17

One of the benefits of not having killed for a while is that there’s less chance of being caught. But then you have to constantly fight down that beautiful hunger. The desire that demands expression in the shedding of another’s blood or in the delivery of pain.

Oh, you can imagine the act. Spend seductive hours in speculation. Pick a position, send your limbs to sleep and your mind on a journey of tragic imaginings. Of course, if you have memories to call on, you can insert just the right detail into your mind’s weavings.

Remember that last breath. The last agonised sigh. Or the moments at the beginning of the attack, when fear first surges in their gut, before the brain can articulate what is about to happen. A recognition of danger that is linked to the pre-socialised animal. Atavistic. Certain. Bowel-loosening.

Hanging on the edge of the surviving twin’s grief worked.

Then it didn’t.

So he had to act. End him. End it. All of life before that moment was a sham. Scrubbing in the shallows. Waiting to die. Being nothing but breath and hunger. And that moment of release was all there was.

All there needed to be.