I don't write my lyrics in pencil. Hades does, the moron, to give himself room to erase the mistakes that flow from his error of a soul. I write in red pen the color of fake blood we stockpile when they put it on sale around Halloween. I write,

The symphony of the dark embraces me
Devours my soul like Caacrinolaas
Lusts for my heart like a slavering siren
The music forsakes me when I prove weak
Why leave me, oh symphony, dark love?
Why rob me of the only silence I dream of?
Leave me
Don't tease me

The orchestra of the night caresses me
Envelops my mind in shadowy fingers
Craves my thoughts, a starving leper
The disease rots me, claws me apart
Why consume me, oh orchestra, beloved?
Why abuse my dying body to the end?
Collar me
Don't swallow me

The music of insomnia

and Pain interrupts me with a shrill, harpyish call of, "Die, aren't you hungry?" mixed dangerously with the smell of pasta Alfredo cooked from a box, bland and unappetizing for those who, like myself, transcend mere mortality and its trappings.

I drop my pen. "Not right now," I grate through grinding teeth. I imagine the molars receiving the brunt of my fury are gnashing chunks of Pain's sweet, soft flesh. I want to tear out his carotid, his larynx. I want to crush the indents of my fingernails into his lily-white arms, the color of purity begging for unholy defilement, a bruising deflowering to make him cry out in beautiful agony. I'm tired of his annoying concern, his henpecking, his pacifying hands on Hades's shoulder, his mascara streaming down his cheeks as he plays some woeful but meaningless piano ballad, and of his spiteful fixation with butting in on me. I want to see him bite his lip, drawing blood into a vampire's kiss to himself, as I hit him and he tries not to scream. I want him to crumple like discarded black leather pants thrown against a wall, bones cracking like the snap and zipper slapping the wall. Although he can't sing with a damned angel's soul in hell, his voice pierces the heard and entrenches itself in the memory when he screams.

They think I don't know about them.

I may be a musician, as destined by that nonexistent omniscient power cruel enough to put us on this earth with helots as our supposed equals, but I can do addition. I know enough to hear the knife in Hades's voice when he talks about breaking away from me, see the tears that streak Pain's consciousness as he struggles to free himself from the chains they have on one another's cracking ankles; they're each other's last hopes for music. Their bodies will break long before the bonds do. I know this like God supposedly knows everything; I know, and it's eating me alive, a curse of anger filling me. I write,

The music of insomnia adores me
Pretends it wants me to slake its thirst
Lies when it claims I am its essence
The somnolence weights my weeping eyes
Wrenches tears from my faltering heart
Tells me falsehoods to pacify, silence me
Why hurt me, leave scars, bloody trails?
Why lie to me to open wounds again?
Why torment me more than any demon?
Why tear my spirit, trample my emotions?
Love me
Don't leave me
Hold me
Don't scorn me
God, you revile me

"Die? Are you sure?" Pain calls one more time, as if he forgot my previous response.

"No. Again," I say.

He hesitates. His hand rests on the door, rattling it in the frame like a shiver through a skeletal mourner in a graveyard colored by midnight. He says, "What does that mean? Do you wanna eat with us?" and his voice wavers as if he is that mourner.

"I'm not hungry," I reply. "That's what it means."

"Hey, Die!" calls Hades, words accompanied by the rustle of a piece of paper likely covered in them, written in mechanical pencil with numerous eraser smudges. He knocks on the door with the click of his ring, the one Pain bought him for his birthday two years ago - not long after we began this experiment in our musical fate - indenting itself in my brain the way the skull on that ring must be indenting the thin wood. "New lyrics for the coffee shop show!"

"Shut up!" I say.

"Pestilence, devour her until she no longer haunts me, / Atrocity, rain upon her soul until her memory dissolves / Chaos, wrench the heart from her lifeless body, / Nightmares, leave her no moment of rest to regain herself," Hades sings.

When we started the band and doled out instruments and roles at the beginning of the only time that has ever mattered in my human parody of life, the three of us agreed that Hades shouldn't be the singer. His voice reminds me of a truck spitting gravel out from under its tires on an old country road, which are, unfortunately, in abundance in this imitation of true hell that is our hometown. He hasn't the otherworldly cadence that echoes through my voice, vibrations reaching out to those listening to beckon them to my bidding. I could enslave an army with my voice. Hades could kill Satan with his, so his serenade nearly brings spurts of blood from my eardrums.

I say, "Get out."

Hades frowns. With all the subtlety and articulation of a landmine under a soldier's feet in the middle of a deceptively peaceful meadow, he explodes. A flick of his spit flies forth into the room, but misses me, landing on the stained carpet instead. "The fuck?! Are you gonna lock yourself up in here all weekend, you prima donna? Just because we didn't like your lyrics for 'Overshadowing Prophecy of Devildom'? What're you doing, writing another pathetically uninspired song that doesn't do justice to our talents? Something to get us kicked out of a bar again, I hope!"

It isn't true, but to rid myself of him, I will say anything. "That's right. Now get out!" I shout.

"Fuck you!" he shouts back, and is gone. On a fresh, virginal white page, I begin,

I live ensconced in hate
I live for providing fear

and I would write more, but Pain opens the door and steps cautiously into the room, like a rabbit hopping tentatively into a meadow, sniffing the air for hints of a fox. I am not a fox. I am a wolf, waiting for the kill, smelling the fresh prey that has just presented itself to me, and I wait until Pain steps up in front of where I sit on my bed to reach up and cuff him around the head, my version of latching my teeth onto his neck and dragging him to the ground while the rest of my snarling pack surrounds him.

He flees, though, before I can sink my teeth in deeper, claw at his sides, before I can beckon the reinforcements to rip at his desperately kicking legs. His whimpers drift back to me through the house, and although I know that I will pay for this later when Hades, strongest of all of us for all he cannot sing, the brute of the group, demonstrates his anger and desire to leave the band. But it was worth it, to write,

I wish your heart to stop
My knife sinking into your flesh
To remove it when it refuses
I wish your brain to die
My hands wrenching it apart
Into ruined lobes when you run.
I live ensconced in hate
I live for providing fear
But only in your heart and mind.