The Games We Play | ✓

13. NORMAL IS AS NORMAL GETS

13.
[NORMAL IS AS NORMAL GETS]

—

THE IDLE NIGHT found the two killers lying quietly in bed together. It was a rare moment of silence amongst their games of murder and mayhem. It was as if under the sheets, they were reminded they were mortal, too.

From her spot, she could see the moon from the window. She wondered how many secrets it was keeping for her.

"Do you think we're bad people?" Reed asked softly that night.

"Yes," she replied without hesitation.

He was silent, almost as if he wanted a different answer.

"But so is everyone else," she continued. "Just because they don't have the guts to kill doesn't mean they're good people. No, they're far worse."

"Life is a game, Reed, and everyone's playing it. Some more serious than others. It's just a constant game of people playing each other, and if you're unlucky, you get eliminated. That's all there is to it. You should know that."

Reed did know that. He knew she loved the game, loved it more than anything. But Reed had played, and he had already won – or so he thought. He was at the top of the food chain, and yet the game never seemed to end, never taking any winners.

So how exactly do you win a pointless game that never ended?

"Life is a game," he repeated to himself.

She stared up at the ceiling like it was a fountain of dreams, "And we're fucking killing it." Her lips curled up slightly into an unseen smirk.

"Yeah," he whispered.

A moment of tainted silence elapsed.

"Don't you sometimes wonder what it would be like to be normal?" he asked quietly, his voice uncharacteristically shaky. The big pop star seemed so small then, curled up underneath his blankets, eyes wide as he stared into the darkness.

It was an absurd question for an equally absurd person.

What a sight it was – to see the vulnerability that danced in his murderous eyes. Without the dripping blood and power-hungry stares, he looked almost angelic in the moonlight.

"Why would we want to be?" she asked, turning to her side to look at him. She ran her hands through his tousled hair.

Normal was the first challenge of the game. If you fell for it, you'd find yourself in a trap where you chased your own in tail in circles, constantly trying to find the one thing normalcy promised – sanity.

But many met their ends trying to find it. 

Like Kenny, who blindly practiced a corrupted law that couldn't protect him. Or Lily, who chased naïve dreams she'd never reach. Or Owen, who fought for an honorable morality that abandoned him in abandoned streets. Or even Tristan, who sought pleasure in companionship he didn't understand. 

Those who overcame this trap played the rest of the game by their own rules. To be normal was to be restrained.

"Normal is boring, and you know how much I detest the boring," she said sweetly. 

Reed smiled softly as he leaned in to capture her lips. "I know it all too well."

He gazed at her, those gradient eyes flickering with something foreign. 

In the darkness, he wasn't a monster.

In the darkness, he dreamed of things he didn't dare dream of in the day. He touched her in ways he didn't dare touch her under the light. He kissed her like he was scared to lose her.

She smiled back at him, her hand drawing invisible patterns down his skin.

In the darkness, he couldn't see the bittersweet end to their gruesome beginning.