It had escalated. Andrew's heart was pumping now, and he could feel it slamming itself against his rib cage. He looked at her; he thought to himself, she knows my weaknesses and I know what she is going to do. She is going to throw them at me, trying to weaken me. She looked at him, tears in her eyes. She was shaking her head in confusion. The formula was beginning again, the game had begun and there were already signs of distress, like slammed objects, forced mess, aggression; his gaze was enough to cut through steel, and yet she held on. Deep down, she knew that it was all she could do. Especially considering that he had begun to drink. It was his weakness, she knew. He never turned to it unless...

...unless he was afraid, scared, and possibly suicidal.

"Don't do this," she warned him. "You think that you raise your fists and things go away? You think that solves anything at all?" She was trying, but she knew what it would look like to him. It would seem as if she was turning away, trying to save herself. The truth of it was that she was afraid and indeed wished to have some protection against his instability. There was something inside this fiery beast that she loved, and she gently told herself that if she just hold on...

He looked at her with hatred in his eyes. "And you think I don't know about him?"

A cold chill broke throughout her entire nervous system. She could feel it crawling up her back, reaching around to her face; it had a hold of her lips, which began to tremble; it had control of her heart, which lept into her throat; and it had control of her soul, which wanted to save her, wanted to explain.

"What do you mean?"

So coy, he thought to himself. She will play this game until the bitter end, pretending and hiding. Secrecy breeds on her like bacteria. "You know what I mean," he said simply, and if eyes could burst into flames, he felt as if his had already exploded. He could feel tears coming up from his throat, tickling the back of his eyeballs. "You killed me," he said, fighting back tears.

"Don't say that," she attempted, looking into his eyes. "Don't do this." She had misunderstood what he had meant. He was not suicidal, he was broken and shattered in a way that, at least he thought, would never heal. He stared at her, his eyes narrowing.

"No, that's not what I meant. I mean you killed me. You took my heart from my chest." He felt them falling, and he cursed her. "Did you think I would never find out? Did you think I was so blind?" His head fell down, too heavy: everything, the entire world, was pressed firmly on his shoulders and the weight was excrutiating. He looked at her, and his eyes filled with an angelic glow. He saw her in the perfection that he always had seen her in, but though he wanted to believe his eyes, his heart told him that she was a threat, something with the sharpest of thorns.

"I have to go." It was his great announcement. He had said it many times before, but this time somehow it had more power. She broke down into tears, stared at him in desperation.

"Please don't go," she pleaded.

He looked at her, walked up to her. He couldn't help himself; his heart couldn't change direction no matter how hard he tried. He walked up to her, kissed her forehead delicately. Both of them broke into tears; their body was violently shaking in one great mass, but he couldn't take it. He stopped for a moment, looked down at her. He knew what he had to do; he knew that she had chosen to chase him away, and he had chosen to ignore the hints-- the fear, the sarcastic curses against commitment in general... how had he been so blind?

His limbs began to shake; the chill had begun to move all over his body. So this is what it feels like to die, he told himself. Not in the physical way, but in a way much deeper, much more permanent. He closed his eyes, but he could still see her, and he knew that he had to escape.

She tugged on him, begged him. His breathing began to sharpen, become painful; it felt like his chest was caving in. the mission had become too dangerous.

He had to escape while he still could. It was easy at first. The first step was just to walk toward the door, but he could hear her crying behind him. It broke his heart into as many pieces as a human could endure without simply dying. And even then, he did not understand how he was still alive, how his heart had simply not just stopped beating.

It was an attack, and she knew it. But she had to try something, even if it would fail and blow up in her face. "Please stay! I don't know what I will do without you."

His eyes caught a photograph of the two of them; he was blissfully staring at her, but her gaze was pointed somewhere else. He did not remember what she would have been looking at, and before he knew it, tears were flowing like a river. "You want him, not me. I'm not that man anymore," he said as he pointed at the picture.

Everything else was a blur. He didn't know how it happened, but he had escaped the apartment and had found enough alcohol to kill an elephant. A part of it was suicidal, he knew, but it was not conscious. Just as cigarettes and fast driving is technically suicidal, it is never conscious but something that the subconscious tries to justify, as excitement, or 'living', or extreme adrenaline rushes. And it was not that he wanted to kill himself per se, but that he wanted to make certain that his mind was completely destroyed so that he might not think anymore; his thoughts were like razors that slowly cut at every nerve. When he closed his eyes, his imagination ran wild thinking about what she had done, and there were so many emotions that occurred at once as he did this. A part of him was hurt, destroyed; another part was guilty and felt like he had betrayed her, pushed her to this heinous act and now he was punishing her for his own inadequacies; another part of him simply wanted to express anger that was bottling up inside, boiling his blood. He wanted to cry, curse... he wanted to implode.

And then a voice:

"Hey, wake up."

His eyes opened to a strange sight. Staring down at him was a green creature with floppy ears, and he felt a wet substance rubbing against his arm. He looked down and found a strange, one eyed cat licking his fingers. He had fallen asleep on a park bench, but now...

"Where am I?" he muttered, as if it was the only question that needed asking. "Who are you?"

"They call me the Boogeyman," the creature said simply, looking down with a smile. "Who I truly am has been lost with time; I have forgotten more about myself than anyone possibly could. The smelly thing licking you is named Peebles."

The Boogeyman: a strange creature that existed in realms not yet explored, to greet lost souls trying to find their way. To some he was called Boogeyman, but to others he was simply "the guide", and to others still, he was once a husband, a father... he was many things, all of which floated around in his subconscious, guided his actions here. "There is only one reason you are here," said the guide forebodingly. "You must be dead."

The word tasted at once bitter and sweet. Dead: he tried the thought again and again in his heart. Deceased; no more; worm-food; rotten and not what once was.

"But somehow I don't think you are. I can't quite see you. You are transparent." Peebles meowed, tentacles and drool flying from what would, one would presume, be lips. He looked down at the cat, and saw that it was not him that was transparent, but the creatures that had begun talking to him.

"You are partially here and partially not. You must be holding onto something." Boogeyman's eyes pointed downward in sorrow. "I once knew someone like that." He smiled awkwardly, looked at Andrew. "But that is a tale that would take quite awhile to tell."

The world was fading, blinking in and out. He felt like he was dreaming, but somehow he knew that this was something different, something stronger. He looked up at his guide, and somehow he knew that he should trust this green, scrawny creature with pointy teeth. "What if I don't want to be dead?"

"Then, beware Nihile."

"Hey buddy."

The world was fading, blurry and flowing like liquid across his senses. In and out, reality flowed like a thin veil; he could see the connection between worlds, could feel a presence stronger than anything he had ever felt before. His blood began to flow as if it were a great waterfall, and he could feel it moving at great speeds through his veins and into the veins of the worlds, the thin strips of energy that connected him and allowed him to see more than one world at once, the vision and voice that allowed him to converse with a dead god.

"Hey buddy, wake up."

He felt something splash against him. It was water, but as the water splashed across his face, for a moment, he thought he saw something between the droplets, a face that was at once dead and alive, rotten and vibrant. It changed and yet it was always the same, it was one face and many; the face looked at him coldly, frowning.

"You will bow to my god," the face said, and he felt empty and angry, felt all the emotions that had put him into this state in the first place. This is how he knew that the face had to have been Nihile. "You already have," said Nihile, "and you know that this world deserves nothing; to be nothing at all, to cease its existence; to be stripped of its constituent parts until everything can be seen from a distance, destroyed and stripped of all movement."

"BUDDY!"

His eyes opened, and for a moment he could still see the face between the water droplets, which hung in the air suspended and moving slowly, as if the water was thick and moving through an even thicker, dense material. As his eyes began to focus, he could see the face of a familiar shopkeeper.

"Josh," Andrew said simply, as if just stating the name explained everything. The shopkeeper looked down, shaking his head.

"Clean yourself up." It was beautiful, this minimal conversation; everything was understood, and for the first time, Andrew understood what was going on.

He returned to his wife that night. He found her asleep, clutching the picture of the two of them in her hand. He was reminded of the dream figures he had seen. Were they real? It didn't matter much. The message was clear. Nothing, nihil, zilch-- that was what his life was like if he left her behind, if he separated himself from her. She knew him, deep inside, in a way that no one else could. And he knew he wasn't perfect, had done some things he was not proud of. And she had stopped herself-- he had not believed her at first, but now it seemed like holding onto that doubt was akin to wanting the destruction of all things. He had sacrificed his heart to the great god Nihil, the destroyer king. But he had not sacrificed as much as he thought, for still something was felt deep down as he looked at her, red eyed and vulnerable.

He took her favourite blanket, a wretched and beat up old thing that she would rub against her lips to calm herself, and wrapped it around her. His lip quivered, but this time it wasn't in pain or suffering. He knew she had not lied to him, that nothing had happened. And even if it did, it was irrelevant. In that look of pain she gave him as he walked out that door-- he knew that she had died as much as he did. And whatever doubt he had about her passion, about her love, could not survive that evidence to her feelings.

He kissed her on the cheek. He knew things would not be solved; he knew pain would not go away, harsh words would leave wounds that would still smart. But in the end, he knew his paranoia was placed in the wrong place. He knew she had an explanation, a reason; she had to, because he knew that she was an intelligent and rational person, a strong woman who did not do things unless she knew what she was doing. She was afraid of him, afraid of committing to a relationship that could never be certain because nothing in the world was certain-- but at the same time, he knew she loved him, and that he loved her.

Existence is uncertain but undeniable. This was the great paradox that flustered Descartes.

He did not care what he could know for certain scientifically or logically; he did not know what reasons he had, but he knew that she loved him. And he knew that if he wanted to survive, he needed to surrender to her and to her mistakes, as painful as they might prove. He was not going to fade into nothingness; he was not going to sacrifice himself, all of himself, all his heart and power, all his soul and love, to Nihil.

Even though he would have explaining, apologizing, and even very likely crying to look forward to, he curled up beside her, kissed her cheeks, and fell asleep, crying not with pain or even guilt, but with love and the knowledge that there was something, hiding between worlds, with a face that changed and stayed the same, that wanted not only his death, but much more impossible, much more frightening, hers as well.

Whatever she had done, whatever they had said, he could not allow that to happen. He knew that he would fight impossibilities and the gods themselves to keep her safe. Because his life was tucked away, kept safe inside her. Without her, there would literally be nothing but a darkness that would stretch his nerves to infinite limits, open to pain that was impossible to comprehend.

Without her, he would be without love itself.