A/N - Last chapter, guys :( I had so much fun writing this, I'm sorry its over. Oh well. Maybe I'll make a sequel and turn it into a longer story if I get any ideas :P Thank you guys so much for all your support, you really have been giving me fantastic reviews. After I read one I'm always on cloud nine for hours afterward, so I thank you for that! :D

Oh yes, I thought I should inform you, this chapter has forced me to change the rating to the big 'M'. You have been warned. :)

I was just getting ready for bed, and wasn't entirely sure if I'd heard it at first. I pulled my pajama top over my head and stopped, listening. I heard it again; something was definitely knocking against my window. I couldn't see anything outside though; it was too dark. Out of the two bedrooms in the house I shared with my roommate, I'd gotten stuck with the one that had the view of the brick building next to us.

I walked cautiously over to the window and squinted into the darkness. I always left it open a crack at night to let a breeze through, and I leaned down and peered through the opening between the window and the sill.

All of a sudden, there was a face pressed up against the glass.

I shrieked and jumped back. He lifted the window and climbed agilely into my bedroom, cackling. I stared at him with wide, shocked eyes.

"Chrissy, Chrissy, Chrissy," he said. He shook his head as he clucked his tongue and wagged his finger at me. "You always were a jumpy one, weren't ya?"

I could only gawk at the man in front of me, and what he had become in such a short period of time. I hardly recognized him.

He'd let his hair grow out and had dyed it a strange, almost grass-like green. His clothes looked like something he'd randomly thrown together in a thrift shop, but they did seem to match in an odd sort of way. And his face…

His face was only a grotesque mask of the handsome, though marred, countenance it had once been. The carefully applied ghost-white greasepaint was smeared together with the obsidian black around his eyes, and the blood-red that rimmed his lips and his scars. Collectively, it gave his features quite a fear-provoking appearance. I realized with a jolt that this way exactly the way Billie Ferguson's face had been made up the last time I'd seen her before she died. Chills ran up and down my spine at this thought, making me shudder.

His eyes were shining and eerie in the muted light of my bedroom lamp, and they were filled with that animalistic dark hunger that I recognized quite quickly.

"So, long time no see, eh?" he said conversationally. His tongue flicked out from between his lips, once, and so quickly that I hadn't even been sure I'd seen correctly, until he did it again a few seconds later.

I recoiled from him, my heart frantically trying to beat its way out of my chest. He pulled a knife out of his pocket and swung it haphazardly in front of him as he advanced on me, his sinister eyes flashing.

"Miss me?" He grinned.

I kept backing away until my back bumped against the door of my closet, on the opposite wall. I gulped nervously. I guessed that running now would be completely out of the question.

He stopped suddenly, holding the bottom of the handle of the knife between his thumb and forefinger, swinging it lazily from side to side. He cocked his head, staring at me expectantly. It was then that it clicked in my mind that he was actually waiting for an answer to his question.

"Erm…" I didn't really know if there was a way to accurately answer him. On one hand, I hadn't missed him terribly, not at all. I'd been free to do and experience quite a few more things without him tying me down. Nobody had wanted to talk to me when he was there; his strange demeanor and frightful reputation had always kept them just out of reach. I'd always thought that I'd had problems making friends, but after he'd left, I'd realized that it hadn't been hard at all. They'd only steered clear of me because of him.

But, on the other hand…

I had missed him, terribly. His dark presence was oddly comforting to me, having been there all my life. He was familiar, comfortable. Even though at this particular moment in time I was deathly terrified of him, I didn't want him to leave again. He was my oldest friend.

It was dreadfully confusing for me. My sudden flurry of inner turmoil made me frown; how could something like this, just seeing his face again, be so utterly chaotic to my mind? This sent a new wave of bewilderment through me.

During my befuddled, pensive silence, he must have sensed that he was not going to get a straight answer out of me. He stepped ever closer with that menacing, glistening knife, until finally he stood no more than a few inches away from me.

"You've certainly changed since I've been away. Not such a, uh, little girl anymore, are we?" he asked, holding the sharp edge of the blade against my collarbone. This erased every thought in my mind immediately.

"N – No," I stammered. I stared up at his face, nearly losing myself in how much he had changed.

He laughed.

"And did you wait for me, Chrissy?" His breath fanned across my face and made me shiver. The blade pressed a little harder against my skin.

"Wait? For…?" I trailed off. I had no idea what he was getting at.

"Me, of course! To come back. To claim you." His tongue stole out of his mouth and swirled over his bottom lip.

Claim me? I could only begin to imagine. My heart hammered rapidly with apprehension.

He grabbed my chin with his free hand and twisted my head from side to side, and his eyes narrowed as he studied me. Inspected me. The knife jiggled with his movements and dug in hard. I inhaled sharply as the blade pierced my skin.

At the sound of my distress he looked down also. He hesitated. His eyes locked onto mine, and, without looking away, he slowly leaned down and licked away the trickle of blood running down my chest. His free hand came up to grab my breast roughly.

Oh.

Now I understood.

He must have seen a light go on in my eyes, because he immediately straightened and grabbed at the hem of my shirt. I lifted my arms, my heart thudding. He jerked it up and over my head aggressively, throwing it to the floor.

I stood there numbly as he undressed me, still not having wrapped my mind around this. Unresisting, I let him seize my shoulders and lift me onto the dresser. My mind was fuzzy with disbelief.

When he pushed into me though, I was suddenly in a world of pain. I felt an excruciating snap as my hymen broke. He felt it too.

"Ahhhhhh. So you did wait," he growled, his breath hot against my ear. "You belong to me, Chrissy. You always have."

He continued without any consideration for me whatsoever. Tears streamed down my cheeks, agonizing pain ripping through me with his every thrust. I bit down on his shoulder hard to keep from screaming out loud. If he felt anything, he didn't acknowledge it. But I didn't ask him to stop.

Before long, pleasure began to override the pain, and I began to enjoy myself. I wondered fleetingly if my roommate was a light sleeper, and hoped to God that she wasn't. We'd gotten pretty loud.

I felt it building and building inside of me, a tightly wound ball of pleasure that was threatening to explode at any moment. Then suddenly I was over the edge, engulfed in waves of bliss. He came moments later, shuddering and moaning. I leaned on his shoulder with my arms around his sweat-slicked neck, panting.

He was still for a moment, then pushed me away and dressed quickly. He climbed swiftly back out the window and was gone. I was left sitting there on my dresser wordlessly, still in shock at what had just happened. I looked down and saw his knife, still on the dresser, a drop of my blood clinging to its tip. I knew he would be back.

That, was our first time. It has been many since then.

Now, I'm taking courses at the university I worked so hard to get into, and I even made enough to rent out my own small house. He always manages to find me, wherever I go. I'd forgotten to let him know that I was moving; and yet the first night I ever spent in my new house had been with him. Having my own place comes in very handy, especially considering what we do during his visits.

He visits me whenever it's convenient for him, be it once a month, once a week, or once a day. Whenever he needs me. And I don't really mind that, in all truth. I just wish he'd try a little foreplay once in awhile. For my sake.

He also bites me quite a bit; I look down at myself right now and see scarlet make-up smears on my skin from his lips, and red marks wherever his teeth have dug into my skin. And if I said he'd never used one of his knives in bed before, I would be lying; I now have various small scars on several parts of my body that are a result of this odd fetish.

He tells me things, sometimes. Things like why the cracks in society are so easy for him to pry open, and why people react the way they do. It fascinates him that such small disturbances in such a disorganized world can cause as enormous of upheavals as they do. He thinks he's got the mechanics of the world all figured out. He's cunning, and I'll definitely give him that. But unfortunately, he is also a madman. And I know that now.

At first, I wouldn't let myself believe that he had gone mad. I kept waiting and waiting for the piece of sanity that I was so sure would begin to shine through his veil of insanity. But it refused to manifest itself; and finally, over time, I realized sadly that it never would.

I've tried dating on and off, and it never seemed to work out. That was when I realized what he had told me that night was true. I belong to him. I always have.

I look at him now, sleeping in that chair by my window, the moonlight streaming onto his disfigured, war-painted face. And it is war paint. He's been fighting a war his entire life: himself, against the whole of humankind.

And I wonder exactly how it came about that I fell in love with a madman.

End