Chapter Text
My hands were shaking. My entire body was shaking. I stood in shock for a mere ten seconds before turning and walking away from the scene as soon as I could. The air felt a lot colder than it had when I had first left the hotel.
I made my way back to my own hotel room to find my mom peacefully asleep on her bed. She was sleeping on top of all of her blankets. Her makeup was slightly smeared, her eyeliner fading into the earthy colored backdrop of her eye shadow. The room was colder than it had been before. Much, much colder.
I crawled into my bed and buried myself under the warmth of the blankets. Even so, I continued to shiver. Questions swam in the waters of my conscience. I thought to myself, “Maybe I was just imagining things. Maybe I smoked something and I don’t remember. Maybe I’m dreaming.” Nothing seemed to make sense to me, it felt like nothing could explain why the hell Tyler Joseph would stab somebody.
Was there a good reason? Most likely not. But I wanted there to be one.
My mind continued, but my body had no will to. I let myself drift off to sleep, surprised that I could possibly do so after witnessing a murder. But I did, shivering because of the cold air, much colder than it had been before. Much colder than it had been before.
Morning came too soon. As soon as I woke up, I wished I could fall back asleep. I wished that the moon had never gone down and that I could sleep for the rest of my existence. Turning my head, I saw my mom hurriedly brushing her hair in front of the mirror.
“I’m going out to brunch with a couple of friends I met last night, is that okay?”
Her voice sounded distant, but it was audible nonetheless.
“Yeah,” I replied, my voice hoarse. “Yeah, I think I’m going to go for a walk.”
I swear I didn’t mean to end up at the park. I kept my distance and simply stared at the spot where I had sworn I saw Tyler last night. There was no trace of any violence, no trace of blood, no evidence to prove what I had seen was true. It was nagging me, though. I couldn’t leave the question of “did it really happen?” unanswered.
Before I knew what I was doing, Tyler’s voice was in my ear.
“Josh?”
“Tyler,” I pretty much breathed out. It came out shaky, but I tried to keep emotion down. “Tyler, where are you right now?”
“I’m, uh…” He took a moment to think. “I”m in the garden of the mansion. Why?”
He sounded too nervous.
“Can I meet you there? I wanna ask you something.”
“...You can’t ask me right now? Over the phone?”
“No. In person.”
“Um.” Another pause. “Okay. I’ll be here, waiting. I’ll tell security you’re coming.”
I hung up, feeling bitter to the core. Never before in my life had I been more cold towards somebody in the way I was with Tyler in that moment. Pocketing my phone, I started to walk to the mansion. The town on the island wasn’t that big, so I easily remembered where it was. It was dangerously close to the park, too… it seemed too close for Tyler to consider committing a murder there.
I arrived at the gates in a little less than fifteen minutes. The security guards let me in without a single word, which I found rather odd. The mansion had sidewalks that wrapped all around the building, leading to different areas around it. It didn’t take me long to find the garden, which was located behind the mansion’s main building, a little bit to the left. I’m pretty sure that the garden contained just about every flower known to man. It was flourishing with sickeningly sweet scents that was almost overwhelming.
Tyler saw me first. When my eyes landed on him, he was already looking at me, sitting on the ledge in front of a bush of roses. If he was nervous at all, he didn’t look it in the slightest.
“Joshua,” he spoke first, using the same sly tone he had when I had first met him only a day ago. “What questioned needed an answer so urgently? I’m honestly dying to find out.”
I gave myself a moment to think of what exactly I wanted to say. I had to be careful. “What exactly happened last night?”
His facial expression softened. “Oh, well, you got a bit tipsy and I had someone escort you to your hotel.”
“Why not my own room?”
He hesitated. “I wasn’t sure which room you were staying in.”
“Yeah, but- but couldn’t you have like, found out or… something.”
“Not that easy. Is… is everything okay? Did something happen?”
I eyed him carefully before stepping close to him. I considered for a second sitting next to him, but being taller than him made me feel safer.
“Where’d you go after… after whatever happened at the lounge happened?”
“Back here, where else?” Tyler answered quickly. “I considered staying with you, but you were in no state to give proper consent to do anything.”
For some reason, that sentence seemed funny to me.
“Besides, there’s not much to do on this island when you’ve lived here for as long as I have. Even the beaches-”
“The park,” I interrupted before I could stop myself. “The park, Tyler, the fucking park.”
“...Park?”
My hands seemed to act on their own accord, pulling Tyler up to my level by his shirt. His face was only a mere few inches away from mine.
“Please, Tyler, tell me I’m crazy or something.”
He continued to look at me with a look of fabricated confusion.
“I seriously don’t know what you’re saying about the park… What, did you see something you shouldn’t have?”
I tightened my grip on him. He was kidding, right? Did he think that this was funny or something?
“I don’t know, was there something going on that I wasn’t supposed to see?”
Tyler turned his head slightly and squinted at me. I could feel that he was trying so, so hard not to seem nervous at all. But I know better. Tyler was nervous as hell, and I could only find any notion of that in his eyes.
“You know,” Tyler began. “I would be careful if I were you. Whatever you may or may not have seen could have more to it that you think.”
“What else could a fucking murder have to it?”
I should’ve really let myself think before saying that, because almost immediately after those words came out of my mouth, my jaw was met with a fist. It was something out of a movie- so dramatic that I fell to the concrete below me. The punch was momentarily blinding, and it gave Tyler just enough control to pull me back up and put me into a headlock. I guess me saying that was proof enough for Tyler that I was a threat.
“Listen man, I really don’t want to hurt you,” Tyler whispered into my ear, his voice much more serious than I had heard before. “That’s why I let you go last night, I had my eye on you but you were too pretty to ruin.”
He started to pull me towards a back door to the mansion, his grip tightening with every step. His words began to dawn on me. Last night, he was planning on killing me instead.
“But if you seriously can’t keep your mouth shut, we’re going to have a problem.”
I was shoved through the door and met with two things: pitch blackness and a kick to my chest that knocked me to the ground in seconds. I could barely even comprehend what was happening.
“I care about you,” Tyler’s voice spoke quietly as soon as the door closed behind him. “I really do. I care about your sad, sad life. But you can’t mess with things you don’t understand.”
“So, what then?” I choke out. “What don’t I understand?”
“Do you want to understand?”
I guess he took the silence as an answer that said “yes”. The light of the room switched on. At first I had thought that the room was empty, but I was wrong.
“I hate the color red, Joshua. I hate it so much. I hate myself, I hate how I am, but I was born like this and I don’t know why. I don’t know why.”
Jars. He took one into his hands and caressed it as if it were a precious gem.
“The taste of my own used to be enough for me, but the taste of other people’s was overwhelming. In the good way. I liked it, it was weirdly comforting. My parents knew it was gonna happen.”
“You’re a fucking vampire,” I breathed out.
“No." Tyler shook his head with a look on his face as if that was the most profoundly obscure thing he had ever heard. "No, I'm not a vampire."
“Then what? What are you?”
Tyler’s hands were shaking as he set the jar back onto one of the many shelves in the room.
“I guess,” he started before taking a very, very deep breath. He closed his eyes tightly. “I’m an addict.”