THE SHINING RADIANCE fades to red as it passes through the russet and translucent curtains covering the tall windows to my side. I walk towards the reddish light, rising from the darkness. First, my hand clinging my cherished knife and then, my spectral face. Is it me or that me that isn't me? The reddish shaft of light highlights the dust specks flying suspended in the air as it spills directly upon the opposite corner of this dark room, thus, revealing the face of my prey, the face of Constantine. He contemplates the immaculate cedar-wood walls decorating this room once more which always fascinated him, and now, he feels with his hands and perceives behind his back. So white and pure as he used to be. Circumstances led us to this crucial moment happening here, amongst the shadows and the scarce light, to cast the lot into the lap of fate. To cast a lot to determine who'll be the hunter and who the prey.

The old wooden gramophone on the other side of this large room plays Mozart's Requiem Aeternam, emitting a faint sound that harmonises with the organic hum from my circulatory system. The gramophone's tonearm holds the needle while the nonstop vinyl spins clockwise, reminding me the remorseless time, which, like the gramophone, won't stop so easily.

The die is cast.

I approach Constantine with slow but steady steps, like a clandestine wolf lurking in the nightshadows as it waits for its prey. He's shivering in fear inside, I can see it in his terrified visage. Same visage that seems perfect marble-carved as a Hellenistic sculpture, but which at this moment, shifts away from the virtue of the harmonious and ideal, because he never foretold this coming from me. He boasted of taming me, and that's why he must pay the consequences for the hubris of assuming his absolution from my vindication against the world. He turns the prey besieged between my flickering knife and the whitish wall behind him. I hold his gaze as he frightened yells:

—MADS, THIS IS MADNESS!

Yes. This is madness. Folie à deux is how shrinks call it. He knows well. This is a madness of two. A shared madness. A madness that began the exact moment we met. Embrace the madness or annihilate it from you.

—Just let this happen, Constantine. Close your eyes and wade into the quiet streams of your mind, and when you open them you'll see that, as in all occasions I've painted you, both in my mind and my canvases, you'll be overwhelmed by the final result. This may hurt both of us, but also may save us. Believe me.

—You aim to give me eternal life and thus make me prevail over death. Can I posit this as your intention? —he asks me perplexed studying me and the situation intently.

As I approach him, the look in his dark eyes begins to get lost in his face's reflection in the chromed blade of the knife. His breathing turns agitated and fast; I can almost hear his heartbeats. His eyes, whose pupils still fixed in the knife, seem liquid.

Then, a knot forms in his throat.

I grasp the wrist of my metallic gloved right hand for a moment, holding, in turn, the knife handle as I revolve it around its own axis. I seek to bring it the same dexterity required to wield a brush. The joint rattles and then, our eyes collide again. Like the first time.

—My only design endeavours to save you and our friendship —I explain him breaking the silence—. I must restore everything is broken between us. I placed you higher than all stellar divinities. Nevertheless, you aimed for more. You turned against me, thus becoming one of them —I say warmly welcoming him with open arms and beckoning so he approaches me—. I know you came here with the clear aim of doing this same to me. This is reciprocal. But unlike you, I'm not going to backnifing you —I add, holding his right shoulder to pull him towards me and thus prove once and for all he isn't another of my delusions.

—You're too vicious for being God, and I'm too naive for being Lucifer —he says finally laying his head on my chest.

While he remains in my arms, he settles among these trying to soothe me with his mere presence. The wan daylight is getting scarcer, dying and dying, little by little. He makes a vain attempt to take my right hand to disarming me, act to which, I immediately react with a subtle headshake in disapproval.

—Can we leave hostility aside and speak calmly? —Constantine asks me, taking his head away from my chest and looking me into the eyes—. All this only happens in your mind. You've to be aware this is not the first time you do this. Don't repeat this story. Our friendship may prevail —he professes patronising.

—That's right, Constantine. Our friendship shall prevail. Don't hesitate about that. This pursues the perpetuity of our devotion, and the only way to achieve it is by closing this circle we opened together. You need to believe in me again in the same way I need to believe in you. Again.

—Eternity requires sacrifices. Do you intend to immolate me just like you did with your father and all of them? —Constantine asks intrigued trying to make me see reason.

—We are posthumous. Every moment since the day I saved you is borrowed. This oblation will turn your fall into a beautiful work of art, Constantine. It's the only way to overcome your betrayal and restore the natural order of things.

—Natural order of things as well of laws of the universe were broken the moment I saw you and you saw me. But at this precise moment, who would be the betrayer and who the betrayed? The boundaries between us and all the opposite existing things became blurred.

—There are no opposites. Just us. And we are balance, harmony. Two sides of a whole.

—We're conjoined. That's precisely why I'm not able to understand what you're doing, Mads. I am your only friend in the world. Moreover, I am the person who knows you better.

—Even when my actions seem incomprehensible, you need to maintain your faith in my creation.

—From here, your creation also seems as destruction.

—Creation and destruction imply the same thing: change. Both states come from the same source. Such imagery can result both elegant and macabre.

—Like skullflowers.

—Yes. Like skullflowers. What an uncanny idea is for human mind the deletion of bounds.

—And are we bounded? Do you long with such desperation to return to your secluded life and the pain and suffering this caused to you?

—We're bonded. I yearn for the days when world ceased to exist and we both confined ourselves to the Eternal Forest. I let you know me. I gave you part of my life without skimping. I placed you before everything and everyone, even myself —I say to him as the words begin to knot in my throat—. Nevertheless, you betrayed our friendship and since then, I die silently and slowly. Yet, I need your empathy for one last time. I want you to feel in your own flesh the pain that tears me apart.

As I utter these words, I see the Wandering Wolf emerging from darkness peeking between my legs. He appears drooling and smacking its lips. Crystalline and glutinous slobber overflows his snout until falling to the ground. Its blue eyes fixed on his, which, like an swaying and sizzling bonfire in the midst of absolute darkness, mesmerise us both. All it wants is to pounce on him to split his jugular and carotids. I realise it eager to do what instinctively covets since the day I met Constantine. We both samesiding. We both aching for the same. Blood, blood, blood. The wolf would be enraptured to see how the blood spatters from his neck would spray up and redstain my face. The darkness we saw looming over us a while ago descends as night falls and begins to sink us.

Constantine lies in my arms like a shuddering child. The idea of ​​change frightens and disturbs him, but simultaneously, causes him curiosity. He must learn the only constant in this universe is change. Even our reflections in the other's gaze are no longer the same because these vanish with each blinking, in the same way, we both dissipate as fog.

—Mads, put that down, please! —he cries once more—. Please, don't lose your mind, or at least, don't get mad at me. Even when cruel, your wrath is a worse punishment than your dagger.

—You can't lose what you never had. Forgive me, Constantine, but you're giving me no choice. You became my yang, and I never accomplished such connection with someone before —I say as I cradle him with more strength—. I revealed even my darkest secrets to you, but you— you took that away from me. You took everything from me. You betrayed me by driving the indulgentless dagger of prevarication straight through me. I gave you something I never gave anyone, but you despised it. Consequently, the only thing I can do to fix you, to fix us, is to turn you into my most beautiful work of art. I intend to transform you into the finest art so that the whole world can appreciate the extravagant glory of our unique friendship.

—Please! —he begs in desperation—. This is not a way out! You will only cause everything to happen again! This won't bring back your father or my sister!

—This is how it should be, Constantine. The feeling of being stuck in this same moment back and forth haunts me. Now, all cycles must be closed. I created you, and I'll destroy you. I extolled you, and I'll humiliate you. I gave to you, and I will strip you. Can't live with you. Can't live without you.

I say those last words to Constantine as I prepare for a theatrical reckoning. He's imprisoned without escape.

Between my arms.

Between the knife and the wall.

Between life and death.

He became the elusive prey ensnared inside the collapsed doorway of my lucidity. Without no escape for either of us, Constantine faces his inevitable and final brush with death. We both get trapped in the perfect labyrinth I created. The cul-de-sac of emptiness conceived by the alienation punished me throughout my life.

This is the moment of truth. The moment for the pageantry ode to friendship and true brotherhood. A square and relentless courtship waltz will be danced on the edge of madness.

I introduce my knife with subtle violence, which like a wolf that jumps over a defenceless lamb, carves its way through the flesh of a victim surrendered to its faith, sinking its teeth and spraying the blood of retributive justice with such beauty and grace it even resembles poetry. Constantine's a helpless lamb who, by his own will, placed his life on the claws of a stealthy wolf eager to fill its appetite for companionship in the world, which, conversely, never stopped loving its loneliness. I'm that wolf, and I need to bloodstain my fangs once more.

I start listening to the reverberation of a tremendous sound. Like a drumset played in a violent and riotous way, which, gradually, begin to coordinate in unison, thus, becoming part of this wild-dance taking place right now inside my head. I feel a fascination for those sounds, after a while though, I realise it's my heart beating and trying to come out and join the frenzy that happens at this moment. I'm the only performer of this Opera. I'm here, as a watcher, observing myself from the outside. Being accomplice and partner in this paradox I am about to create by immolating the only friend I had since the Darkest Night. Accordingly, I'll be forced to return to that confinement that will eventually end my existence.

I push Constantine away from me. I hold him by the back with my left hand as I begin to thrust my knife into his chest in a firm and relentless fashion while still holding his gaze. The limpid and semi-transparent fabric of his shirt starts to pigment with the garnet of the blood, blending in like the canvas and the oil. A series of ephemeral sobs escape from his mouth as the dagger penetrates his flesh. Tears come out of his eyes, but despite that, he withstands the blade bizarrely. His eyes express a mixture of gratitude and contrition as I hear him mutter something.

—I do understand —he whispers as I hold him in my arms—. This is our nemesis. Yours and mine. I forgive you, Mads.

Then, in that moment of clarity, I stab his heart just like he stabbed mine, ensuring he feels that blade inside of him and procuring injure with such tenderness, so he has the opportunity to become part of my tribute to loyalty. This our Last Supper tableau and this is us, in flesh and bone, more alive than ever.

Constantine:

'What kind of irony am I a victim of? What kind of mockery of fate put my life in the hands of the one I considered my best friend? I suppose it's just that. The fact that I trusted him so much it was me who placed that double-edged weapon on his hands. I gave him that power to corner me between life and death in this decisive moment in which that shining metal blade grabbed by his hand, the hand of madness, it's my expiation. I could never see him completely how he indeed was. Hidden all the time behind several masks concealing the colossal emptiness inside of him. I heard that untamed wolf howling so many times, starving for flesh and blood, but I never saw it with the monstrous clarity I see it now. I kept my eyes wide shut. It's late for regrets. We mean nothing but smoke and mirrors.'

Mads:

'My symphony seems complete now. This complex composition, that, as a requiem is played in a phlegmatical tone, and whose crimson notes I engrave in the immaculate wall in which this dark performance it's spread and draw. This sorrowful and romantic medley would surely give him chills when played by delicately kissing his timpani.'

Constantine:

'I find myself facing the hangman who will execute this sacrifice. He became my nemesis. I feel the raw and stinging knife reaching my heart. It hurts, suffocates, punishes, and condemns me. I see into his eyes while he turns his blade inside of me. I peek a glance of what, from afar, might seem a tear running down his face before my sight vanishes. As he said, the pain feels unbearable, but concurrently, it's assuaged. He gently holds me to prevent me from roughly falling, and then, he subtly lays me down. He approaches me, and even when I can barely see him, I am able to perceive him. I feel how he stands in front of me and steals my last breath taking it inside him.'

This is the end of everything, or maybe, it's just the beginning. You and I developed into Alpha and Omega. We're the beginning and the end of each other. You lie in front of me, so powerless and ethereal like I never saw you. I begin to divest you of all materialism, so that close the cycle of life, and restore you to the state you were born in. Without chores. Without guilt. And even if you are no longer present, I will relish you for the last time. I see you transparent as never before. I appreciate the beauty of the velvety bare skin of your angelical body amongst the dim and dying light entering through the window. Now, I will consecrate you to what you always represented to me: an angel who showed me the closest to heaven, but who fatefully descended from the podium I placed him. But I will glorify you again turning you into a post-mortem work of art.

I close my eyes.

I see two fuzzy silhouettes merging into one. You ascended from my arms and set yourself up in the pose will give you immortality. From your back, a pair of wings arises filling this room wide; these will complete your metamorphosis. The lamb at least became a lion. The light that, at the end of the day, extinguished, is enlivened with greater splendour and as it enters through the windows, these transform into a majestic and colourful stained-glass. Pink. Purple. Yellow. Many brilliant colours make up. Beautiful, like a field of flowers blossoming accelerated before my eyes. A lot of geometric living patterns intersect each other like in a kaleidoscope. From behind, I see your backlit silhouette standing against the window light which makes your open wings seem endless as these vanish in the dark. At the top, right above your head, I can recognize a figure, it's a lion inside a circle. But I reconsider it for a moment, and it also resembles a gryphon.

Thus, with every drop of your spilt blood, I will colour this beautiful piece I pictured in my mind painted in your memory, which I will call "The Fallen Angel." A masterpiece.

The moment you leave me, both my heart and the universe and as well the whole will be halved. Just like I've bifurcated your heart in half. One half of mine will be filled with memories, and the other will die with you. See? See how merciful I've been with you? The dagger I carry inside of me will not lead me to death. Instead, it will be a sorrow punishing and cursing me for the rest of my days. I'll be stabbed, over and over, every time I remember you or think about you, and I can never root that out from my being. I'll wake up in the middle of the night, inundated by the leaves of memories detaching from the trees of the Eternal Forest. I forgave you, but I'll never forgive myself for changing you. I changed you. I changed you forever. Now, I can only hope for the inevitable inversion to befalls. At some point, time will start to reverse, recomposing the natural order shattered and prevailing over any sign of entropy — I tell him gently caressing his chin and realising he's still resting on my lap while we both lie on the floor.

"I turned to him.

I started to cry.

I wanted to kill him.

I had to do this.

I had to be with him.

He had to be with me.

We were the only ones left.

We were the only ones who mattered.

There is no one else in sight.

There is no one else in the world."

Inversion is here.

Close your eyes.

Eyes wide shut.

Continues in Chapter I - Part II

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