I really needed to stop waking up to people waiting for me. True story.

This time it was Beatrice, but we were in her apartment, so it was almost expected. At least this time there didn't seem to be any knives involved and I wasn't bleeding.

"Holy shit, you scared me," I grumbled, trying to get my heart rate back to something resembling normal. "I was having the most fucked up dream. You were flying and wanted to kill me and we ended up have some freaky sex all over the apartment—"

I looked up at Beatrice perched on the end of the bed like some kind of psychotic gargoyle, just patiently watching me; reality firmly asserted itself. None of it had been a dream.

Beatrice had found some clothes at some point when I was still unconscious. She wore black on black and looked like she was heading into battle. Only her feet were still bare.

"Oh good," she said, "you're awake. I thought I was going to have to do something drastic to wake you up."

"Were you really flying?" I asked, that being suddenly the most pressing question I had to ask.

"No," Beatrice said with a wry smile. "That was more like floating. Actual flying is impossible."

My mind went through a series of impossible gymnastics and still failed to make sense in anything that Beatrice had just said. Flying is complicated, but we already covered that, so let's just move on, shall we?

"What is it about you, Bob?" Beatrice asked, looking at me intently, almost greedily. "I really can't figure out what it is. Maybe it's that you make me actually laugh."

I pulled myself up, looking for my clothes in the wrecked bedroom, before concluding that after the afternoon's encounter, there was very little hope that my clothes were still intact. Unfortunately, clothing lacks the ability to heal. My shoulders barely even ached from where they had been impaled, scars still thick and puckered, but definitely on the mend. My healing ability was working faster ever since my last death; in an hour you wouldn't even know that I had ever been stabbed.

"Don't worry about your clothes," Beatrice said. "I told the concierge to bring up something in your size. Preferably something not covered in blood."

"I hope you made sure to specify no holes," I half-joked, flexing my shoulder, wincing at the memory of the trauma.

"See? There you go again, making me laugh," Beatrice smiled, "I'm glad I didn't kill you."

"I'm glad you didn't kill me either," I responded. Then: "Why did you want to kill me again? Exactly?"

Beatrice shrugged and easily stepped off the bed and walked to the window where she pulled back the huge floor to ceiling curtain. She looked out at the city lights for a long moment and I wondered if she would respond.

"You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time Bobbikins. I needed to hurt someone and you were there and I'm sorry it happened." She looked like she wanted to cry, but then her face hardened. "It's probably going to happen again. Maybe worse next time, and you might not even survive it. I'd be really sorry about it too, I promise you that. I may even give your severed head a kiss, but I doubt it. In fifty years I won't even remember your name or that I murdered you just so I could feel alive again."

There is a point when all of your instincts are screaming at you to run, run and don't look back, just fucking run goddamnit. When you reach that point, make sure to listen to the other set of instincts that say very quietly: if you make a move she's going to skin you alive.

"Do you know how fucked up your memories get when you've lived for a really long time and in as many places as I have?" Her face seemed to twitch, starting from her mouth and working it's way up to her eye as if she was trying to force a memory away by scrunching her face up. "You're lucky, you know. You've only lived in two places so it's easier for you. You can still remember everyone you've ever been close to. You know, I can't even remember if Beatrice is actually my original name or one of the dozens I've adopted over the years. I like to think that it is... but do you know how fucked up you'd have to be to forget your own name?"

"How old are you anyway?" I asked hesitantly, then: "Are you okay?"

"No Bob. I've lost my fucking mind. Again."

I didn't know whether to agree with her or not. I decided to stay quiet.

"It's been happening more, and more, recently. When I come back from being killed, there's a period of... adjustment. All of my memories come back, all at once. It can get overwhelming sometimes. It breaks my fucking mind because there's so much of it, so many people and faces and places and so much fucking death." She looked at me intensely, "I've killed so many, but I've lost so many others. People I grew fond of, lovers, friends, they all faded away. I buried my family a long time ago and I can't even remember them now, but the loss, the sorrow, I still carry deep in my heart, even after all of these years. You're going to feel it too you know. You're going to watch everyone you care about get old and die. One day it will be funeral after funeral until you can't handle the grief anymore and you just become numb to it, but you'll go to every single funeral out of some sense of fucked up obligation, even if it means just watching from a distance out of the sun, never a part of the crowd. It's a reminder that you're not going to die anytime soon."

Beatrice turned to face me. Her face was a mixture of sorrow, pain and rage, but most of all, a barely concealed insanity that threatened to twist her features at a moment's notice.

"That's what I face, every time I die. I come back and the memories are waiting to tear me apart. After a while, you get good at staying alive, if just so you can avoid the madness of memory."

She smiled and held out a hand.

"Did you mean it when you said you loved me?"

Fuck. What the fuck? And once again, just so we're clear: fuck!

Pro-tip, when your clearly psychotic girlfriend who has just tried to murder you tells you that she remembers you declaring your love for her, don't be a dumbass. Tell her you love her and then get the hell out of there as soon as possible.

What you don't do is freeze like a deer about to be splattered across the highway by the oncoming Mack truck on the Fuck-You-Highway.

"When exactly did I say that?" I asked stupidly, this sense of doom settling on me like a shroud.

"Are you calling me a liar Bob?" Beatrice asked, her voice deadly cold, and I knew in a split second what all of those battered wives and husbands and girlfriends and boyfriends realized in the moment before they were brutally murdered by the one who loved them and had sworn to protect them. You know what it is I realized? Everything is fucked. All of it. Love protects nobody; it's the blanket that we put over our heads to hide from the reality that at some point, everything is just fucked.

"I LOVE YOU BEA!" I yelled before she could move, and it was more out of reflex than anything. "I'm saying it right here and now. I fucking love you!"

Beatrice's face softened and then she glared in suspicion.

"Do you really mean it or are you just trying not to get killed?"

"I came to you, didn't I? I was scared shitless and I still came to you."

Beatrice smiled then, her stern countenance softening immensely, and there she was emerging from the current package of crazy, the woman I had been slowly and steadily falling for. The woman I wasn't terrified of.

"I think that's the first time you've ever called me anything other than my full name," she noted fondly.

"It seemed right. You call me Bobbikins all the time."

"Only because I always know how I feel. You just took your own damn sweet time."

Beatrice moved close to me, soft and seductive. She almost seemed sane. I tried to act natural but failed massively in trying not to flinch away from her touch.

"You're scared of me Bobbikins?"

"Only when you're trying to put knives into me," I admitted. I tried on an awkward smile. "It's getting really hard to guess when that might be though, so I'm trying not to make any sudden moves."

"I liked it when you weren't scared of me," Beatrice said her face hardening, the threat in her voice.

"I like it when you weren't stabbing me."

"If you loved me, you wouldn't mind!" Beatrice screamed and before I knew what was happening, she was slapping and shoving at me, driving me away from her through the apartment.

"Get out! Just get out!" Beatrice screamed and slammed the door in my face.

I was left alone in the corridor, still shocked at what had just happened, but still alive. I looked down at myself and frowned.

Oh yeah, I was still naked.

Ding! The elevator arrived and the concierge stepped out with a couple of shopping bags of clothes. He noticed my state, even as I covered my crotch with my hands, but the man barely raised an eyebrow.

"I believe Sir will be needing these," the man offered.

#####END OF CHAPTER 11#####