"Did I tell you about that one time I got suspended for punching a kid in the grade above me? Well, of course I didn't tell you, but—"

"Hold on, you what?" Jack almost choked on his cold herbal tea, setting it back down on the table to keep it from spilling any more. Apparently, it does wonders to help settle a cannibal's stomach. "I thought that treatment was reserved for me!"

I laughed and flicked a piece of his hair upward to create a sort of temporary, partial cowlick. "Dumbass. This was in, like, sixth grade!"

"Okay, okay, what happened?" He leaned forward on his elbows like he was some drunk regular trying to hit on the bartender. We had both sat down at my kitchen table, telling any weird life stories that came to us (though he had yet to say anything of substance) and kind of losing our minds; 3:00 AM is not the best time to try doing anything like a rational human being. I once heard someone across campus claim that they learned to juggle lit torches in their room at 3:00 in the morning, but forgot it all that same day after falling asleep for an hour. I always called bullshit on that one, since it was so convenient that they couldn't prove their hidden talent on the spot. But it was a fun one to tell.

"So, our story begins on the magical grounds of Hudson Valley Prep..."

"Not Hogwarts?"

"Quiet. It's storytime. I was being picked on by this one kid, a whole year older than me, which...oh, back then, that's like he was my dad. So he kept doing all these really fucking petty things, he'd put little secret notes in my locker and call me gay and say my deadname really loud in the hallways to bother me—I mean, back then it wasn't exactly my deadname, but I still hated it. But one day he went just a tiny bit too far, and I snapped."

"So you punched him?"

"I think I did a little more than that, if I'm being honest. I was almost beating him up, I cursed him out and hit him in the legs and socked him in the face, all that stuff. The thing is, though, I only got one good hit. Everything else was just a failed swing at him, and then all the adults who were there in that hallway broke it up. I wasn't even crying. Actually, I kind of felt great after that. Got suspended for a week, the other guy got a little talk from our guidance counselor about bullying and a slap on the wrist for fighting back against a kid the year below him." I shrugged and swirled the water around in my glass around like it was some fancy brand of wine. "I was still kinda pissed that they didn't do more, because I told them basically everything he'd done up to that point. But he didn't bother me again. I don't even think he was scared of me, it just didn't seem worth it anymore." I looked at Jack with one eyebrow arched and a finger pointed at him. "And you know what the best part is?"

"What?"

"I caught him making out with some other boy in a bathroom stall, two years later."

He burst out laughing, though I have no idea why he found it that funny. Maybe he just hadn't gotten the chance to laugh in a long time. Either way, I started laughing too.

"Yeah, how about calling me gay now, Hunter?" I yelled into the air. Jack was practically wheezing.

"Holy crap, his name was Hunter?!"

"Right? It's like it was destiny! You know, I've only known two people named that in my life, but everyone else I've talked to says the same thing about their own Hunters. It's magic, I swear to God it is." I collected myself, took several deep breaths, and rested my head in my hands.

"Okay, I told my story. Your turn."

"No, no, I really don't have anything."

"Come on, you've been saying that for the past hour, there's gotta be something! What about...uh, I don't know, any girlfriends? Anything that happened at school?"

Jack feigned scratching his face, holding up his middle finger in the process. I laughed while he narrowed his eyelids and took a sip of tea.

"I already told you, my life was unbelievably normal. Now will you stop bugging me about it?"

"You fool, bugging is my specialty! You're asking a bee not to buzz, a flower not to grow, an American not to shoot!"

He scoffed and let his head roll back over the chair's edge. "Why are you only this funny when it's to annoy the shit out of me?"

"Aw, you think I'm funny?"

"I should've rephrased that," he muttered, fingers drumming on the table as he seemed to think. My gaze started wandering towards his skin, gray and chipping off like stone, the blood that still lined his sweater sleeves, his empty eye sockets...

I quickly sobered up from our late-night hijinks, and my voice dropped to a murmur for no reason I could place.

"Jack, how did you die?"

His head snapped up again and he fixed me with a look. I can't exactly explain what his look meant with words, but one of the things I knew he was trying to communicate was, are you serious? I hastily elaborated.

"I mean, according to you, that's the only interesting thing about your life, right? How you died."

He stayed silent for a moment, as if deciding whether this topic was worth it.

"...I thought you knew what happened. Didn't you look me up?"

"Yeah, I got your 'name,' if you could even call it that. I wasn't going to look that far into it, I was more concerned with staying alive for a couple more days."

He groaned. "Of course. I'm gonna have to explain it."

I furrowed my eyebrows. "Hey, you don't have to. I was just—"

"No, it's fine. I'd rather you know, anyway." His eyelids started twitching, as if just thinking about this was enough to make him sick. "That goddamned girl, those people...I can't even say they tricked me, that's...stupid enough to go near them, thought giving her the benefit of the doubt couldn't hurt, and then..."

He seemed to be organizing his thoughts out loud, which threw me for a loop. The mood of this conversation changed so quickly, I found myself wondering how long he'd been waiting to tell this story. But why would he wait for that, anyway? This must have been traumatic for him, and he's just going to spill everything at the drop of a hat?

Steepling his fingers and staring straight at me (or maybe he was looking sideways; it's pretty difficult to tell with him), I could see all the creases and stress lines in his face doubling by the second. I almost regretted asking in the first place, but answers are answers.

"...it was all because I'd known Jenny Smith. Let's start there. Nice girl. Weird, but nice. She always said hi, always asked me how my day was going, always tried dragging me out of my room when I'd been cooped up there for too long. I thought it was because maybe she saw me as a friend. Maybe she cared about me, even if I barely knew her past the name."

"Let me guess: she didn't."

"It's a lot more complicated than that, but yeah." He closed his eyes and took in a shaky breath. Getting past that part seemed to take a lot out of him, for just a couple of sentences. "My roommate was suspicious of her. Not because she really did anything, she just seemed way too interested in...you know." At my confused and mildly disgusted expression, he raised an eyebrow. "Cults. She read a lot about cults, don't look at me like that."

"Ah. Okay."

"So, the idiot I was, I brushed it all off. Harmless, right? Just some random girl who looks into dark, creepy things. No big deal. I still don't know if she had her eye on me from the beginning, or if it'd just been pure bad luck, but I do know that I never should have gone anywhere near the forest that night. That night or ever. I can still..." He swallowed, trailed off and began twisting the skin on his arm, as if trying to give himself a burn.

"I can still hear all the chanting sometimes. It hasn't gotten better, not at all, not since Ch—uh, since the boss has found me. He's a twister, that's kind of what I like to call him. Pulls people in when they hit rock bottom, twists their mind around until it's like putty...I'm lucky he didn't have anything to threaten me, or bribe me with. Some people think they've lost it all, but..." he gazed at one of his hands, tracing a finger over the claws. "I really did. The only thing I could've rid myself of at that point was the mask. And trust me, I would have. The girl, Jenny, she worshipped that demon along with God-knows-how-many people. When I tried to get her to leave, she knocked me out, sacrificed me, got rid of..."

He nearly doubled over, unable to say the next words, at least not in the same breath. I didn't need him to. I thought maybe I should pat him on the back, get him another serving of tea or something—coffee. I still haven't had any coffee today—but I just sat there, not knowing what the right move would be. Eventually, he continued.

"...yeah. So, I-I killed them. All of them. Everybody who was there, at least, I know some of the smarter ones stayed home that night. But I took Jenny's mask, I was almost going to break it in half, but then I realized that I wasn't even really human anymore." He let out an ironic little laugh. "I'd just murdered a bunch of fucking college students, in the middle of the forest, during a bonfire that everyone from a mile around could see! I had to hide myself, so...I put it on."

He didn't explain further than that, though the way he furrowed his eyebrows said something like, of course, that was pointless. Everybody knows who I am now. And how the hell was I supposed to respond to that? Sorry, Jack, I never realized you had such a tragic backstory? Let's hug again and agree to never talk about this as long as we live?!

"...that sucks," I said slowly, cringing on the inside from how much of an understatement that was. Weirdly enough, he didn't seem too bothered by it. I even thought I could see a tiny smile flicker on his face before he narrowed his eyelids some more, looking away.

"Anyway—"

"Are you sure you want to keep going?" I leaned forward, trying to catch his...well, not-eye. "It kinda seems like you're just reliving it at this point. You don't have to tell me the full story."

"But you deserve it. I was a total dick to you when we first met, and all that stuff with your aunt happened, and...I don't know. Maybe if you were some other person...ha, maybe if you'd been, like, 1% meaner to me I would've stopped a while ago."

"But what more is there to say?" I was really starting to regret asking him about this; before, when we were just messing around and laughing and trying to forget our rocky history, it was like we were equals. Friends, even. I didn't feel like I needed to rush him out or force him to stay—hell, I was enjoying his company. Now I was trapped, and he wanted to tell the whole truth about his death and Jenny or whatever her name was because apparently, I deserved to know. But I didn't buy that. Even if it was true, I didn't want him to continue. For both of our sakes.

"What more is there to say...?" he repeated, his head sinking until it landed in folded arms. "Well, the demons found me. Told me I belonged to them, that I was only alive because of them, yadda yadda, I'm pretty sure most of it was bullshit. But I've stayed with them for this long, so..."

He sighed and tapped his nails on the table, trying to find out where that sentence was supposed to lead. Thinking about it long enough seemed to screw him up pretty badly; the part of his hair that swept up, in its own charming little way, practically wilted. His eyelids stretched so wide I thought they might split down the middle.

"God, what's my life come to? Yeah, I'm not really sure what would happen if I just left, but I've been letting those assholes walk all over me for years! Just because I used to be human, they—they think they own me! I was in college, my life was nothing! I-it was just beginning, and then all that happened, and..."

He tied up his unfinished sentence with a shake of the head and buried his face in his arms like a sulky teenage boy. I hesitated to interrupt his angst stew, almost reaching out to pat him on the shoulder but ultimately deciding against it.

"You okay there, buddy?"

He lifted his head and scrunched up his nose in thought. "I—ugh. Sorry, I'm just...going through it right now, I guess." Running a hand through his hair, he sighed and muttered to himself, "Why couldn't have I just thought about all this alone?"

I don't know, maybe because I asked you to spill your whole tragic past five minutes ago?

I bit the inside of my cheek. "It's okay," I said for the second time that night. It didn't seem to surprise him any less. As silence fell over the kitchen, I looked down at my water and tried to fight back a pitying smile.

"What you said back in January, about not wanting to live without me...you didn't mean that, did you?"

Jack frowned, sitting up straight again. "What? Of course I meant it. I..." A sheepish look crossed his face as he rubbed a heavily scratched spot on his forehead, eyelids shutting closed. "Jesus, that sounded really stupid, didn't it."

"No. Not really. But I don't think you were talking about me."

His sheepish look turned to one of abject confusion. I tried elaborating without being too on-the-nose about it, though that was getting harder by the second. "Jack, how long has it been since you just talked to someone?"

"By 'someone,' I'm assuming you mean a human." He sighed, blowing a tiny piece of hair up and out of his face. "Haven't been doing a lot of that lately."

I nodded, letting my very next thought slip out without so much as a blink.

"You've really been alone, haven't you?"

He seemed to have a difficult time in deciphering whether I was being serious or taunting him. I raised an eyebrow and took my hands off the table, as if communicating to a frightened animal, I'm not going to hurt you. After an oddly strained moment, he drummed his fingers on his arms, gulped, and turned his head to nod.

"...yeah. Alone, isolated, independent, whatever you want to call it. That's what I've been."

"So I'm the first person you've talked to in...however many years?"

"Five." He narrowed his eyelids, reluctant to actually answer my question. I was surprised he didn't flat-out say that no, of course I wasn't, or tell me to get over myself. He simply pulled a sweater sleeve over his hand and rested his head there, still avoiding eye contact.

He wasn't saying he didn't want to live without me.

He didn't want to lose the one potential friend he's had all this time.

I took a breath, and his unspoken advice; I got over myself.

"Hey. I know I don't seem like it sometimes, but...I care about you. Really."

Though his mouth was covered, I saw his eyes squint over the hoodie's fabric, and I could tell he was smiling despite himself. "I knew it," he muttered.

"Okay, on second thought, you're the worst person I've ever met in my life."