One point five gallons.

  It is what makes them live. What makes the heart vibrate in function? What makes the brain shock through the shriveling neurons gifted yet wasted?

  They dance but cry.

  They offer but fear.

  They laugh but die.

  The cycle never stops for a reason because I exist. I always have, but I was never awakened for some delicious retribution. I was never meant for the light because the shadows were always the backbone of all creation. The backdrops of identity are where the many pondered but always feared.

  The dance continues. The joy on their smiles made their sorrow numb, but never had they tried to kill the darkness because no one knew why the lights existed. I will say that their offerings to appease my cause are pure bliss of their desperation, a result of fear that conducts from their sobs, like a melody that never broke the needle on the record. The laughter was their final goodbyes, attempting to cure the black with intangible medicine that only stalled death - The Vulture's Call!

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  The ballroom is always so decorative, so beautiful - vibrant in human creativity and dance. But not everyone is invited. Me? I chose not to come because I saw what was outside those golden gates.

  Outside are the reasons I chose to appease the pleasantry when every soul withered into nothingness, I, the judge, had always determined the birth of the darkness to kill the light. It's my job! It's always been! A buffet of eternal faces, wrinkling in pure terror of their demise as their bodies ache for their mandatory rituals that only I can conduct.

  What can you do to beat the darkness if necessary for your life? Nothing! I love the competition, because I always, and forever, will win.

  I can dance anywhere because the fabric of existence is my ballroom. My music is a collection of boundless acres of my cues. My territory is everything you can never witness because I am the one who laughs, as everyone else dies in my grasp of love.

  My responsibility. My duty.

  Remember everything in this letter when the lights are out because everyone who bled before me seems to forget. They think screaming, crying, twitching, and bleeding are normal. But what's really normal is that the human body can carry up to one point five gallons of pure red liquid. Enough to fill the ballroom that never finishes. I call it -

  The Crimson Plains.

  I never want it to end because the buffet is just so delicious.