knew he was reaching the end of how much Mars could take from him, and how much longer he would be on this planet. That's when the chill, the fever without a fire began to make his body shake in a crude attempt to try to warm his system up.

Shane couldn't hear the slowing of his pulse, the beating and thumping of his heart like a trapped fly between the teeth of a carnivorous plant. He would stop breathing soon. Mars pulled up, unlatching his fangs from the vein, wiping the blood off his mouth that had escaped from his victim's persistent struggling. That skin that he loved to touch, once full of so much color, was now pale and yellowing. He had had his fill. He couldn't drain his victim any further, in a state of euphoria Mars caressed up and down the opposite side of where he fed.

Those eyes….

There's nothing behind them…

Like an animal…

"You look so beautiful. And you taste so good. I'd feed on you forever if I could," Mars uttered, cold and calculated before placing a kiss against a tear stained cheek. "I'm sorry it had to be this way, I love you."

There was a sharp cracking of joints from Mars' jaw, followed by a disgusting popping of bones moving as he traced his fangs, now longer and seemingly sharper than before, around the punctures he left. Shane wanted to die at that point. Why did he need to suffer anymore? He desperately wished this horror show would end, but peace of the mind was never meant for him. When Mars reentered his bloodstream, he had prepared himself for that draining, sucking dread to maybe, just maybe let him finally find his end.

But that's not what happened.

He felt burning like nothing he had ever experienced before, even when he felt like his veins were gasoline soaked and someone had lit a match. That felt like a winter breeze, this time, his body was brimstone, charing his imprisoned soul in this hellscape of a body. Another pang of energy hit, and again he failed to topple Mars, who was pinning his limbs down. Why did he even try? In those few moments Shane had left of his life, he thought about how he was just an animal fighting against what he had asked for. He would get his wish for the end, but damn, would it be violent.

8:30PM

When Mars was finished, he rolled off Shane, his hands on his guts, a grin carved like marble across his features. The earth wouldn't let Shane's mortal existence go, and he continued to lay there in agony. Whatever Mars had envenomated him with squeezed through him like cold honey, pushing the gore that was left in him up and out. In a matter of minutes, which felt like hours, his veins became bulged and varicose. His breathing was irregular, stopping for minutes at a time, only for his lungs that felt flooded to then jolt him with the need to gasp for air. He was drowning, but in what?

"This part's the worst. But it could be worse. You could be dead. I mean you're going to die but…you know what? Nevermind. I don't want to freak you out too much," Mars chuckled.

Shane managed to roll himself over, get on his hands and knees and crawl. Why was he running? Mars had just said he was going to die, even laughed about it. Again the thought that he wasn't any better than any animal graced his thoughts, along with his regrets of not being able to say goodbye to Marnie or Jas. That's why he was running, fighting. If he was going to die, especially from this thing, this disgusting fiend he called a friend, he sure as hell wasn't going out without a fight.

He made it to a tree and slowly pulled himself up, the vertigo coming back to haunt him. Drips of sweat were rolling down his forehead, not surprising as he felt like he was burning to death from the inside out. His guts twisted and twirled, and he braced himself to vomit. Shane assumed it would just be bile, but he was wrong. Deep red like a fresh cut flowed from out of his guts out of his nose and mouth. He began shaking all over as he again felt the realization of death. He began to sob, saying all his sorrys he could to Jas and Marnie, wishing he was home, complaining about woes that didn't compare to this, wanting his aunt to scope him up in her arms and hold him like he wished his mother would've when he was a scared little boy. Weak in the knees but still able to get a few steps in before falling back to the ground, Shane didn't feel the impact of the fall. And maybe he was lucky in that sense. As he crawled forward towards the river, he told himself all he had to do was get to the water and put out this fire inside him.

"Aunt Marnie, I'm sorry…" he spoke to himself weakly. " I should've…I should've talked to you about how bad I've been feeling. I'm sorry."

The river was so close but quiet. The usual sounds of insects and frogs were gone. They knew of the predator that lurked, why didn't he?

"Jas, I'm sorry. I love you so much, you'll never understand… I just wish I could've told you…"

The moon reflected his image in the water.

"Ohh God…"

The sweat he had felt rolling down his skin from earlier was blood, as were the tears he had wept, and what emerged when he pushed down on the mottled skin on his forearms and hands. He was a mess of red. What Mars couldn't steal, Shane was expelling outright.

9:55 PM

He laid down by the coursing waterfront for the rest of his waking time, the heat from earlier slowly subsiding, and leaving Shane colder than he had ever been cold before, and empty. Maybe it was the delirium from blood loss or the desperate need for warmth, but when Mars joined him by the river bank, Shane accepted the arms that wrapped around his frigid form and muttered through tears, "I'm so cold, I'm so fucking cold."

"I know...I know," Mars answered, trying to swaddle himself around Shane who was shivering uncontrollably. "Just relax, shhh….it's going to be over soon."

"I don't want to be...be c….col...cold anymore. I want to go home."

"I'll take you home soon," Mars said, beginning to entangle his fingers in Shane's drenched hair.

"I'm so tired… I'm so tired. I don't think I can walk home."

"It's okay, I'll carry you," Mars answered him. Shane's sporadic breathing was stopping for minutes at a time but still came back in predictable, sparse and scattered gasps. "Just close your eyes, Shane. It's almost over."

"I'm scared, Mars."

"I know. It's okay to be scared," Mars said, still holding on, trying his best to comfort the dying man. As the clouds moved past the moon and all the light in the world seemed to flicker out, so did Shane, finally too cold and tired to continue fighting.

MIDNIGHT

Shane died.