You meet her at a bar in Toronto, a tall blonde who orders from the tap. She sits down next to you, and you start up the conversation. Not because you are hungry, a curse swarming your veins, but because you are tired of being alone.

Eight years of running, and it is finally hitting you. Bodies piled. Pain in your chest sets in.

You're a monster, Bo.

Just when you think that voice has gone away. When you forget, when everything seems fine… Then that hunger comes sprinting back, and you know you have to satisfy it.

You hate the results of that. Your lover lying limp next to you in bed, a sight you see after you wake, void of a heart beat. They are a vessel now, and like them, you are empty.

You hope this girl doesn't find the same fate as all the others before her. You kind of… like her. The features of her face carry no flaws, perfect, yet gentle. And her laugh infects you, pulls you closer. Definitely contagious. You like how your hand feels rested on her thigh under the bar. How her thumb brushes along your knuckle.

You ask for another drink. Whiskey.

"So…" She, who you now know as Auretta, taps her nails against her glass. "What do you do, Bo?"

You stare into your own glass, at the pool of orange, as you try to conjure up some kind of answer. It has only been two weeks since you moved here after your last kill, living in some abandoned—at least it seemed that way when you found it—house. Windows boarded up, lacking furniture, paint peeled off the walls. But hey, it has running water, and that's all that matters, right?

Regardless of your living situation, you can't exactly tell her that you're technically a serial killer, that you don't know who you are, what you are. All of that scares you because you don't want to hurt anyone. You're just lost without control over anything. Everything, it seems like. What you've done, it's not on purpose.

It just happens.

Blue burns, and death follows.

"I've been traveling so much that I never get the chance to settle down. Every other week, it feels like I'm going somewhere new."

Sometimes, it is every other week. Other times, it's every month. On rare occasions, it's two months, maybe three if you're lucky. That's not how you should live, but here you are. Possibly running for the rest of your life.

You don't know how much of Canada you have left.

Auretta raises an eyebrow, a smirk tugging at her lips. "Adventurous? Before you know it, you will have explored the entire world."

You nurse your whiskey. "Not exactly. I kinda want to stay put for once."

"What's stopping you?"

Everything.

"Sometimes, when people have a bad past, it tends to follow them around," you say.

Running. Always running. You're not allowed to stop, not when it becomes unsafe for you to keep staying.

But you want to stay. One spot, just to breathe for a little bit. Where your worries no longer exist. They no longer haunt you, creep behind your back when you least expect it. If you can live like that, maybe you'll finally be at peace with yourself. Maybe you'll find home. You can be normal, as if you can't kill someone with a single kiss. Manipulate people with your touch.

Normal. Whatever that is.

She asks to take you back to her place, and despite the voice in your head yelling at you to say 'no' because you know the end result of this, you accept her invitation and walk with her.

The brisk Toronto air wisps against your face, your hands, the inch of skin exposed by your leather jacket at your wrists. You hug yourself, scanning the empty road and the sidewalk in front of you. Stores close for the night, signs flipped on doors. Silence embraces you. How long is this walk?

How long before she meets with Death?

Accompanies him for tea and difficult conversations?

Maybe today, you can resist it. Her last breath won't be when you finally pull away from her lips after the stream of blue leaves her, finding a new home in your soul. It keeps you alive.

You're not sure how you feel about others' lives being sacrificed for your own as you eat them away. This relief only lasts for so long. You wish it wasn't like that. You wish you could just live and this hunger couldn't tie you down, so much that sometimes, you feel like you're drowning. Things crumble into pieces, and you can't hide back in the comfort of the shadows.

That comfort of humanness, assuming you're anything but. You can't play pretend then, play human. Be able to kiss someone without the repercussions.

What would that be like? You try to imagine it, but your mind goes blank. Stealing life with a kiss is all you've ever known.

Since Kyle…

She leads you into her apartment building, out of the slight cold, and into the elevator. Third floor. The elevator dings with each floor it passes, until hers.

"This is it."

There are four doors, four apartments, all holding different lives. Then there's 3C, which is Auretta's. The one life you know. Breathing as she unlocks her door and gestures for you to go in first.

You step through the door frame, greeted with a home that has furniture, where the paint on the walls isn't peeling. Windows are… well, windows.

"Nice place."

"Thanks." She snakes past you after closing the door, her hand briefly connecting with the small of your back. "Would you like anything? Something to drink?"

You would like the physical contact to return, but instead with her hands on your waist or her palm caressing your cheek. Maybe traveling kisses, from your neck, to your chest, to…

No places left unexplored, left untouched. Or tasted.

God, wake up. You can't, Bo. You just can't. Not her.

No matter the hunger that sits patiently waiting in your blood. For you to catch your prey and suck them dry. But you aren't some kind of animal.

What you are, what you've done says otherwise.

You shake your head, snap out of the emotions that control you and don't stop until they're successful, get what they want. "Wine."

"Hmm." She sifts through her kitchen and picks up two bottles, turning to show you. "Red or white?"

You set your glass of red down on the coffee table, a chuckle finding Auretta's ears as you face her, bring your legs up onto the couch and curl them under you. She oozes a bright red hue around her, around her hand that tucks a stray lock behind your ear. You don't know what the hue means, but whatever it is, you can feel it. Heat against your skin. A desire pulling at your limbs, tearing at each organ in your body.

How hard you're trying to resist it all, detach yourself from all that you're feeling, hurts. A stab to the gut. The knife twists.

She continues to tell you about the rescue cats in the local pet store that she cares for. Times she plays with them and they do something weird like flop onto their sides, paws reaching for the small toy mouse at the end of the wand. She gets another laugh out of you.

This is somewhat a distraction, her words and stories that make the atmosphere more casual, less sexual. But that hue, something like an aura, ties itself to you. The hunger launches itself forward, ahead of all the possible emotions you could be feeling, now front and center. When she inches closer to you, it takes over.

Your breath gets caught in your throat as her hand settles on your shoulder, light and real. Different. Intoxicating.

"Can I kiss you, Bo?" Auretta asks.

Yes.

But you'll kill her. If it becomes more…

You bow your head, staring down at your hands fighting on your lap. What's going on with you, Bo? You've never hesitated before when opportunity presented itself—no, you couldn't hesitate. So why now? Why her?

"Bo?" She slips her fingers under your chin and lifts your head up. "It's okay if you don't—"

"No, I do. I want to." You take Auretta's hand away from your face, hold it in your own. "I really want to. I've wanted to since the bar."

She leans in, noses so close to touching. "But?"

A wave crashes into you, your hunger clouding your senses. It's been weeks, and you're starting to feel that, as she caresses your waist. If you just push a little bit, lips will connect and release will capture you. Hunger content, despite your screams to let her go.

You hum, something shifting inside you. Blue shows itself. Now, there's no going back. There's no stopping this, and you know that. "Fuck it," you mumble, and take that leap.

Your lips mark her soul, along with the rest of her.

She guides you to bed.