It's down to just the two of us now. Killer versus killer.

I know that I'm dreaming, but it seems so very real...

"It's time to end this, Red..."

"Time to end you anyway, asshole..."

I recognize this...thing standing before me, both his appearance and voice...

I step forward, raising my knife and aiming for his neck, but he catches me by surprise and suddenly swings his scalpel upwards, catching me in the neck instead and slitting it open.

---

My eyes snap open to see blood spraying upwards in front of me.

What the fuck?

Standing up from my laying position on the sofa in the living room, I feel dizzy and realize the blood's coming from me, or to be more specific, from my neck. Reaching up, I feel the large gash along my neck, but due to my rapid regeneration, within seconds, the bleeding's already become a small drizzle. Glancing around, I see several of my servants spread around on the floor of the room, all either dead or fatally wounded. And then when I look behind me, I see April standing in a doorway, a blood drenched scalpel in hand.

April: "What does it take to kill you?!"

Oh shit.

It's not her talking. Well, it is, but she's going through one of her urges, so she has no control over what she says or does. So what should I do? I don't really want to fight her, as I could easily incapacitate her, even when she's like this, with a force behind her giving her strength that she wouldn't have normally. If I don't fight her though, she'll just continue killing my servants and trying to kill me. I could try to just wait it out and dodge her attacks until she loses the urge, but that could take hours to happen.

"April, put the scalpel down."

April: "I'll surrender my weapons to no one, especially not to someone such as yourself."

Behind her, I saw one of my servants that had managed to avoid her initial assault trying to sneak up behind her. When he was just a couple feet away, she suddenly spun around and slit his throat, just like she'd done to me, except my servant wasn't likely to survive. He fell to his knees, grasping at his throat as his blood spilled out of it, adding to the bloodstains already on the carpet from myself and the other servants. This little urge of hers was going to cost me some money when it was over.

---

April watched in horror as Red's servant bled to death at her feet. She was still holding the scalpel, but she had zero control over what she did with it. She could feel some sort of presence in her mind, which she was certain was the reason for her behavior. She tried to fight the presence, force it out of her mind so she could regain control. She wasn't strong enough to do so though. Then she tried to speak to Red with her own words, but she wasn't strong enough to do that either.

Turning from looking at the dying servant to look back at Red, she saw that he'd moved slightly closer to her while she'd been distracted by the servant. She was afraid of both what she might do to him and what he might do to her. She'd already tried to kill him once, reminded of that fact by his bloodied neck, but apparently she hadn't done it properly. She was glad of that though. If she lost him, especially if it was because of something she did, she figured she might as well just kill herself, because there was no way she could manage this 'problem' on her own and there was no one else she could go to about it.

Red: "April, put the god damn scalpel down right now!"

I want to, Red. I really do...

April: "I'll put it down after I put you down."

---

Alright, she's leaving me no choice. I've got to get close enough to her to get that scalpel out her hands, but how? She'll stab me if I get too close and despite my rapid regeneration, being stabbed fucking hurts and isn't something I particularly enjoy. I guess I could try to distract her somehow, maybe with one of my remaining servants. I don't really want to do that either though. She's already thinned their numbers enough for one day and they're getting harder and harder to replace. It seems like more and more potential people for me to hire as servants are too afraid to accept the job. Maybe word's going around that working for me can be hazardous.

Fuck it.

Doing no more thinking about this situation, I charge at her. I feel a sharp pain as the scalpel enters my abdomen, going deep, but I ignore it for the moment. I ended up catching her completely off guard and she gets knocked off her feet. As she's standing back up, I quickly grab her with both of my arms.

"Sorry about this."

I then proceed to give her a headbutt, knocking her out, before gently laying her back onto the floor. I hope I haven't done any serious damage to her. She'll have one hell of a headache when she wakes back up though. And hopefully when she wakes back up, she'll be back to her normal, kind self.

Wincing in pain, I remember the scalpel and look down to see that only about an inch of it didn't get shoved into my guts. Grabbing onto what I can of the handle, which is slick with blood, I begin to pull it out, resisting to very strong urge to start hollering obscenities over the pain it's causing me. Once it's out, the sharp pain almost immediately subsides to a dull throbbing. Dropping the blood coated scalpel to the floor, I turn my attention back to April.

Normally when someone cuts me with something, twice, I proceed to do the same to them but in much worse ways than they did to me. With April though, I scoop her up into my arms and carry her over to the sofa where I was napping before. She appears to be unharmed, other than the fact that I headbutted her. There's some blood on her arms and clothes, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't belong to her.

Servant: "Sir?"

I turn around to see that my surviving servants have entered the room. There's only four of them now.

"What?"

Servant: "Umm...this may not be the best time to tell you this, but the police are here..."

Great, just what I need now. I let out a sigh.

"How many?"

Servant: "It looks like a SWAT team."

"Fuck. Take her upstairs to my bedroom then and protect her."

Of course, if she wakes up and isn't back to normal, they'll be the ones that need protection.