I had never taken a life before. I'd never thought that I'd need to.
The creatures that shared my mindscape laughed in malicious glee even as I stared in rapidly growing horror at the ever expanding puddle beneath the face-down body of my best friend. I could feel them grinning behind my eyes, waiting for me to ask the question that I knew only they would have the answer to.
Shuddering, I closed my eyes and tried to push them away, but it didn't do any good. I could see them in the darkness then, as i did whenever I tried to shut them out. Disembodied heads, piranha-like, floating there and watching me with their glowing green eyes, their hideous faces split open in ever-present rictus grins revealing jagged teeth that dripped with bile.
I was past wondering if I was crazy. I had seen the truth, seen the madness behind my friend's eyes as the Other overtook him. Despairing, knowing I had no other choice, I asked them.
"What do I do now?", I asked aloud, though I knew that I didn't need to. They could hear me think. It was a small comfort, however, to pretend that they existed outside of me rather than within. Their reply was instant.
"Wait," they hissed, "He isn't done yet."
I opened my eyes to discover that they were right. The thing that had once been like a brother to me was even now struggling to lift itself from the floor, the caved in side of its face bubbling as its jaw worked. It was trying to speak. It looked at me, its one good eye rolling up to face me, and I think it tried to say my name. It didn't have enough face left to make words, so instead it just gurgled at me.
Slowly, tears stinging my eyes, I lifted the hammer again, and before it could try to say anything else I brought it down. I didn't stop swinging until all I was doing was pounding hunks of wet bone and brain matter into the floor. It shrieked as it finally died, a hideous, inhuman noise that left my ears bleeding.
I could still hear them laughing in my head.
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