I was slumped against the headboard, the sheets covered in my blood for quite a while. I was pretty sure there was some wild something happening on the bed beside me, but I had neither the physical nor emotional energy to even turn my head and look.

 

All I could see was a brooding Kara sitting against the wall across from me. She was staring down at the floor, and very much mirrored my own state. She looked… tired.

 

I pushed through the daydream fog that was settling over me. As I had been regaining my senses, I had felt Master’s control on me. Regardless of my opinion of Kara’s… brutality, it sure did clear my head. I wanted to keep control. The dazed girl he’d made me into wasn’t who I was or who I wanted to be. He used what he saw in me and pushed and prodded until I reflected his wishes and his fantasies. He wanted some sex trip, and who knows what he’d want tomorrow.

 

I scooted myself back so that I could sit up a little better against the headboard. As soon as I moved, Kara’s eyes shot up and locked with mine. They were cold, and I had no clue what lay behind them. I wasn’t too scared though, as she slowly averted her eyes back down to the spot she’d been staring at.

 

I could actually hear what was happening now, and it was so over the top. Loud moans and the sounds of bodies smashing together. It sounded like bad porn. The kind that’s so bad it just makes you feel sorry for everyone involved. I made one small look over at the scene and instantly regretted it because it looked as bad as it sounded.

 

I was done with him. Done with what he’d made my friends do. Done with what he made do. Done with everything involving Master. The fog was clear and I was getting angry.

 

I looked around the room and I saw it. My ticket out of this mess. It was laying underneath the TV in a small pool of blood it had spilt.

 

I was completely naked, which should have at any other moment left me feeling defenseless. But it was a reminder. A reminder of what he’d done without my consent.

 

I slid off the side of the bed and walked over to the TV. Kara was sitting beside the TV cabinet and looked up at me. I looked down at her… and dared her to stop me. She looked away.

 

I turned to the pile of flesh and tried to discern which was the one I wanted. It didn’t surprise me that he was on top. I walked over to the bed, standing in that space between beds. Kara stood up and followed behind me.

 

I stood next to the pile of flesh and for a split second saw the faces of my two friends. But they were two former friends that he’d killed…

 

So I was going to kill him.

 

I held the blade Master had used to cut himself up and then drove it down into his back where his heart would be.

 

He shouted and rolled onto his side so that he faced me. He reached an arm out to hurt me, but Kara caught it and with her free hand slashed across his throat.

 

The others on the bed looked up at me with anger. The one that had been Martin tried to stop the bleeding from his throat, while the other two leaped at me and pushed me onto the other bed. I landed on my back with the wind knocked out of me while the two of them pinned me down.

 

But just as suddenly as they had grabbed me, they were shrieking. I probably was too. The small ring that had remained on my toe was burning more than it ever had… as a migraine shot through my head. I shrunk back into my own experience, hiding in pain inside the recesses of my mind.

 

I think I heard the shrieking die off one by one until I was the only one left screaming. Then… finally, the pain in my head died down.

 

I felt arms pull me into a sitting position and wrap a sheet around my shoulders. I hadn’t realized that my vision had tunneled until it began to return to normal. My eyes settled on what was in front of me: carnage.

 

There were just bodies… four of them. Martin was face down on the bed. Grace was slumped with her face buried on the side of the bed. The other guy, who’s name I’d never even learned, was lying on his back with water in his dead eyes. All three of them had blood dripping from their ears.

 

And then there was Master…

 

He would have been on his back, but the knife sticking out of it put him at a weird angle. His limbs were sprawled out and his expression contorted in pain. He was covered in blood.

 

There was so much blood in the room that I could feel the moisture. I felt a dripping on my leg and saw a slow trickle of red that came from my chin. I reached a shaking hand up to my ear and when I pulled it away it was red.

 

He’d killed all of them, but he’d only wanted to kill me.

 

I’d only wanted to kill him, but I’d killed all of them.

 

I sat with Kara for a long time. She’d pushed the bodies off the bed and up against the furthest wall, out of sight from where I sat. Even though it had been the longest night of my life, sitting and just doing nothing lasted longer than any of the rest. She kept an arm around me while I just shook. I was shaking for a multitude of reasons that would be difficult to nail down. How is someone supposed to feel after they indirectly caused the death of their already sort of dead friends because they stabbed someone who magically enslaved and transformed them?

 

I didn’t know how to handle it. I’m pretty sure I went through about two of the stages of grief and was settling on bargaining. Was there some way I could have my old life back? Could I even handle it if I did? Were the authorities going to get involved?

 

That last one seemed a little clear because it’d been a while since there was full-on shrieking happening with no repercussions. Maybe Master had created some sort of magical sound barrier?

 

Oh… I supposed I didn’t have to call him that anymore. I didn’t remember what he said his actual name had been, but I didn’t think I’d want to call him that either.

 

“What am I going to do?” I whispered to myself, although I was pretty sure Kara heard it.

 

Tears started rolling again and I just turned my head and cried into Kara’s arms. Her body was cold to the touch, but it was better than nothing.

 

Then a thought occurred to me.

 

“Could you… could you turn me back? Make me forget?” I asked her. “You’re one of them now, surely you can do it?”

 

“I… don’t think it works that way,” she replied coolly. “You were… one of his. Even though he’s dead, he still has a claim to you that I can’t override.”

 

“So, I’m stuck—” I was going to say more but heaving sobs overwhelmed me before I could get it out. I cried for another few minutes before I could regain the ability to speak.

 

“The worst part is,” I mumbled, “I don’t even know what I want… I don’t know the difference between what was me and what he crammed into me. The fact that… that… that I liked some of what he did to me. Was that something I wanted? Or was that something he made up for me and tricked me into believing?”

 

“Does it matter?” Kara responded after a moment.

 

“What!? Of course, it matters!” I pulled away from her and tried to look her in the eye, but she wouldn’t catch my gaze.

 

“But you still feel how you feel. And you must know that there’s no way to change yourself. Not after killing him.”

 

“I don’t even know what I feel.”

 

Kara nodded in understanding. I forgot this was new to her too, even newer perhaps. She’d had a handful of hours whereas I’d had a whole night. Not that the extra hours made a difference.

 

“He’s dead now. He can’t hold anything else over you.” I got the feeling Kara was saying that more to herself than to me.

 

“You hunted him and now you became of them… I—I can’t even imagine.”

 

We were both silent.

 

“I understand it now. I still blame him for every little thing he did and still think he deserved to die for it… but I understand. All this raw feeling. I can see what almost feels like a split second of the future and I can smell the blood of someone a block away. How could this power not go to someone’s head?” Kara’s eyes were narrowed. She was angry but wrestling with the humanization of someone she had hunted down and helped kill.

 

I had killed. I took a knife and stabbed someone with it. My feelings about the others aside, I stabbed him. It was self-defense—it was—I…

 

“That kind of power… would it make these feelings go away?”

 

For the first time since we sat down, she met my eyes.

 

Kara was silent for a while as she read my face before finally answering, “Yes.”

 

Her eyes narrowed again as she took in my reaction.

 

“But that might not be better—”

 

I cut her off, “It’ll be better.”

 

She took a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling before returning her gaze to me.

 

“Just… be gentle,” I barely got out before closing my eyes.