Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The pizza place glows soft and golden under flickering fluorescent lights, the kind that buzzed if you listened for too long.

There was a peaceful stillness that lingered throughout the shop. No customers. No calls. Just the sound of ruffling papers.

His sister sits at the small table near the window, kicking her feet under the chair and humming softly as she tucks her worksheet into her backpack. Elliot had just finished helping her with those messy long division problems—the kind from fourth grade that most teens and adults forget how to do by the time they hit high school.

His break is over.

He returned to the counter at the cutting station where they also box up pizzas. As a young teen, his dad, Mr. Builder, trusted him with the family business. He was in duty of slicing pizzas and boxing them, not ready to deliver them just yet at fifteen years old.

He turned back to the finished pizza where steam rose from the melted cheese and pepperoni. He picked up the pizza cutter without thinking. Round blade. Plastic handle. Dull edge. He’s used this thing a hundred times. A thousand. His dad always said to keep it sharp, but not too sharp — "Don't wanna kill someone, eh?"

Elliot laughs under his breath.

But something makes him stop mid-slice. The wheel jams against a thick part of crust. He pushes, and it resists just enough to feel it in his wrist. His smile falters.

If I sharpened this more… just a little more…

If I used more force and stopped the blade from rolling...

His thumb runs along the edge. It wouldn’t take much. A grindstone. Ten minutes. If it could glide through crust, it could go through skin. Through the back of someone’s neck. Straight through the soft spot where it doesn't hit the bone.

The thought comes fast.

Elliot blinks. The air in the kitchen feels heavier.

He sets the cutter down and shakes his head quickly, like shaking water out of his ears. He bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes salt.

Where did that come from?

That's not him.

He felt his heartbeat skipping, his fingers slightly trembling as he leaned into his forearms, bent against the counter. His eyes locked on his knuckles, turning red from how hard he was pressing into them. His face was scrunched, brows tight like every thought was physically trying to force its way out. His chest felt like it was caving in, and his neck had gone stiff and narrow, like there was only a thin tube left for air to squeeze through. He breathed slowly into his chest, but it felt shallow and useless.

Then, finally, he took a deep breath and stepped back from the counter. His fingers were still shaking, his arms tense, his jaw clenched. The feeling hadn’t passed. It just… dulled around the edges.

Elliot swallows. His palms are damp. He wipes them on his apron, leaves darker streaks along with the red sauce stains.  The tremor in his hands wont stop; it travels up his arms and crawls into his back. A prickling heat tingles at the nape of his neck.

Why am I shaking? It’s just pizza. It's just pizza.

And then the thought returns to him.

Would blood spray or pour? Would it smell like copper, or hot like the oven when you open it too fast?

"Stop," he breathes, louder this time. He presses knuckles to his brow until color flashes behind his eyelids.

He stepped back from the counter, arms loose at his sides now, fingers still twitching with leftover static. His heart was finally slowing down, but it thudded unevenly in his ears. He’d just spiraled over nothing.

He let out a short, breathy laugh, almost more of a cough.

"God," he muttered, rubbing at his face with both hands, dragging them down like he could smear the feeling off. "What the hell was that?"

It was ridiculous, really. He plays too many video games. He doesn't care about death — nor killing people. He was just an edgy teenager with a boredom fantasy, protecting his brain from a boring day at work. He lives a perfect life and has zero reason to think about killing somebody.

Shaking because of an intrusive thought was silly. Especially THAT big of a reaction.

But it still felt so real.

So what? He was still the nice person who everyone knew. He just had some intrusive thoughts when he was bored.

Chapter Text

It was near a craving—though he didn’t prefer calling it that. Craving sounded childish. Shallow. Like something a movie villain would say with a crooked grin and dull eyes. Like something a school shooter would write in a manifesto, trying to pin everything on the yearn in their head instead of the choices they made. As if the violence wasn’t theirs—just something that happened to them.

And Elliot wasn’t like that.

He was a sweet kid. He always had been. He helped his little sister with her math, remembered to wipe the counters, folded napkins into shapes even when no one asked him to.

He felt things. That's what made his thoughts so hard to understand.

Elliot always felt a warmth in his chest after helping his father. He loved spending time with his sister, teasing her and making her laugh. Her laugh would make something ease inside his head, a comfort that reminded him how much he valued life.

He wasn’t faking that. Not any of it. The love—it was real. It lived so deeply inside him.

So why?

Why?

What would it feel like if he broke this for others?

He didn’t want it. 

Fuck, he didn't want it.

But the thought came anyway. And every time, it left him staring at his hands like they weren’t entirely his.

And eventually, the thoughts became too much.

And his empathy lessened.

He didn’t know when the line had actually been crossed. There wasn’t a single moment, just a slow sinking. A quiet breaking of himself which he didn’t even realize was breaking.

He misplaced something in himself. Something he kept searching for in the mirror. A reflection that now looked back differently. He kept trying to find it, that gentle part of himself, the one that flinched  at scary movies and cried when animals died in books. But it was harder now. Like his eyes weren’t all the way there.

His eyes were still there of course. Just... different. Distant.

He still loved his family. H e loved them.

If something happened to them—if they were gone—he knew it would ruin him. He would scream until his throat shredded itself. Until it burned and collapsed and gave out, until the only sound would be the stifled cries into a damp pillow and the creak of his bed frame.

He tasted that grief.

And at first, when the darker thoughts crept in, when he imagined killing someone, he pushed back hard.

"What if they have a sister like yours?"

He’d pause, eyes wide. His heart would hurt.

"You’re right. I love my sister. And they might have one too."

"Wouldn’t someone grieve for them the way you’d grieve for your family?"

"Of course. Of course they would. It would hurt. It would destroy someone. It would destroy me."

"Wouldn’t it hurt? Their body. Their mind. Dying like that."

"…Yeah. It would. Absolutely, it would."

That stopped him. For a while.

But the thoughts didn’t stop. They got quieter. They waited.

And then, one day, the questions came again.

"What if they have a sister like yours?"

Well… she isn’t mine.

"Wouldn’t someone grieve for them the way you’d grieve for your family?"

They might. But that grief wouldn’t be mine to carry.

"Wouldn’t it hurt?"

Yes. But it wouldn’t be my pain.

He wasn’t horrified by the answers anymore. That was the worst part.

He used to feel other people’s pain. Used to imagine it so vividly that it made him ache. But now it was like watching a movie. The weight of it was now gone.

He hadn't meant to lose that part of himself. But those scary thought lurked in the back of his mind, crawling forward to the front of his brain.

He was growing quieter inside.

And that silence scared him more than the thoughts ever did.

But he still interacted normally, and everything felt normal. He felt normal.

But he knew he would have to give in.

First, he tore his skin open.

Not a shallow cut, never that. He wanted depth, even if the length was short. The blade sank through with resistance and revealed torn flesh. Yellow fat bubbled up from beneath the surface, glistening. When he bent his arm toward himself, he could see the way those bubbles shifted and compressed, folding inward with the motion.

It wasn’t enough.

He cut deeper.

The pain sharpened but he didn’t stop. Not when the blood began pouring freely, not when the deeper tissues were exposed. His muscle peeked through like something alive, twitching.

And when he bent his arm again, the wound stirred.

The blood moved, thick and steady, like a slow churn inside a pot. It surged against the walls of the cut, warm, and beneath it he saw the muscle stretch faintly, open and close with each motion, as if smiling. A tiny but deep cut. He would have to get someone to stitch this later.

It was agony. And it was fascinating.

And oh, it hurt like hell.

The pain was blinding, raw. His body tensed, breath caught, vision blurred.

He wouldn’t wish this on himself again. Not really.

But that’s what made it so fascinating.

If it hurt this much… what would it do to someone else?

What would it look like on them?

Later, these thoughts scared him. They consumed him.

The deed was done.

He hadn’t planned it. Not really. But the feeling had been there for weeks, curling inside his stomach. That clawing curiosity. That unbearable itch beneath his skin.

And now, it was done.

The thing laid still in front of him, and his hands… his hands . They were shaking, but not from fear. More like satisfying buzzing in his veins. More like awe.

Well the thing was a dog.

There was blood, of course. Too much. And the smell. And the heat still radiating from the body.

He couldn’t look away.

Something in him felt like it had opened, like a door cracked wide, and now he couldn’t remember what it was like without it.

He didn’t smile. He didn’t feel triumph.

Only understanding .

That this was what it meant to go too far.

Yet, he still had friends. A loving family. But, they didn't think like him. Something was wrong with him. He became terrified of his own thoughts. Not just disturbed, but terrified. It wasn’t just intrusive—it was obsessive. Every time he was alone, the thoughts would come crawling back, and he would feel his chest tighten and his fingers sweat.

After killing far too many cats, dogs, and other kill (how he found the time and place he doesn't know), the urge had grown. He didn't want animals anymore. He wanted to kill a person.

And that's what scared him.

He needed help.

Chapter Text

He stood outside the office for what felt like forever.

The hallway was quiet. The afternoon sun was out. The sun shined through the blinds and beamed onto his face. He could hear the sound of his own pulse in his ears. His fingers hovered over the doorknob, hesitating once, then once again.

Just go in.

He opened the door.

His father sat behind the desk, reading something on his computer monitor. The room smelled like paper and dust.

"Hey, bud," his dad said, smiling without looking up. "Need something?"

Elliot swallowed hard. "Can I… can I talk to you? Like really talk?"

His father glanced up. The smile dropped a little. "Yeah. Of course."

Elliot stepped inside, shut the door quietly, and just stood there. He didn’t know what to do with his hands , so he kept rubbing his palms down the sides of his jeans, trying to dry them. It didn’t work. His stomach twisted. His chest churred with tension.

"You okay?" his father asked gently. "Is something wrong?"

Elliot’s mouth opened.

Then closed.

He looked down. "I’m… I don’t know. I’ve been—" His voice cracked, and he immediately shook his head like he wanted to knock the words loose. "I’ve been feeling really weird. For a long time. And it’s not like… not like anxiety. Or sadness. I mean, maybe it is. But it’s more like—"

Another pause.

His father waited.

"I have bad thoughts," Elliot finally said, staring at the floor. "Really bad ones. About people. About hurting them."

That caught his father off guard. The older man sat up straighter, concern lining his face. "Elliot… are you feeling overwhelmed? Like hurting yourself or—?"

"No. Not like that. Not… me."

He forced himself to look up, meeting his father’s eyes for just a moment before his gaze dropped again.

"I mean I think about hurting other people. Like, a lot. And it’s not just some passing thought that scares me. It’s not a random idea I can shrug off. It’s constant. I’ll be doing something normal — cooking, folding boxes, helping with homework — and suddenly I’m thinking about how easily I could just—"

He stopped. Covered his mouth with a hand. He wanted to be sick.

He looked up for just a second and saw his father’s eyes.

They’d sharpened.

Not with anger.

But with something far worse.

Not just fear, but something rawer. Like grief. Like a man watching a house burn while still standing inside it.

A blink. A twitch at the corner of his mouth. His knuckles clenched where they rested on the desk, not tight — just enough to say everything he didn’t.

Elliot looked away again, fast. His voice turned small.

"I didn’t want to keep doing it," he said. "But I couldn’t stop wondering. What it looked like. How long it took for the fight to stop. The way their chests moved, fast and then shallow. The way their eyes went wide and then quiet. How it stayed warm longer than I thought it would. I needed to see it."

For a moment, his father truly believed Elliot had taken a human life. A cold wave of nausea settled deep inside him. It wasn't just nausea. It was grief.

"I haven’t done anything to anyone," Elliot said quickly, shaking his head. "I haven’t. Not a person. Not yet."

Relief passed through his father's eyes—but it was fleeting. His disturbance didn't fade. His relief was swallowed by a darker grief. Grief for a future. His own son. His kid.

Another pause. Then, very quietly:

"But I’ve… killed things."

His voice barely broke above a whisper.

His father blinked, a terrible pit forming in his stomach. 

Elliot stared at the floor, his voice hollow now — as if he wasn’t sure it was still coming from him. "Animals. A lot of them. I don’t know how many. I stopped counting after 55. I thought maybe it was just morbid curiosity or some sick habit that would go away, but it didn’t. It got worse. It got so much worse. And it felt so good."

He swallowed, voice rising with desperation.

"I didn’t mean for it to keep happening. I just… I needed to see it. To feel it. I kept wondering things. Stupid things. Dark things. And once I started, I couldn’t stop wondering more. What it looked like, what they felt, how they breathed when they were scared, how the blood moved—" He choked on the last word.

"And then I started wondering this about people. I wondered how the silence would feel. I imagined how they wouldn't go home again. That someone, somewhere—maybe a mother, maybe a friend—would wait for them without knowing they were already gone. I liked imagining I would be the reason someone was robbed from another person's life."

A pause.

"I hate this part of me," he said. "I hate it. But it’s there. Every day. It won't shut up."

The silence afterward was unbearable. Elliot didn’t dare look at him. He just looked down. His jaw trembled, eyes burning with unshed tears, throat tightening.

"I’m telling you now," he whispered, "because I don’t know how to live with it anymore. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. But I don’t want it to go further. I really don't... but I do. I'm so close to doing it."

The room was quiet.

"Please, Dad..." Elliot’s voice was wrecked. Hoarse, raw, like it had already been torn apart. But he didn’t care. He yelled with an uneven voice, forcing the sound out, even though it scraped against his throat. "Help me...!" It came out louder, shakier — his whole chest spoke with it. It didn’t matter if it hurt to speak. He had to scream. He needed to be heard.

"Please," he sobbed, his voice cracking. "What's wrong with me?"

He wasn’t thinking about how he sounded. He wasn’t thinking about respect, or fear, or if he was being too loud. All of that was gone.

He just needed someone to listen. To do something. To stop it.

He took a shallow breath, shaky and stiff, like his throat wasn’t ready to let air in yet.

His chest stuttered. He coughed once, dry and pitiful, and wiped his face with the back of his sleeve, even though it only smeared the tears. His shoulders twitched like he might start sobbing again. But he didn’t.

He just… sat there.

Silent.

The crying stopped slowly, draining out bit by bit. The only sound was his breathing. Uneven and quiet.

He looked up slowly, eyes glassy, throat aching. But the pain didn’t reach him anymore.

Just numbness.

The panic was gone. Burned out.

Now, staring at his father, all he felt was the heavy silence.

He didn’t speak at first. The room felt heavier with silence, broken only by the faint ticking of the clock.

Finally, he exhaled, voice low and cautious. "You’re… saying these thoughts have been with you for a while?"

Elliot nodded silently.

His father’s face tightened, a flicker of fear crossing his features—quick, then gone. He was in disbelief. Not just at what Elliot had said, but at the fact that he had carried it—all of it—in silence for so long. All those family dinners, car rides, however many birthday parties... All those quiet moments when Elliot had smiled, played at being fine... and underneath it, was this.

"We can get you help," he said, his tone distant, almost clinical. "Therapy. A professional who knows how to handle this." He paused, swallowing hard. "If it comes to it… maybe a hospital stay. A psych ward. Somewhere safe."

His hand hovered briefly near Elliot’s shoulder but didn’t touch. Instead, it dropped to his side.

"I’m not sure what else to say." His voice cracked slightly, betraying the tight control he was trying to hold. "We’ll make the calls. Figure it out."

He glanced away, eyes distant. "You’re my son. This… it’s hard to understand. But I’ll do what needs to be done."

"N-no psych ward..." Elliots voice said, ragged, a deep wish from within. "Please, Dad, I don't want that. I just. I can't be locked away."

He continued. "I love you. I love my sister. I would never hurt you. I could never… not you. But others? It’s different. I don’t feel for them the way I do for you. That's how deep my love is — because I won't kill you."

His father's eyes grew wide, heart shattering at the confession. The son he raised, the boy he thought he knew. He couldn't believe his justification. "This isn’t love, Elliot," his father said quietly, voice breaking. "This is something broken, something you need help with."

But Elliot shook his head slowly, voice low but steady. "It’s love. And that means… I'm not lost. Not yet."

His father's eyes held a flicker of doubt, especially with that reasoning. Todays information came so fast. He was overwhelmed beyond belief.

After that day, Elliot began therapy. His sister was never told why her brother had to see a therapist every three days, nor why he was closely monitored at first. She just knew she couldn't be alone with him.

Elliot grew sneakier, but eventually his father caught him in the act.

He found Elliot crouched in the grass with a small kitten, the sight of blood stark against the pale yellow skin of his son’s arms. It didn’t look real at first. Too quiet, too still. But the moment settled with a sickening clarity.

The father’s heart broke in an instant, horror and disbelief crashing over him like a wave. His breath caught, strangled in his throat.

Elliot looked up. His eyes were hollow, glassy—but eerily calm. A kind of calm that didn’t belong on a child’s face. A calm more terrifying than any scream.

He didn’t flinch. Didn’t try to explain. He just sat there, hands soaked, the kitten’s body limp beside him, as if nothing was out of place. The ear of the kitten sat in his son's hands. He held his palm up as he looked into it with satisfaction.

And his father could only stand there, paralyzed. Shaken.

Not just by what Elliot had done, but by how familiar he seemed in that moment. How at ease.

His Elliot. His loving boy.

It wasn’t a tantrum. It wasn’t confusion. It was something colder. Something chosen.

The air felt too still. The backyard, once safe and full of memories, now looked like a crime scene. 

There was a hollow calm in his son's eyes — a calm more terrifying than any scream.

Elliot killed less and less after that, eventually stopping in his adult years. The urges never truly disappeared. They still slipped into his mind, unexpected and brutal thoughts that made his skin crawl. But eventually, he returned to being a normal teenager. Then a normal adult. And both he and his father buried this memory deep inside of them, never to be brought up again. The father wanted to forget. Elliot simply forgot.

His father believed Elliot was better. He treated him normally but watched closely, always trying to understand the darkness that still haunted his son’s mind. But all was better.

Chapter Text

Elliot jolted awake. His heart thundered against his chest, unrhythmic and low.

The sound thudded in his ears, distorted and deep. His sheets clung to him with sweat, and the cramped wood cabin felt colder than before, though his face burned. He swallowed thickly, his throat tight, catching his breath.

The vividness of the dream was unsettling, more real than any dream he'd had before. He rubbed his face with his trembling hands and sat up slowly, listening to the sound of the wind whistling outside his cabin walls. Each gust sent a fresh creak through the cabin walls as if the whole structure was straining to hold itself together.

He hung around the bar every day.

Not inside it—no, he was just a teenager, still years from legal, explaining that underage drinking was beneath him. But outside? Outside was okay. He loitered across the street, near enough to see faces, far enough not to be noticed. He didn’t want to be seen. That would ruin everything.

He told himself he was just observing. Scouting, even. For someone who met the criteria:

Homeless. Drunk. Alone.

Despite looking for this, he wouldn’t really kill anyone.

That wasn’t what this was. This was just… looking. Observing. Playing pretend in his mind. A private game of what if, like holding onto the rail of a balcony, and imagining if you jumped—not because you want to jump, but because you want to feel the fear. The trembling sensation in your legs that gets your heart racing.

Right?

That’s what he told himself, again and again.

He didn’t really  want to hurt a person, despite what his brain told him. Animals were different. He just wanted to know what it might feel like to almost cross that line. To keep the possibility warm in his chest and dangle the thought over the edge, curious if it might fall.

He walked by that bar for a week. At first, he didn’t approach anyone. Each near encounter gave him an excuse to turn away.

Too tall. Too alert. Too strong.

He didn’t want someone who might fight back. He told himself it was logic. Strategy. Not fear. But it was fear, deep down—it always was.

That week was long. Agonizing. The voice inside his head, low and ever-present, grew louder with each passing day. It told him. "Do it. "

And no, the voice wasn’t some separate thing. Not something he could use to distance himself from his actions. It was his own voice, the same one he used to read stories in his head or debate himself in the shower. That was the worst part. He knew exactly where it came from, because it came from him. It wasn't madness. It was just him.

Each day after helping his sister with homework and helping his dad at the pizza place, he found himself pacing the same sidewalk. He would circle the bar, heart thudding at the thought that maybe today— today —he would act. The anxiety was suffocating. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t think. It hurt, but it fascinated him.

Then one night, he saw a man. Older. Dirty jacket, face wrinkled like sheets. He was muttering to himself, wandering off into a narrow patch of woods behind the street. Elliot followed without thinking.

The man spoke aloud to no one. "Can’t let the cops see me again… gotta wait ‘til they’re gone…"

Perfect.

Elliot’s fingers trembled as he gripped the mallet he had hidden under his red shirt. The weight of it was wrong. Too real. Too final. Every instinct screamed at him to go home, to turn around, to forget this ever happened.

A human is too different from an animal... I shouldn't.

But his feet moved forward anyway, mechanical like, stuck in a trance.

He told himself he always would strike from the back.

The man's back was turned.

He swung.

The mallet connected with a dull thud, and the man crumpled forward into the dirt, crying and yelling out.

Elliot froze. The sound—the pain—it shook him. He hadn’t expected it to sound like that. He hadn’t expected the man to scream like that.

Panic stirred in his chest, but adrenaline rushed through his veins. He stepped forward, kicked the man’s leg out from under him, sending him crashing again into a bush. He had to finish. He had to do it, didn’t he?

The penknife came out of his pocket.

His hand moved before he could think. Instinct, impulse, dread all coiled into one violent motion. The penknife sank into the man’s temple with a sickening resistance. Blood welled up immediately, dark and fast, painting tiny red droplets onto the ground. The penknife wasn't long enough to sink into an artery, so the blood bubbled out instead of spraying.

What are you doing?

What have you done?

Elliot stepped back, breathing hard. His body shook. His head throbbed. His hands... they were shaking, sticky, foreign.

It wasn’t what he thought it would be.

No big spray. No burst of red like in the videos. Just… a sudden, ugly bubbling, where the skin had opened too easily and was bleeding out. The guy made this awful grunt—half pain, half surprise.

Elliot froze.

He had imagined it louder. Messier. He thought it would feel like something shifted inside him. That he’d crossed some line he couldn’t come back from. But it was quiet. Still. The guy didn’t drop instantly, he just sort of sagged forward, like he didn’t even know he was bleeding yet.

Elliot was scared more than anything.

He had expected to feel shock, or guilt—or maybe some twisted kind of satisfaction. But instead it was like his brain hadn’t caught up. He just stood there watching the blood run down the guy’s face.

It didn’t feel real.

And yet his heart was pounding like he was about to die, instead of the old guy he just attacked. His whole body was shaking. He couldn’t tell if it was adrenaline, or regret, or just the horror of realizing he’d actually attacked someone.

He hadn’t even meant to. Not really. He just wanted to know what it would be like. Just get close to the edge and think about it. Pretend.

But now there was blood. And it was his fault.

And the guy was still breathing.

And there were lights coming through the trees.

Elliot held onto the man's weakening body, shoving him to the ground once again. He crawled on top of him, pouring his body weight into the man. The mallet trembled in his grip. He raised the mallet high above his head, hands shaking, and brought it down. Once. Twice. Three times.

Each strike was wet, releasing a heavy thud with every impact. And his heart pounded with every blow. Not just fear, but also something closer to relief.

He didn’t think. He just reacted. I can’t get caught. I can’t go to prison. I can't lose my dad. My sister. I love them too much. That thought surged through his head louder than any morality.

When the man stopped moving, Elliot stopped. Blood pooled beneath the body, warm and slow. The man’s head had caved in slightly. Cracked, dented, and oozing. Something pale and runny leaked out, clinging to hair and broken skin. Tissue, he guessed. Not a lot. Just a smear. Enough to make Elliot’s throat clench. It wasn't cartoonishly fatty like how he once imagined. Brains don't always look like that.

He’d seen death before. He’d created it: all those small, shivering bodies, the dogs and cats and possums. But this… this was different. This was human. This was close . The body twitched beneath him.

He backed away, heart racing, feeling the warm glow of the light behind him.

He turned and bolted.

He didn't stop running until his legs nearly gave out. He collapsed behind a tree, sweaty and panting, definitely turning some heads if people ever saw him. The woods were silent again.

His chest burned. His lungs felt like fire.

And the blood had dried onto his hands. It had soaked into the sleeve of his jacket. His stomach twisted, but he didn't throw up. His throat tightened, but no sobs came out.

He had killed someone.

Not in theory. Not in a dream.

Not with anger, not with a purpose of extremist ideals or a romantic tale.

He had crushed a stranger’s skull because it felt easier than facing the consequences.

The screaming in his head had stopped. The crawling anxiety that gnawed at him had gone quiet. Everything was still.

And now… it was coming back.

But worse. Because with the silence came clarity. And with clarity came guilt.

Not guilt for what he’d done.

Guilt for how good it felt.

He wanted to scream. To hit himself. To rip his skin off and crawl away from the thing he had become. But there was no undoing it. No pretending. No going back to the version of himself who only thought of killing.

That version was gone now. And what was left had blood on his hands and a calm in his brain.

He didn’t know what scared him more—what he had done…

…or the part of him that already missed it.

Elliot sat on the edge of his bed, fingers gripping the edge of the mattress, head bowed low.

His breath came in short—uneven, the aftermath of a nightmare still clinging to his skin like a fever. He blinked slowly, wiping the sweat from his brow.

It was just a dream.

A weird one. A really weird one. Frightening in a way he couldn’t quite describe—not because of what he saw, but because of how real it had felt. He could still feel the weight of the mallet in his hands. The pressure of it, the resistance. The sickening thud. The way it all felt like muscle memory.

But it wasn't real.

Eventually, he stood. It was only four in the morning, but lying there any longer would’ve made him feel worse. Restless energy charged through him.

He pulled on his red shirt, walked into the small kitchen of the cabin, and turned on the soft yellow light. Then he started making pizza.

Not because anyone asked. Not because he needed to. Just because… it helped. And because he loved making pizzas. To help othes.

Kneading the dough, brushing sauce on in a rhythm, humming softly to fill the silence. It all made him feel normal again. Like he was normal. Like this place, this game, hadn’t gotten to him.

And he loved making things for his friends. Loved the way they lit up when they tasted something warm. He was the glue in this mess. The cheerful one. The one who kept people together.

So why the hell had he dreamed that?

He didn’t want to kill anyone. Not really. It was just a dream. A weird, terrifying dream. One where he wandered around outside a bar for a week straight. Where he stalked some poor guy into the trees and smashed his head in with a mallet. Where he felt… relief.

The pizza was ready just as Chance shuffled in, rubbing sleep from his eyes with a lazy grin already on his face.

"Elliot," Chance said, voice half-mocking, half-sincere. "What kind of maniac wakes up at four to make breakfast? You trying to impress me?"

Elliot gave him a light smile. "What if I am?"

Chance leaned against the counter. "Well then, I’m flattered."

Elliot finished cutting the pizza into slices, trying to keep his hands steady. "I had a terrible dream. Last night. Like… the worst."

Elliot didn't know why he was admitting this. He was too tired for his mouth filter to work. Or brain.

Chance raised an eyebrow, still grinning but a little more curious now. "Yeah?"

"… I killed a homeless guy," Elliot said with a nervous laugh. "With a mallet. And a penknife."

The room went quiet. Chance stared, unsure if he should laugh or not.

Elliot continued, too tired to care that he might regret this later.

"I was obsessing about it in the dream," Elliot continued, his voice casual but his face twitching at the edges. "Killing people, I mean. And I guess I started with animals or something? It was vague. I remember stalking the same bar for a week straight, trying to find the ‘right’ person. It was messed up. But it was just a dream. Probably from being killed so much in this damn game. My brain’s coping in weird ways, right?"

He let out a forced chuckle, brushing his bangs out of his face. "I mean… imagine if I dreamed about killing Vanity Jason and eating him. Now that would be funny."

Chance didn’t laugh. Not really. Just gave him a strange look.

"Eat him?" he said, a little too flat. “Well, I guess if anyone deserves it…”

Elliot laughed again, but it didn’t reach his eyes. "Yeah. Gross, I know. I’m just tired. It was just one of those dreams that won’t shake off, you know? Like it meant something."

Chance nodded slowly, eyeing him with a look that tried to stay playful, but didn’t quite land. "Yeah. Sure. Weird dream, man."

They stood in silence for a moment, the only sound the low hum of the oven behind them.

The pizza smelled amazing.

But suddenly, neither of them was hungry.