Love and Hatred shared a one-bedroom shack at the farthest stretch of the bayou. The disgusting beauties spent most of their days diving and swimming the muck, waiting for some unlucky idiot to tear apart. It was no one’s fault that the two gaunt, pale lovers were confused for sisters.

Outside of Love looking deader and Hatred’s seething flesh, they made games of trying on the other’s clothes, swapping blond and black wigs, and exchanging eyes. Their makeup was always smeared from sweat and fighting and kissing.

Ash always told them apart, even as he crashed headlong into a rotted log and through to their den the night that Song died (and Decay ordered another glass alone).

“I’m not taking his clothes off this time.”

Ash rolled onto his back and tossed muck across the fire-preserved wood. He had little time for more, as the sisters descended in a violent fashion. Love took his throat, Hatred pinned him with bony thighs.

“Ash, what are you doing back here so soon?”

“She killed Song,” Ash muttered, trying to sit. The fist clenching his throat was as good as a metaphor. A lack of oxygen meant nothing. “And I’m off having drinks with a Grand Reaper like nothing happened.”

“Who killed Song?” Hatred grinned with sparkling white teeth behind a white bridal veil. “I bet it was the damn video star again.”

“Hush, hush. We don’t make human references. It lowers us.” Love kicked at her analogue’s face. “Time won’t like that.”

“Time hates everything,” Hatred chimed in. “She might be a bitch. What are you doing here, Ash?”

“I told you.”

“You hate Time. Blah, blah, blah.”

“He hates Time but he doesn’t just visit us because of hate. He never wants just me.”

“Who do you love?”

“No one,” Ash shoved Love away, trying to gain purchase on the slippery, boondock* floor. “I want back out. Take me back to where I was. This was a mistake, coming to you two. Remember when you cared about more than fucking?”

Hatred climbed off of the comfy lap and joined Love, gazing down at Ash from a place of resentment and persecution. A soft wind blew in from the swamps, followed by the distant croak of a Borea-born horror.

“Everything is sex,” the two echoed. “There has never been a time where it was anything else.”

Ash bore his teeth.

“Play Time a song. Kill her.”

“Hatred! He’s not here because of Time. He’s here for--”

Hateful knuckles struck Love across the cheek. Her sentence wasn’t meant to cross the finish line. And soon the lovers were consumed in a cozy, little war that crashed through kitchenette cutlery and flimsy walls.

Ash picked melted crickets from his hair, watching the quaint home torn to pieces.

The whirling dervish of limbs slapped behind him, somersaulted through postering screeches, and came to a calamitous end where it had started, with Hatred’s veil shredded, and Love’s bottom lip split and bloody.

“Cunt.”

“Reapers need love, too.” Love spat in Hatred’s face. Teeth stained crimson, bubbling at the gums.

“You’re beyond full of yourself.”

“Can I go now?” Ash asked. “You both know I don't choose to visit you. Ever since the rupturing, you have too much control.”

“Oh, you won’t want to go from here.” Hatred turned flared mascara eyes upon the reaper. Her expression turned from bitter to regret. “I’m afraid my sad little creature of a minx is wrong about herself. No one needs love. Not in this world or the lesser one beneath our brow. You need hope.”

“Don’t say it,” Love muttered.

“Too bad hope died a long time ago.”

Another suckerpunch. Another clambering of skeletal fisticuffs.

And, if Ash listened hard enough--which he did, he heard Hatred saying “I stole a message from Time. She sent a new harvest with your little baby name on it, Ash.”

“Then give it here.” Ash had found his footing. He pried the two apart only to have them both turn against him.

Two unified fists slammed his chest, knocked the inessential air from his lungs, and threw him back the way he came.exex