• There was no way to stop, stall or skip that night; That night when the thick, frozen air tried to stop me in my tracks; That night when my skin prickled with an army of gooseflesh and my heart began beating louder than the sirens that surrounded my tremulous body; That night when the smell of blood filled my lungs like toxic fumes; That night when I killed him.

    The night began on a military camp where the holy forces resided. An army of glowing figures with white, cloud-like wings dancing on the backs of their graceful figures, stood in perfect, even lines. It somehow looked unreal, the way that the flawless bodies of dancers unnaturally forced their forms into a stiff and resolute stature, some sort of immaculate war-time parade.

    With blank, apathetic faces and cold, vacant eyes, the legions of misfit troups welcomed the night with bows and arrows and swords of impenetrable steel. Daringly, they called upon the darkness, summoning it in the most malignant fashion that angels can procure. Then, they marched.

    Lying in bed, I could not help but wrap my small, nimble arms around his dark, smooth expanse as my fingers traced every indent, scar and muscle on the body that I had memorized time and time again. Snuggling up to his warmth, I could feel it- the call of the approaching soldiers, marching to their piercing sirens. Millions of my kin approached our land, crusading with an unholy passion, thirsty for the blood of the fallen.

    With a tender kiss, I let his slumbering body bring heat to my frozen lips and slipped out of a soft sea of silk and affection, and into the icy, night air that filled our home. With the likeness of a collective, I could feel the malevolent detestation of the approaching Holy Men fill me up like venom. Bitterness and revulsion took lead of hands that were no longer mine and a skull as hollow and empty as a neverending vase remained unable to stop them.

    Gazing at the scene from another place, a nonexistent, illusion that my mind resided in, I could see my arms as they committed blasphemous actions upon his beautiful and flawed form. Stealing away his light in the most vile of ways. Removing his essence from his sublime and imperfect shell.

    Swimming through the frozen night wind like water, I drowned in my grief, choking on the stench of the dead, until an impermeable force thrust me back into my body, lavishing in a hot pool of blood and death.

    Closing my eyes, I willed myself away from the hate and destruction, I wished my pain away from the legions of the tainted and the righteous, as another pair of eyes, also my own, opened their eyes to reveal a hollow mind peering out of a marching figure; perfect and flawless, cold and vacant, beautiful and apathetic, resolute and determined. The "Holy", righteous crusader.