Sleep used to come so easy to Patrick. Before - well, before everything, before his entire life was grabbed and shaken vigorously, he'd slept like a baby, simply crawling between the covers and falling into a deep slumber, dead to the world. But it'd been eight months since he and his friends were kidnapped and tortured, and a good night's sleep had become the stuff of myth. He can never seem to lie still, his mind insisting on replaying the darkest moments of his life over and over. And by the angels, had Patrick seen darkness.

He became interesting when they took him; I'd never paid much attention to him before, he was average. I knew the flaws, of course, the temper and the insecurity, the tendency to be both too arrogant and too shy, but they'd smoothed themselves out over the years and to be frank, the only peculiar thing about him was the mole on his forehead - a creative afterthought on my part. But when they took him, oh, how intriguing he became. They tortured him to hell and back, it was gripping, seeing his little life get torn apart. And, indeed, his body.

The hand was a shame, I'll admit. I watch him cradle the stump of his wrist, it's hurting again, twinging something horrid. He hates it, he hates looking at it, he hates waking up every morning and remembering that he can't play guitar anymore.

He'll take that, though, over another sleepless night. Even when he does, for an hour or so, fall away from his reality, he dreams of blood and fire and ghosts with yellow eyes, and when he wakes, a cold sweat covering his body, he feels a slow boil of rage in his stomach, feels himself begin to panic. He had learnt to deal with the rages, the occasional echoes of the monster they turned him into, but he hadn't had one for a while, and he'd rather hoped they'd stopped.

Feeling across the sheets in the darkness, he confirms what he already knows: Pete isn't here. Pete is at a work thing, because he'd been sensible enough to get a job, to drag pieces of his life back into place. Patrick feels his chest clench a little; he can deal with the episodes without Pete, but it's always easier with a hand to hold. So he simply breathes, slow and steady, sitting up in bed and turning the light on, focussing on the numbers of the clock, the faint hum of air conditioning, grounding himself in and closing his eyes to keep away the yellow.

Thinking of Pete helps - I'm not usually one for romance, but the relationship that blossomed between them was a rather sweet twist - and Patrick tries to remember what Pete usually says, replicating the shushing in his ear with his own breaths, running his fingers over his face and imagining Pete's lips against his own. He reminds himself who he is, one piece at a time, ignoring the throbbing in his wrist. He's not there anymore, he's here, he's Patrick and he's okay.

That fact turned out to be rather tenuous, but Patrick doesn't know that yet. He sips at his glass of water like it'll cure him of his ills, running fingers through his thinning hair and redrawing the worry lines in his forehead. I didn't make him ugly - I never make ugly people - but the world did, the lattice of scars across his body horrifying to everyone but Pete, who kisses them like he doesn't miss the unspoiled porcelain I gifted specially to Patrick. It's a shame to see my work so dreadfully ruined.

Patrick doesn't cry this time; he seemed to have got past the crying stage by this point, opting instead to stare blankly at one of his silly self-help books, as if anything but divine intervention can help him now. He's just about got the hang of reading with one hand without wanting to throw the book across the room, so he reads until his eyes feel heavy again, until he's sure the monster has gone. Then he turns out the light, a pillow hugged tight to his chest.

He's five minutes in to what promises to be a solid night's sleep when he's jolted awake by a sharp bang on his bedroom door.

Panic seizes in his chest; he scrambles for the light, keeping his eyes on the door, searching for movement. You'd think that the weeks of ordeals he'd been put through would have made him brave - I certainly hoped so - but they simply made him scared. It takes him a whole minute to pluck up the courage to climb out of bed, and every second of that is spent praying it was simply a picture falling from the wall, or a book from the shelf.

He creeps towards the door, everything about his demeanour screaming coward, the way he hunches his shoulders and keeps the stump of his wrist close to his chest. When he finally yanks the door open, there's nobody there, of course. There's not a scratch on the wood, either, and Patrick relaxes minutely.

There's no one in the hall, either. At least, not that Patrick sees. He's not put his glasses on - awful eyesight not something I willingly give anyone, but there are certain flaws that must be doled out - so he squints blindly at the shadows at the end of the hallway. He doesn't see them move.

With a sigh, he retreats back inside the room, closing the door and leaning his forehead against it. He used to be so much more than unfounded fear. But, on this occasion, the fear is not unfounded. When Patrick turns around, two grey eyes stare back.

All the breath leaves Patrick's body. There's a man in his bedroom. Tattered clothes hang from his body, stained with - with, Patrick realises, the blood slowly dripping from the gash in his neck. His own blood freezes over as terror slips down his spine.

"A-Andy?" Patrick chokes, staring at his friend, his dead friend, his neck torn open and his eyes sunken.

"Oh, so you remember my name?" Andy's voice rattles, blood bubbling from his wound with every word.

There's tears in Patrick's eyes as he scrabbles for the door handle - it moves, but the door remains firmly shut. He pulls on it for a few humiliating seconds before giving up. He can't bear to look, but he can't look away, either. "Of course," he says quietly.

Andy laughs at Patrick's futile escape attempt, then takes a lunging step forward. "Ah. I thought perhaps you'd forgotten."

"Are you real?" Patrick blurts. He'd never been good with words, but this was perhaps the worst time to exemplify that particular flaw.

"Good question," Andy muses, moving closer to Patrick by the second. "You tell me."

Patrick fails to move out of the way before Andy pounces. The man shoves him against the door, easily resisting Patrick's struggles, and slams Patrick's head back against the wood, causing Patrick's world to spin sickeningly. He tries to recoil from the grey, decaying face, but Andy only presses closer, baring yellowed teeth and breathing sour breath into Patrick's face.

"Andy, please-" Patrick begs, but he can only watch in horror as Andy sinks a hand into the wound in his throat, coats his palm in dark blood and then grabs Patrick's face, smearing it across Patrick's cheeks, making Patrick choke as he shoves his fingers into Patrick's mouth and coats Patrick's lips with his blood.

"Am I real now?" Andy smirks as Patrick coughs blood out of his mouth, gagging on the taste of copper and the sight of severed windpipes twitching in Andy's throat. The man wipes his bloody fingers on Patrick's t-shirt, scratching hard through the fabric when he feels the ridge of a scar. Patrick makes a rather pathetic noise and caves in slightly. Andy chokes a laugh, spraying more blood into Patrick's face.

He nods frantically, vomit rising in his throat. "I - I'm sorry - I didn't -"

"Let me guess, you didn't mean to?" Andy spits, a bitter smile ripping his face in two. "You didn't mean to stand and watch me die?"

"I wasn't myself, I swear, that wasn't me, I -"

"That wasn't you?" Andy mocks, his gnarled fingers twisting in Patrick's shirt, "It sure looked like you, Patrick. You're telling me that those eyes -" he brings a hand to Patrick's face and digs his thumb and forefinger into Patrick's eye sockets - "didn't see them slit my throat open?"

Patrick grapples for Andy's wrist, crying out as his fingers sink deeper. I was rather relieved when the man finally retracted his hand; I won't say I'm not rather proud of Patrick's eyes, the colours took a while to mix, and I'd rather he didn't bleed all over them. I think it's fair to say that Patrick was equally relieved, if such an emotion is possible when tormented by a corpse. I wouldn't know - the dead are not my speciality. I rear the lambs, I do not cook the mutton.

Black spots swim in Patrick's vision as he tries to refocus his gaze upon Andy's face; Andy simply leans further towards him, grinning when he sees Patrick's attempt to twist his face away, to wipe at the drying blood on his cheeks. "Guilt isn't enough, Patrick," he says quietly, "guilt doesn't take away what you did."

"They were controlling me, Andy, I didn't know what I was doing," Patrick cries, reciting Pete's words like a mantra. It wasn't my fault, it wasn't my fault. "They made me a monster, Andy!"

"They didn't have to make many changes, though, did they?" Andy says, his voice rising. "You've always been a selfish brat. You've always been a coward. All they had to do was slap yellow eyes on you and wait for you to betray your friends one by one."

Now, I'm not one to take sides, but I couldn't help but root for my own realm's lifeform. The spirits are always ones for exaggerating, and Andy was twisting facts a little. The monster they turned Patrick into was so much less than Patrick himself - a puppet, really, a dog saved for slaughter and kept tightly collared the rest of the time. The assumption that I created a coward is rather offensive - humans assign definitions like that to each other far too readily. Then again, I began to doubt my belief in Patrick when he started to cry uncontrollably.

If Andy's opinion of him could sink any lower, it certainly does now as he watches the tears work their way down Patrick's face. He wipes at his eyes with the stump of his wrist, covered over with a blue, striped sock, a pathetic attempt at sugar-coating the wound. "Weapons don't cry, Patrick," Andy coos, grabbing Patrick's wrist and digging his thumbnail into the nub of skin, pressing until the sock darkens with spots of red and Patrick cries out in pain.

"What do you want?" Patrick asks, finally taking a breath and meeting Andy's eyes.

Andy chuckles. "It'd be no fun if I told you," he says, pouting with tattered lips. "You've seen the movies - this is far from over."

"What - no, no, just tell me what you want, I'll do it, whatever it is, Andy, please, I'm sorry, I - I -"

He's cut off when Andy's hand slips around his neck and squeezes. "For once in your life, shut up," Andy snarls, watching as Patrick's face flushes red and his bloodstained mouth opens and shuts breathlessly.

"Beware the ghost, Patrick," Andy says softly, watching Patrick's eyes flash with fear, with silent begging. "Beware the ghost."

Patrick's limbs begin to feel heavy and his brain fogs. Both Andy and I watch him collapse, a piteous heap on the bedroom floor. Andy disappears, I lose interest.

-

Pete is a good person. He was erratic, as a child - and indeed as an adult - but when I built his heart, I poured nothing but love into it. And spilt a little insanity over it too, evidently.

To say that he loved Patrick is probably an understatement; as I said, I rarely take interest in romance, it usually ends in the ruining of my creations, but the way he attached himself to the at best, average man was quite touching. Pete was convinced, of course, that there was something innate about his love, that somehow he'd been created for Patrick. This is utter drivel, of course, but as drivel goes, it's not the worst thing to believe of yourself.

Perhaps there is something in it, though, because surely only innate love could last through this kind of trauma, this kind of decimation of oneself - the Patrick Pete drives home to is not the one he fell for all those years ago. This Patrick is a shell, a void, ebbing apathy and then clinging desperately. Only a good - and perhaps slightly delusional - person would put up with loving someone like that. Goodness, humans always turn out far more complicated than I intend.

Anyway, Pete doesn't shout when he finds the kitchen in the same mess it was in when he left; he doesn't chide Patrick for not preparing any lunch, or putting on any laundry, he doesn't huff and puff when he pushes open the bedroom door to find Patrick sprawled on the bed in the dark, still fast asleep at half past one in the afternoon. He simply pushes the curtains open, sighs at the mess of his boyfriend, then leaves to put the kettle on.

Patrick is rather surprised when he wakes up. The light pouring into the room makes him think, for a second, that this might be heaven, that he might have got there after all, but then he sees his bedroom, his phone on the bedside table, his clothes littering the floor. He checks his limbs; they still work, although his hand still isn't there, crushing the sliver of hope that touches him every morning. He nearly jumps out of his skin, though, when he sees a figure in the door.

"Hey, sleepy," Pete says, holding a cup of tea in each hand. Patrick feels himself relax, melting further into the sheets. "Only me."

Patrick watches Pete set the mugs down, and feels the mattress dip as Pete sits beside him, a hand reaching to stroke Patrick's hair.

"You okay?" Pete asks, and Patrick nods like he always does. Okay doesn't mean okay anymore, it's clear that neither of them are ever going to be relatively okay, it's been reduced to meaning simply non-suicidal. Patrick reaches for Pete's hand and tangles their fingers together, pushing himself onto his elbows and leaning into Pete. Pete smiles, bending to peck Patrick on the lips. That's when Patrick remembers.

All he can taste is blood; he can't feel it on his face but it's clogging his mouth, oozing over his teeth, thick and metallic and not his own. Shoving Pete away, he bolts to the bathroom, slamming the door behind him and falling to his knees, heaving over the toilet. He can hear Pete call his name but it doesn't matter because he can't get it out, no matter how much he coughs and spits, his mouth remains coated in blood. Andy's blood.

Staggering to his feet and staring into the mirror, he looks at himself. He remembers it so clearly now; the knock at the door, the gaping wound at Andy's neck, the blame. He touches his fingers to his own neck, feels the sting of bruised skin, but in the mirror, his neck is untarnished. There's no red staining his face, nor his teeth, there's no trace of anything that happened the night before. He's alive, it was a dream, a stupid nightmare.

He still feels the ache in his throat, though, where fingers were pressed into it, tastes the copper of blood on his tongue. On his t-shirt, there's a smudge of red in the shape of fingers. But humans have a remarkable ability to ignore things that are right in front of them, so Patrick simply leans over the sink until his nerves settle, then showers the cold sweat from his skin. He can't quite shake the image of Andy's corpse from his mind.

His room seems much tidier when he steps back into it; the takeaway boxes are gone from the floor, and so are the piles of his underwear. The bed's been made, and Pete's sitting on top of it with that usual look of worry on his face.

"What was that about?" Pete says, smiling his slightly-anxious smile. Patrick ducks away from Pete's gaze, digging through the drawers for some underwear and feeling anger start to boil within him when he struggles to pull them up his legs. It turns out that fingers are quite integral to the dressing process. Every day it makes him want to cry.

"Just needed a shower," Patrick shrugs, pulling a t-shirt over his head. This seems like a step forward to Pete; sometimes Patrick won't shower, will refuse to shower or put on clean clothes and Pete will have to drag him to the bathroom. Those are the bad days, though, the worst days.

Pete doesn't offer to help him with his jeans; he knows better than that. Patrick refuses to accept help with anything, he'd rather take half an hour just to wrestle with his clothing than let Pete intervene for even a second. So Pete just watches from the bed, hoping that the shower is a good omen. When Patrick's finally done, Pete pats the bed beside him and smiles. Patrick very nearly smiles back - it must be a good day.

"Can I kiss you now?" Pete says once Patrick's sat beside him. Patrick nods, thankfully, and tips his head towards Pete. He won't make the first move, he never does. Pete sometimes wonders if Patrick even really loves him, or if it's just some kind of dried up guilt from the last ten years. He lets Pete kiss him, though, even cups Pete's face to draw him closer, lighting a spark of excitement inside Pete. The kiss deepens, and this could be it, this could be one of those precious moments between them that Pete has learnt to treasure. The hand he's placed on Patrick's waist dips under the hem of his t-shirt, feeling the slightly damp skin underneath, clean and warm. He slides it round to the small of Patrick's back, and just as he's thinking something has changed, Patrick pushes him away.

"I'm sorry," Patrick mumbles, picking Pete's hand off himself. Pete tries not to show the disappointment on his face.

"No, I'm sorry," Pete sighs, stroking his knuckles along Patrick's cheekbone. He'll never, ever force Patrick into doing anything he's not comfortable with, but that doesn't mean that all the masturbation in the shower isn't getting slightly tedious.

"How was the work thing?" Patrick tries, taking Pete's hand into his lap.

"Oh, you know, team building exercises and all that shit. I've never heard the word motivation so many times in a day," he says, watching Patrick's face crease into a smile and feeling his day get a little better. "Did you sleep okay?"

It's a stupid question, really. Neither of them ever sleep okay, but it opens the door to their usual exchange of nightmares. Patrick shakes his head, and Pete smiles bitterly. "Me neither."

"It was Andy," Patrick says quietly. "He was here. Like, in this room. He was standing right there." He points to the corner by the chest-of-drawers.

"What did he do?"

"He - uh, he said stuff. He - blamed me. Like usual, but - but it was so real." Patrick sighs, running his fingers through his wet hair.

"I know, love," Pete says, even if he doesn't know at all. That's the problem with humans - they feed each other's delusions.

Pete talks for a little while about his dream - the same one as always, except this time, it was Patrick he slashed to death with the hook - and Patrick makes his usual comforting noises. It helps to talk; somehow, thinking of it in terms of nightmares makes them both forget that it all actually happened. For Pete, at least. For Patrick, the reality hits him every time he looks down and sees the stump where his hand used to be.

"Oh, also," Pete says, once he's stared at Patrick's wrist for longer than Patrick's really comfortable with, "I got you some more socks."

They're blue and patterned with small sheep, each with a slightly different expression, and Pete hopes so hard that Patrick likes them as he pulls them from the plastic bag and shows them to him. Patrick's face twitches with a smile, but his eyes don't light up, which means that Pete has failed again.

Nevertheless, Patrick lets him tug off the old striped sock - which even looks like it's got blood on it, Pete observes - and pull one of the new socks on. Patrick buries his head in Pete's shoulder for the majority of this process; he won't look at the gnarled skin at the nub of his wrist, another thing Pete's learnt. Patrick mumbles a thank you, and Pete kisses his wet hair like he doesn't want to scream at Patrick for not being the person he was a year ago.

I feel I should make it clear that Patrick is also a good person. On the bad days he is selfish and uncaring, on the worse days he is childish and demanding, but he is, at heart, a good person. That's perhaps why it was so tragic that they chose him.

-

It was two weeks later when it happened again. The incident had been lost under piles of new nightmares, the pain in Patrick's throat had faded and the blood was mistaken for a ketchup stain. He was not expecting it to happen again. I think that was their intention.

He sleeps relatively well, the night it happens again. He lays with a hand touching Pete at all times, just to remind himself he's not alone, and Pete's arm thrown over his waist. It keeps the nightmares away, he likes to think, even though that's obviously complete bollocks.

It's just past two in the morning when the knocking starts.

This time it's two, sharp and clear, ringing out through the darkness. Patrick feels his whole body turn rigid.

He shoots upright, eyes fixed on the bedroom door. Not again, he pleads to an imaginary enemy, please, not again.

"Pete," he whispers towards his boyfriend's sprawled shadow, "Pete, wake up." He gives the man a gentle shake, and his eyes slit open, a groan escaping his lips.

"Wha's matter?" Pete mumbles, rubbing his eyes and pushing himself onto his elbows. "You okay?"

"Someone knocked at the door," Patrick blurts, his heart wearing a hole in his t-shirt.

Pete makes a frustrated noise and reaches to turn on the bedside lamp. "It's probably nothing, 'Trick. Go to sleep."

Patrick is very close to crying at this point, trying to convey his desperation in the look he turns on Pete. "No, no, this is what happened last time, he knocked on the door, and - and -"

"Whoa, what? What last time?"

"When you were away, y'know, I had the dream about Andy...but what if it wasn't a dream, Pete, he said it wasn't over, he said beware the ghost, Pete what if this is it, what if he's back - or - or, I don't know -"

Pete cuts off Patrick's stammering by grabbing hold of his hand. "Okay. Alright. Calm down, it's gonna be okay," Pete says, his carer mode finally kicking in. "So last time, someone knocked at the door?"

Patrick nods, quickly recounting the events of that night to Pete, his expression descending into stricken with each terrifying detail he remembers. The taste of copper fills his mouth. He doesn't tell Pete about the blood.

Pete doesn't believe him, but it doesn't really matter because even Patrick's not sure if he believes the words spouting from his mouth. But he remembers the hand at his throat, the tears down his face. The two, sharp knocks echo in his brain. Reality and nightmare begin to ripple over each other.

"Alright." Pete's voice cuts into Patrick's reeling mind. "Come on, we'll go look together."

Patrick nods, keeping hold of Pete's hand and crawling over to his side of the bed. Pete pulls Patrick to his feet, leading them both over to the wardrobe. Pete opens it and reaches inside, emerging with a baseball bat clutched in his free hand. He gives Patrick a small grin that says he definitely thinks all this is complete bullshit, shuts the wardrobe and tows Patrick to the bedroom door, wielding the bat in front of them both.

A few seconds pass where they both stare at the door, presumably waiting for whatever devilish creature to invite itself in, before Pete lunges for the handle, letting go of Patrick's hand. They both watch the door swing open, they both feel the air rush from them when it reveals nothing but an empty frame. Their own bodies cast a strange three-legged shadow on the wall of the hallway.

"Phew," Pete breathes, nudging Patrick's shoulder and throwing him a grin. "For a moment there I thought -"

Another shadow crosses their own. Pete's cut off by his own gasp.

They huddle close to each other as they stare around the room, looking for any sign of movement. "Shit," Pete whispers, one arm tight around Patrick's shoulders and the other gripping the baseball bat with white knuckles. "Alright. Okay," Pete assures himself, while Patrick wonders if this is what a heart attack feels like.

Patrick tries to resist as Pete shuffles them both towards the open door, but he won't be left behind, either. He grips tight to Pete's arm like a child to its mother as Pete peers around the door frame and into the hallway, his hand darting to switch the lights on. The bright landing light illuminates the hallway, chasing the shadows away. It's funny, there's something about light that makes humans think they're safer.

"There's no-one here," Pete says softly, but he's still holding the bat like they're about to be savaged. Patrick's the first to see the figure reflected in the mirror.

He sees the eyes first, the dead eyes, and cries out, pointing. Pete looks a second too late. The eyes vanish.

Patrick shoves Pete back towards the bedroom door, they both need to get inside before whatever that thing was gets them, they need to do it now, but as soon as he sets foot across the threshold he feels arms that aren't Pete's shoving him to the floor. He tastes carpet just before he hears the bedroom door slam behind him. Pete is on the other side. Patrick looks up.

There's a body on the bed. He can see it as he scrambles to his feet, clawing for the door handle.

"Patrick?" he hears Pete shout, and Patrick goes to reply, to shout and scream and kick the door down in his haste to get to Pete, but a coldness touches his body, spreads over his skin, and when he opens his mouth, no sound comes out. The hand clamped to the door handle can't turn it. His feet won't move from where they're rooted, his head can't turn itself away from the corpse on his bed. He knows exactly who it is, would recognise the expression alone anywhere. If he could move, he'd throw up.

Joe's eyes are open. They always are, in Patrick's dreams, in his memory. They never close, they never stop staring, they never stop gazing at Patrick, knowing he's the reason they'll never light with laughter again.

Patrick feels Pete try to turn the handle, shouting Patrick's name. Joe's head turns towards Patrick, and his mouth snaps open in the most horrific manner.

"Don't worry, Pete," Joe says, but it's Patrick's voice Joe's speaking with, leaving Patrick's own mouth quivering, unable to form words. "I'm just - sorting something out."

"What? Patrick, let me the fuck in, for God's sake! What the fuck are you doing?!" Pete shouts, still wrestling with the handle, which Patrick's hand stays clamped around, unmoving.

"I just," Joe says slowly, still staring at Patrick, unblinking, "I wet the bed."

There's a short silence from the other side of the door. "O - oh. Okay. I'll - uh - I'll wait out here, then," Pete says, quieter than before, whilst Patrick implores his mouth to move, his hand to open the door. Hot shame flushes his cheeks at the reminder that Pete's twenty-eight year old boyfriend wetting the bed isn't out of the ordinary.

Joes eyes bore into him like drills. Patrick isn't sure if he's ever been this scared in his life - and then Joe sits bolt upright and turns his body to face Patrick.

"You killed me, Patrick," Joe says, in his own voice, his own, nasally Joe voice that Patrick's missed so much. "Why did you kill me?" He looks so innocent, his head tilted to one side and his eyebrows knitted together in confusion.

Patrick tries once again to speak, but only a rasping breath comes out, his tongue glued to the floor of his mouth.

"You choked me to death, Patrick," Joe says, in that same puzzled tone, like his eyes aren't sunken and his teeth aren't rotting in his mouth. "Don't you remember?"

Of course he remembers. I gave him a rather horrific memory - he was unlucky and also very lucky in that respect - but he'll never forget hearing Joe's last breath, feeling his heart stop, realising, when his mind came back to him, that it was all his fault. His vision starts to blur.

"You were so selfish, Patrick," Joe continues, shaking his head slightly. "You never wanted me around. Even when we were in the band, you wanted to write all the songs yourself."

Patrick wants to yell, to scream that he's so sorry, that he never meant to hurt Joe, that he wanted to change, he would've changed if all this hadn't happened, but all he can do is let the tears fall down his face as Joe looks at him with hatred and pity in his eyes.

"I can't believe I ever trusted you, Patrick. It took me so long to realise that you only ever cared about yourself. You always had to be the genius, Patrick, didn't you, the musical mastermind. You made everyone think you were so talented by making sure no-one else ever got to show their own talents. You let them think Pete was the arrogant one, but it was your ego that needed the most feeding."

The tears are coming hot and fast now, Patrick can feel them soaking the neck of his t-shirt. Joe stands suddenly, robotically, his arms loose like a ragdoll. One of his limp hands digs into his pocket, and Patrick's heart leaps into his throat as he sees the flash of a blade.

"But look at you now," Joe muses, his eyes raking over Patrick and coming to rest on his red-rimmed eyes. "Crying like a coward. Andy was right, you really are a sorry sight. The one-handed freak." Joe's eyes flick to the stump of Patrick's wrist. "But, thinking about it, maybe even one hand is too many..."

Joe moves towards him, the knife fully visible now, shining viciously in the light. It's rusted and serrated, and it makes Patrick's vision cloud over for a second. He feels Joe's hand touch his own, sees him tilt his head in assessment, then feels the cold of the blade's teeth against his skin. He tries to speak one last time, but he can only croak, his mouth stuck slightly open and his eyes alight with horror.

Joe just looks at him, sadness pooling in his eyes. "I was gonna be a dad, someday. You took so much from me, Patrick."

Patrick wants to feel the crushing guilt, wants to feel the shame of what he did, of everything he ruined, but once the blade bites into him, he can only feel pain. He tries to look away, to shut his eyes, but something compels him to stare at the blood spraying with the knife edge as Joe yanks it back and forth, sawing deeper until Patrick feels his arm jar when the blade hits bone.

He starts to lose consciousness as the bones in his wrist grind and crack, but his vision hasn't quite faded to black when he hears Joe repeat Andy's words.

"Beware the ghost."

-

I feel I should mention that I usually condemn murder of any kind, since murderers never seem to realise quite how much work went into making their victims alive in the first place. But, Patrick was exceptional circumstances - I will say it again, he is not a bad person. It is also worth mentioning that Pete himself is a murderer too, he simply got lucky in that the person he killed happened to be a rather rambunctious demon who thought it might be funny to exploit him.

Patrick, however, killed a friend. A good, living, friend, whom death did not have on her wish-list, and was therefore irritated to receive so soon. Even I had to stifle a sigh when I saw him do it - he could have had such a fulfilling life. But, then again, it was a rather exciting plot-twist in his little tale. I'm always a sucker for drama, which is why I continued watching so avidly.

The first thing Patrick does when he wakes up is scream. He screams every word he wishes he could have said, he screams apologies and excuses and begs for mercy, he screams out every bit of pain he felt when the knife began to dig through his wrist. He screams when Pete bursts through the door and sees him crumpled against the wall, he screams when Pete starts screaming at him to tell him what the fuck happened.

He rakes his fingers down his face and pulls at his hair before he realises that his hand is still there, it's not a bleeding lump of bone, it's attached and whole and it still works. He cradles it to his chest, curling in on himself to protect it from anyone else who might want to take it away from him.

When arms wrap around him, he shoves at them, pushing himself into the corner of the room and starting to sob gracelessly. He knows, this time, he knows it was real, that it wasn't a stupid nightmare. That somewhere, Joe hates him. That something is out to kill him.

Hands cup his face and he jumps, ready to slash at his attacker, but instead of those icy blue eyes, warm brown ones stare back at him, screaming nothing but panic and concern. It's Pete, he realises, it's Pete. He falls forward, and Pete catches him, squeezing him tight as he shakes.

"Patrick, what the hell happened?" Pete asks, softly but edged with panic.

"J - Joe," Patrick cries, the sobs making it difficult for him to get quite enough air into his lungs. "He - he w - was here, h - he c - cut my other h - hand off, I - I couldn't m - move, Pete, I - couldn't -"

"But you said you were fine, you said -"

"No!" Patrick yells into Pete's shoulder, "I d - didn't say that, h - he said it, he used m - my voice, he stopped me s - speaking, p - please believe me, Pete, p - please!"

"Okay, alright," Pete says, rubbing slow circles in Patrick's back. "Just try to breathe, okay, he's not here anymore, no-one's going to hurt you."

Patrick very much doubts that, but he tries to copy the slow rushes of air moving through Pete. After what he'd been through, the torture, the brainwashing, he never thought he'd feel such fear again. Yet here he is, the proximity of death overwhelming him to the point of insanity. He can't get those words out of his head, beware the ghost, beware the ghost, over and over like a chorus.

Pete rocks his boyfriend back and forth as he cries, and tries not to cry himself. There's been a couple of nights like this before, months ago, where Patrick would sob uncontrollably, fitfully, where he'd scream whenever Pete came near him and lash out if he tried to touch him. They've always been the scariest nights, because Pete's always terrified that he won't come back to himself. The hallucinations have got to a point where even Pete isn't sure whether they're all in Patrick's mind or not.

He shushes Patrick until the hacking sobs calm down, then helps him to his feet. He refuses to sleep in their bed, he says that's where Joe's body was, so Pete holds him close and guides them both into the guest room, where they huddle in the small single bed. Patrick wraps his arms tight around Pete, still trembling like tissue paper. Pete kisses Patrick's forehead like he isn't worrying himself to death.

-

"I'm so fucking scared, Pete," Patrick confesses, three weeks after the incident and clutching a scotch in his hand. They're curled on the sofa, half-watching some documentary on the Rolling Stones. He thinks about Joe every day, and not in the way he used to - every time he closes his eyes, he sees Joe's mouth snapping open and his own voice tumbling out, he feels Joe's cold and rotting fingers at his wrist.

"Me too," Pete says softly, not taking his eyes off the screen. At first, Patrick was terrified by Pete's silence, at his refusal to talk about what happened that night, but now, he's realised it's because Pete actually believes him. The baseball bat has remained stoutly beside Pete's bedside table, and while he used to drift off to bed early, he's taken to staying on the couch until Patrick takes pity on him and agrees to come to bed too. Patrick's pretty sure they're spending double what they used to on electricity due to their new habit of keeping all the lights on all the time.

"I just don't know what we're supposed to do," Patrick sighs. They did as much as they possibly could to make things easier for the people left behind, they made sure the burials were exactly what their friends would have wanted, they refresh the flowers at the graves weekly. Patrick sometimes spends hours kneeling in the dirt, saying everything he should have said. He's not sure he'll ever forget the way Andy's mother slammed her front door in his face, though.

"If they were going to kill us, they would have done it already," Pete says firmly. Patrick's heart aches at his use of the word us. It implies that it isn't just Patrick's head they want, even though it very clearly is.

"What you have to remember, Patrick," Pete says, shifting to face Patrick and taking his hand, "it's not them. Those - things, they aren't Joe and Andy. Joe and Andy wouldn't blame you, Joe and Andy wouldn't think those things about you. It's just some - some demon, or something, pretending to be them to fuck with you. Don't believe a word of it, Patrick."

"Okay," Patrick nods, just to make Pete a little happier. He knows he'll never be able to truly believe what Pete's saying, but it's nice to have someone sticking up for him. Humans are so easily influenced. "I just struggle to - y'know, see the point of all this. Of carrying on at all."

Pete knows about these thoughts of Patrick's. That's another thing he's worried about, coming home from work one day to find his boyfriend hanging from the ceiling fan. Pete himself has also thought of undoing all my hard work, but having once got so close, he's made a point of steering far clear of that, throwing himself into his fashion business rather than off a bridge.

"It'll get better," he says heavily, giving Patrick's hand a squeeze, "it will."

"When," Patrick asks, "when will it get better? When will we ever get to a point where we're as happy as we were before all this?"

"Well, I don't know, I -"

"What the fuck did we gain from that?" Patrick says, his voice growing louder as he becomes more frustrated, "I'm not braver, I'm not more compassionate, I don't have a new perspective on life, I'm just broken. We didn't even defeat them, we just ran away and left them to kill each other. We lost so much, Pete, for nothing."

Pete gazes at Patrick for a few moments, a look in his eyes that reminds Patrick of a kicked puppy. Then he says, "What about us? Wasn't that, I dunno, something?"

Patrick's heart sinks. "Yeah," he says, looking down at their joined hands, "that's something."

"I love you, Patrick," Pete says, and oh God, he looks close to tears, "but I'm not sure if you love me." That's the thing with humans, love apparently means nothing unless it is returned, exchanged for some other person's love. Love is so similar to money in that respect - even if the Romantics would hate to admit it.

"Of course I love you," Patrick says quietly, staring at a loose threat at the neck of Pete's jumper, "I can't believe you'd - you'd doubt that."

Pete scoffs, turning off the TV abruptly and leaving Patrick stranded in the silence. "Patrick, how long has it been since you said it? You used to say it, all the time, you used to actually seem to want me around."

"I'm sorry," is all Patrick can say, so he decides to try to show, instead. He leans forward and catches Pete's lips with his own, pressing them gently together and hoping he doesn't get shoved away. "I do want you," he mumbles against Pete's mouth, "I know I get - stupid and - sad and crazy, but you're - you're everything to -"

He's cut off by Pete kissing him hard, Pete's hands settling on his hips. Patrick threads his hand through Pete's hair, and for once, it isn't forced. When Pete's hands creep lower, when fingers slip underneath fabric and graze along bare skin, Patrick doesn't feel the need to push him away, to make him stop for fear of his own embarrassment. It'd been weeks since they'd been intimate, and although Pete always tries to return the favour, Patrick finds his interests as far away from proceedings as they could possibly get.

He used to be good at sex, he used to give women multiple orgasms and reduce men to boneless messes, he used to be able to drive Pete insane with just one look, but that's just another thing the torture took away from him. In a bout of frustration, he'd tried finding some remedy, but the shame of taking Viagra at twenty-eight was a step too far for Patrick.

Now, though, now he feels a spark of that same excitement buzzing down his spine. Pete's hands rest cautiously above Patrick's ass, while Patrick winds his arms tighter around Pete's neck and crushes their lips together over and over. It must be something about near-death experiences, they do seem to rile humans up a great deal.

"Are you sure you want to?" Pete asks, his eyes alight with hope and desire. When Patrick nods, Pete smiles wider than he has in months, and ducks his head to kiss along Patrick's jaw and bite at his ear. When Patrick grinds his hips forward, Pete moans into Patrick's neck, one hand squeezing a handful of Patrick's ass and the other clamped tight to his thigh.

They end up scampering upstairs, to the master bedroom this time, Pete diving into his bedside drawer to retrieve required items faster than you could say libido, then focussing on getting Patrick's clothes off as fast as is possible. Humanly possible, that is. I can do it much faster.

It takes a little while for Patrick to be entirely comfortable exhibiting his various scars, but once Pete pushes him down and peppers him with wet kisses, he feels his insecurity fall away, like it used to when they were simply fooling around in the back of a tour bus. There's adrenaline rushing through him that he hasn't felt in months, and he strives to make the most of it, dragging his teeth along all the places he knows Pete likes, nipping and sucking as he rolls them both over and pushes Pete's legs apart.

He'd forgotten what it felt like to be so enraptured by someone. Being inside Pete feels like being home, being so loved and so in love that they are no longer separate. Each roll of his hips reminds him how much he's been missing, how dead he's chosen to be when he could be feeling so alive. He does everything he knows Pete loves, each moan that spills from Pete's lips a shining trophy, the wrap of Pete's legs around Patrick's waist making Patrick's chest glow with pride.

He takes Pete right to the edge of his climax and yanks him back at the last moment, his hips spurred forwards when Pete begins to beg. He keeps Pete teetering on the gleaming brink of euphoria until Patrick himself can't take it anymore, then pushes them both over in a tumble of breathless moans and pulled-taut muscles.

There's a fuzziness in his brain that he's missed so much, a feeling of such intense satisfaction that he wonders how he ever went without it for so long.

When he finally opens his eyes, Pete's grinning at him like an idiot, his face bathed in sweat and his hair a tangled mess. He looks so beautiful to Patrick; suddenly Patrick feels every ounce of the love he should have shown Pete rush back to him in one sweeping hit. They kiss deeply, Pete's legs dropping from Patrick's waist but his hands replacing them, pulling Patrick close to his chest and sighing happily.

They end up tangled together, Patrick flopped on his back with Pete's head on his chest, Pete's fingers tracing absently through the patch of hair between Patrick's nipples in a way that makes Patrick feel a little like a hunky movie star.

"That was fucking amazing," Pete smiles, looking up at Patrick with dopey eyes. "Top five, definitely. Maybe even top three."

"Really?" Patrick says, his chest puffing out of its own accord. Pete nods, still grinning, and Patrick returns the smile, curling his arm around Pete's hips. He even took the sock off his stump; it doesn't bother him so much now he knows he's still got it, even with only one hand. Patrick thinks there must be some kind of an award for that. There isn't.

For once, they talk about mundane things, like potential dog ownership and the production offers Patrick's considering taking. Fall Out Boy is a distant memory, but they still need to keep a relatively low profile, working in separate circles and adopting pseudonyms when the press start poking their noses in too far. It's not been easy, what with Patrick's near-imprisonment and the extensive enquiry as to what happened, but thankfully, the police seemed more interested in using them for information regarding the whereabouts of the terrorist organisation they'd been attacked by. Terrorist is a significantly less exciting term than demon, but it's much more fun to let the humans think they actually stand a chance.

Speaking of which, Patrick lays back and lets the peace wash over him, the post-coital tranquillity of breathless pleasure, listening to Pete ramble about his trip to the shopping centre and feeling Pete's fingers trace over his skin. Perhaps things will get better.

-

They don't.

The words tick over in his mind, every moment of every day, beware the ghost. Every night he waits for the knocking, jumps at every odd sound and hides from every unnatural shadow. He can feel his sanity start to slip away from him.

Pete can see it too. He sees the way Patrick's eyes flick around every room as he walks into it, feels how every time he touches Patrick, the man tenses with fear. Patrick starts to dread leaving the house, begins to live his life on the couch or in bed, nervously tapping on whatever surface is available to him.

He stops returning calls. He stops speaking to anyone who isn't Pete, fleeing company like it's a disease, always wrestling with the desire to sob and beg for mercy from whatever creature is being sent to kill him. The ghost is coming, he thinks, every night, the ghost is going to kill me. Maybe even Pete, too.

As the weeks drag by, Patrick's body becomes more and more ravaged by fear. He sees Joe's eyes everywhere, full of hurt and blame, he sees Andy's figure in the darkness, waiting to choke him. The lack of sleep leaves his eyes sunken, the lack of sunlight leaves his skin pallid. The scars suddenly seem less ugly. He realises, at last, that he can't go on.

He won't do it in the house, won't hurt Pete with the shock of finding him. He's thankful that the lake is so near – if he was ever going to do it, he wanted to be sitting on the shores. He sits himself on a grassy knoll by the lakeside and stares across the dark water, pills clutched in his hand.

He touches his fingers to the sock covering his wrist - it's the one Pete gave him the morning after this whole nightmare started. The sheep all look so happy. He hopes Pete won't be too sad when he's gone. He's really not worth it.

He takes a few moments to see the world in complete clarity, to feel the wind on his face and touch the earth beneath him, untainted by fear. He waits until the first streaks of orange begin to show on the horizon before he starts to swallow the pills.

It takes longer than he thought it would. He took a few sleeping pills, too, just to make sure he passes out in good time, but the pain still hits him in the gut like a freight train. He wants to vomit, he wants to tear open his stomach in an effort to get these things out of him, but it's so nearly over, he's so nearly there. The world is reduced to the ultimate goal of death, and when his body begins to collapse, he begs that his brain will follow. The grass is suddenly soft against his searing cheeks, and he feels his eyes fall shut, his muscles finally realising that it's over, and relaxing against the ground.

He feels nothing but intense, burning pain in his gut and his head and his throat, but once it fades, he just feels nothing. Such a waste.

There's no fanfare, when Patrick wakes up. He's expecting something a little more than silence, but all he can hear is the rush of the lake, the hum of the wind across the grass. He sits up, staring.

I'm not dead, is all he can think. The realisation cuts through him like a knife, the revelation that he can feel the air on his face, the sand under his fingers. He wants to be distraught, he wants to scream and cry that he's failed again, that he can't even kill himself right, but deep down, as he looks at the blossoming sunrise, he feels a profound sense of relief.

He wonders, as he gets to his feet, if this is everything he should have learnt from his torture; the world seems wholly more beautiful, and his mind has achieved the sort of clarity that he could only dream of in the months previously. When he looks out over the lake, he actually smiles. If Pete could see him now.

And that reminds him, Pete. Pete who's still at home, alone and oblivious to Patrick's bad decision, Pete whom Patrick loves more than anything in the world. He's going to go home, right now, and tell him that, and then he's going to make them both a lovely cooked breakfast. Maybe he'll take Pete out in the evening, to that art exhibition he was talking about, then they could go for dinner and hold hands under the table.

His pace quickens as his mind races, pushing aside all thoughts of demons as he finally realises that fear of death should not impede life, and his body feels lighter than it has done in years. He wonders if this is what an epiphany feels like.

Their house stands nestled in between trees in the middle of the street; the décor was never really what Patrick would have chosen, but it was spacious and homely and available at very short notice when they needed somewhere to hide from publicity. Patrick decides there and then that he's going to fix up his studio, piano and all, and become one of those inspirational disabled musicians he sometimes watches on YouTube.

He's almost smiling as runs up the driveway and knocks once, twice, three times on the door. He doesn't realise what he's done until Pete opens it, stares straight at him, yet doesn't react in the slightest.

"Pete?" Patrick says, waving a hand in front of Pete's blank face and wondering if this is what he's like when he's just got out of bed.

Pete just peers around the door frame, unseeing. When he straightens up, he looks straight through Patrick.

"Pete," Patrick says again, panic beginning to rise within him, "it's me, Pete!"

The door begins to close, and Patrick lunges forwards. But when he touches Pete, his hands sear like he's been burned.

"You can't touch him," a sly voice says in his ear. Patrick starts, looking round to see Andy and Joe, smirking at him with their decaying faces in the half-light. "He's not a Sinner like you. You should have died in that desert – finally, you've finished the job."

"W-what?" Patrick stammers, looking back at his lover, getting one last glimpse into his gorgeous brown eyes before the door is slammed in his face.

The realisation hits him like a baseball bat. He's dead. He died earlier this morning. A wave of nausea crashes over him.

Andy and Joe throw him one last smile before they pounce, the former hooking an arm tight around Patrick's neck as if he can do more than simply gape. Patrick learns very quickly that he can still feel pain.

Patrick hardly struggles as the men pin him down, just screams in agony when Joe takes that same knife out of his pocket and plunges it into his stomach, snarling into his face and seeing his teary eyes widen as he begins to twist. Now that Patrick's dead, they can inflict more than just imaginary wounds, and they revel in it.

Patrick's legs give out from under him, but Andy keeps him upright, greedy eyes watching Joe pull the gleaming red blade out of Patrick's gut. No sooner has he given Patrick a last look of disgust, he vanishes into thin air, the knife dropping to the floor. Andy pushes Patrick to his knees.

"Once we're avenged, we'll go to heaven," Andy says, his voice sticky and wet in Patrick's ear. "You won't," he adds darkly.

Patrick watches with terror as Andy sweeps the knife from the ground and presses it to Patrick's face. Patrick can feel the wound in his stomach pulsing with blood, soaking through his sweater, beads of red dripping down his face as Andy presses the knife deeper. Patrick feels himself go still when Andy's hand rests in his hair.

With a final intake of breath, Andy yanks Patrick's head backwards and slashes the blade across his exposed throat. Pain overtakes reality.

Patrick can't breathe, anymore. He can't taste anything but the blood that spills from his mouth, can't feel anything but hot liquid running down his neck. He falls to the concrete as Andy's hand leaves his hair. Andy stands over him for a few seconds, watching Patrick collapse at his feet. Then he, too, vanishes into thin air.

Patrick is left, bleeding and alone.

He tries calling out for Pete, for anyone, but all that comes out is a sick gurgling sound. He won't be alone for long, though. They'll come for him soon. Then, he'll wish I'd never breathed life into him in the first place.

And that, dear friends, is the story of how Patrick Stump became interesting. I'd love to tell you what became of them all, but I have no insight into the workings of either heaven or hell. I can only assume that Joe and Andy are eating large helpings of ambrosia, whilst Patrick is slowly being tortured until his body resembles that of a butchered animal. I'll advise you never to answer the door to strange knocks in the night, and, as long as you live, beware the ghost.