The whites of Aunamee's eyes are now a fiery scarlet. His lips are cracked, blue. When Grey releases his neck, the muscles remain crushed, holding up his head as though it were an hour glass. His wrist snaps under the pressure of the metal arm, but his fingers remain improbably locked around the knife's handle. He pushes the blade deeper. Harder.

And he laughs.

It's not immediately obvious as a laugh. With his throat crushed, it sounds more like a series of whistles, some wet with blood, others rattling like the cries of a summer cicada. He laughs because he always wins, because Grey will be dead soon and it will take a long time, because everything about the other man's fear is perfect.

Or maybe he laughs because he's scared out of his mind, because whenever he tries to look into his own future, he sees nothing but darkness. It's a twitching hysteria that soon escapes into his smile, his movements, his grotesquely exposed eyeballs. He throws his other arm up with all that unbalanced mania and reaches for Grey's face with his thumb and index finger.

He reaches for his eyes.