Human nature is something as complex as its vessel—made with care to be so intricate, yet it is flawed.

In front of me were two people. One half-dead. One wholly-alive.

The living was on top of the dead one; he just stood there, inanimate, except for his hand. The corpse’s breath was unrhythmic compared to the metronomic beat of the knife that moved.

Up, down, up, down—I couldn't get that out of my head.

I stood there inside an old part of the museum, a place where abandoned sculptures had come to call their home.

The moonlight came in through a broken window and fell onto the two beings as if a stage light. The floor was flooded with a bright red hue of blood, which glowed against the white marble. It seeped through the cracks in the floor, as if wanting to get as far as possible from this scene.

The man looked at me, and I recognised him at once: Harold Descartes, a renowned painter whose name and work were respected throughout the place. Why did this man, one who had achieved all of the things in life there are to be, turn into this monster of a being?

I stared back into his eyes.

I expected to see hatred.

Anger.

It was anything but that.

It was fear.

I didn't understand it at the time.

My body shook as I took the gun out of my pocket.

I took a step back and took the entirety of the situation in with a deep breath. The statues in the room bore their eyes onto me, awaiting to see what was to be done, and my index finger grazed the trigger, waiting to be given the sign. Should I take this life? Isn't he but another human being? But one that's lost his sanity? Then can he now be considered one?

But my finger seemed to have a mind of its own.

The smell of gunpowder choked me as the shot rang through the hall. I took a glance at the worn-down statue of Sisyphus pushing the weight of the boulder. The symbolic sculpture had been abandoned, left to succumb to its ruin. A carriage moved outside: the hooves of its horses rattled against the road, and what only followed was silence.

It was the dreaded silence of an aftermath, but what had occurred slowly seeped into my imagination. 

Life ended faster than it was made.