Per 
For a moment, the dead of night is quiet.
And then it isn't.
The passenger side door opens, metal grinding against metal as its hinges creak open. Lily steps out of the wreckage, not a single hair out of place, the warm air of the summer night embracing her like a blanket.
She turns towards me.
"Hey," Lily says. "I was wondering when you were going to show up."
I'm standing in front of her, staring at the monster in front of me, that great horned beast with blonde hair and blue eyes in front of me, glaring at me with a gaze that burned through my skin.
"H-How the fuck?" I manage to choke out. "You can't—" Words get stuck in my throat. Something's stopping them from being spoken.
All I can do is look up at Lily. She's standing there in front of me.
Lily's eyes drift away from me, like they're operating independently from her body, and towards the corpse in the driver's seat of the wrecked car next to her. Blood's streaming down the face that kissed her a few minutes ago. His skin is without color. His eyes are without life. "I never liked him, to be honest," Lily says, her voice chilly against the warm summer night. "But I guess… someone out there thought we looked cute together." Lily turns to me, her face lighting up with an innocent smile, for once looking like the teenage girl she's supposed to be rather than the eldritch horror she is.
"It doesn't matter…" Lily muses, her smile fading, to be replaced by a look of deep thought. "Nothing… matters." For a moment, it's like the universe holds its breath. And then it's gone, and the driver's seat is empty.
"You know, I wanted to go to Stanford," Lily begins. Her slender arms are raised slightly to her slides, like a bird ready to take flight. "I know I'm not the smartest kid in my class. But I thought, maybe if I made myself stand out, showed them what I was passionate about… who knows?" Her gaze trails off into the distance. All of a sudden it hardens, and her youthful face turns into a mask hardened by resentment and bitterness. "But it's never going to happen." She looks directly at me again, and my heart seems to stop. "Because of you."
You.
Those three letters, making up such a simple word, are spoken with such venom and hate that seems almost inhuman coming from Lily's red lips, the monster lurking beneath that innocent facade unveiling itself for the first time.
"You know what it's like to be me?" Lily spits. Her hair is blowing in the wind. "It's like being fucked. It's like being fucked by thousands of people all at once." Her voice cracks until it's barely a whimper. She wraps her arms around her torso like's she's cold. All of a sudden, instead of seeing the monster in front of me, I see the seventeen-year-old girl, lost and lonely and hurt.
I almost feel sorry for her.
"Oh, God, I've waited so long for this," Lily breathes, almost orgasmically. "I thought I was crazy. I've known all these years that you were out there… And now I've found you. And you're completely at my mercy." She pauses. "Why don't you explain yourself? I want to hear what you have to say."
It's like a weight is taken off my throat. "Lily, please, you have to understand!" I beg, words coming out of my mouth like sand through my fingertips. "It wasn't anything personal, I swear! I didn't know things were going to be like this!" The muscles in my face slacken as I realize the horror that I have wrought. And suddenly, I can't defend myself anymore.
There's a short pause before Lily speaks again.
"Didn't you?" Lily hisses venomously. "Didn't you know that you were going to orchestrate all this… this shit?" She gestures her arms in outrage around her. "God, looking at that thing makes me fucking sick." The universe holds its breath again. And then it lets go, and the wreckage of the Civic is gone from the highway.
I'm suddenly aware of the fact that there are no more stars in the night sky.
Lily slinks towards me, long legs moving with unearthly grace, her eyes glowing like a cat before it kills its prey. "You think you're such hot shit," she purrs, licking her lips. "You think you're a fucking god." Lily's getting uncomfortably close to me, maybe two feet away. I can see the brimstone in her eyes.
Her face is mere inches from mine. She speaks again.
"But I know everything now. I know that you're nothing. I know of the others, watching over you as you did to me. And you can't do shit to stop them."
"What the fuck are you talking about?" I whimper. I don't accept it, but in the back of my head I already understand.
"I guess in that way… we're the same." Lily speaks with a tenderness that catches me off guard. The way she's looking at me… it's like she understands what's happening to us. Maybe that does make us the same.
And then her lips touch mine.
The kiss is longer than I expected, but it ends. Lily pulls away. She's growing horns from her head. The universe throbs, as if Lily is inflaming it like an infection. All of a sudden the cars are gone. The highway is gone. The sky is gone. All that's left of the universe is Lily and I, I and Lily.
"You know what you have to do," Lily breathes, her voice light and ethereal, dissipating into the nothingness around us, becoming one with the void. The next time I blink, she's gone. And in her place is a gun.
"You know what you have to do." Lily's gone, but the words are circling around me like a swarm of bees, and the nothingness is now Lily's voice. "You know what you have to do." "You know what you have to do." "You know what you have to do."
"You know what you have to do."
I walk over to the pistol.
I place the barrel into my mouth.
I pull the trigger.
In my last moments, I see them.
I'll be watching you, Andrew.
