Betrayed Us.

The night felt dead, the silence suffocating with a sky starved of the moonlight's kiss, leaving the world in obsidian grey. Darkness draped over us like death's shroud and time seemed to have slowed to a crawl. There I stood in the dead of night, the scent of blood an unpleasant pleasure. I stood with a smile drawn across my face, a stark contrast to my clothes ensanguined.

A laugh erupted from my chest, breaking the grave like stillness of an eerie night. A wicked laugh akin to the devil, a sound so mephistophelean that it made the night tremble. But disbelief gnawed at my sanity as I struggled to comprehend the scene unfolding before me: my own friend holding a gun to my temple.

His tear-filled eyes trembled, fingers wrapped around the trigger like a desperate prayer. He felt sick as I peered into his eyes, dissecting the emotions that weighed on his heart. I could feel the trepidation, I could sense his fears. For once upon a time, when guns were a distant spectre, a time void of wars and armies, when nihilism was a tale found in the pages of imagination, our minds were at synch and there were only two of us, dreaming of a future we would create.

And now as he stood before me, his eyes like a desolate mirror reflected mine perfectly. There and then I had my epiphany, I was the one who betrayed us. I could barely recognize myself in the limelight of his eyes, I had become a creature devoid of a soul, darkness itself veiled in my image, I had become the very thing I swore to protect us from. How many had died in my course? how many more would die if I persist? Perhaps in my mania I would veer my world to chaos.

With a sad smile, I placed a finger before my forehead, "do it." I whispered, "release me from my misery." And I shut my eyes close, the tears streaming down my face. For I knew I wasn't going alone. I've seen his smile, his laugh, his tears, his frown but that one emotion, I had never seen before. Yet I knew exactly what it was. A black despondency,

'Pow,' A report of gunshot through the still night. The last thing I heard before darkness crept into the edges of my vision. In the end, I was the one who betrayed us.