Q follows HER down the alley way turning at the end of what looks like a dead end. She slides through what looks like a crack in the wall into a tiny closet like room. HER lights two well-used candles and the room illuminates. Inside are stacks of notepads and old magazines and newspapers. Every inch of them drawn on.

Q squeezes in behind her and stares around the room. What’s with all the notepads? She reaches out to the closest stack next to her and opens the notepad precariously placed on top. She turns to the first page and sees a drawing of a hand with a wedding band on it. There are small wrinkles at the knuckles. The hand is rough and masculine.

So you like to draw? Q continues to thumb through. With each page turn she sees more and more fragmented images. One body part after another.

I had no idea you loved drawing so much. Looks like you really like details.

Q takes a seat in the one empty corner and starts laying these notebooks around her open.

Her stays in the middle of the room and plops herself down. To her right an inconspicuous pile of pencils and charcoal are scattered on the ground.

I’m not drawing. I’m remembering.

Q looks over at HER and then looks down at the drawing in her hand. A face completely covered with matted bloodied hair. The shape is off. The person’s head is bashed in on the top.

Q continues to move through the notebooks, but this time more slowly and thoughtfully. Did HER see all of this? Are all of these dead people.

Q suddenly halts her methodical page turning. And halts immediately at a man, mid-thirties, smiling straight from the page. This man. This is him.

What are you remembering about this man? She asks in a light-hearted, coy way. Q holds up the drawing of NYX to HER.

HER pauses for a moment and thinks.

I remember… I remember how he looked liked that the first time he told me to kill.

And how he still looked like that, with this big, unnerving smile afterwards...

[flashback to the first time she killed. NYX, her, and soon-to-be deadman]

[soon-to-be deadman, sitting in a chair, hands are tied up behind him]

Nyx hands a gun over to HER. And he sees the hesitation in grabbing it from him. HER lets the weight settle into her hands. It feels heavy and cold.

What you are going to do right now will set you free. Let go of the guilt you carry with you. Carrying the weight of someone else’s life will not help you live. Death will happen to everyone. Including you. So why does it matter if you cause the death, or someone else does, or nature? Death will happen to everyone.

Why you decided to become a soldier doesn’t really fucking matter. And guilt has no place in being a soldier.

Nyx walks over to a masked body sitting on the wooden chair with his hands tied up behind him. He roughly grabs the top of the bag and holds up the soon-to-be deadman’s head. Nyx smiles at HER and gives her the look from her journal. He lets go of the head and it immediately flops right down.

You are no longer an individual. A single entity. Death will happen for this man. If not you, some other soldier will kill him.

So let go. Shoot. And be free.

HER holds up the gun. hesitates. Lowers gun.

HER pictures the scene from Q’s house, a bloody girl next to her mother on the floor. HER running away.

You don’t have to feel anymore. You don’t have to think. Just let go. Raise your gun now. Shoot him, soldier.

The gunshot rings out. And HER stares at Nyx. His face. I’ll never forget his face. And he looks back at her as if she is the most seductive and beautiful women in the world.