The sound of his laughter echoed through the room, but his eyes remained cold and distant. Beams of moonlight shot through gaps in the floorboards above, illuminating the dust and gun smoke that swirled in the stale basement air, as the dark red glow of his eyes slowly faded below the ragged hole in his forehead. Looking at the wound, I almost regretted using such a barbaric projectile. A hollowed-out wooden spike lined with silver and filled with gunpowder. Three months spent developing the bullet, three months spent developing the gun to fire it, and one month spent learning to aim, but I had failed to hit a single target until today. When it mattered, the spike flew true and found its mark. But there he still stood, his icy stare fixed on me. This was not the first time I had delivered a seemingly fatal blow, not even the tenth time, but this time was different. His eyes had never before lost their glow. I took a slow, cautious step to the left to see if his gaze would follow me, but he was motionless, lifeless, and still standing. His laugh had long since ceased bouncing off the decrepit, earthen walls, but it still reverberated in my mind. His eyes had finally faded, so why not the laugh? Whether involuntary, like nervous laughter, or intentional, his ominous laugh always gave him away. He could have easily used his cunning and stealth to approach unnoticed and end my life, but the laugh always preceded his attack. Maybe he didn’t want to win so easily. Maybe he preferred the challenge. I was entertainment, or sport, or both. He had plenty of other victims to feed his hunger, so I guess I fed his mind. Only this time, I fed it with the wooden spike now lodged in the wall behind where he still stood. The laugh rang louder in my mind. It was like he was right next to me, or even inside my head. I considered the possibility of him passing his being from his decimated brain matter into my mind, and the thought made me feel faint. I stumbled to the nearest wall for support. He had shown so many fascinating abilities during our brief history, it would not surprise me if he were capable of such a trick. I watched him fly into the night sky just before dawn, blow like sand under a closed door and re-form on the other side, and regenerate his skin to heal the wounds I had inflicted, so why doubt the ability to pass from one mind to another? I quickly searched for memories to prove I was still myself. The time I had fallen asleep on a branch of the big, solitary oak tree in my family’s backyard and was awakened by the ground. The time my grandfather took me fishing and I cast the hook into the back of my earlobe. The time I snuck up behind my older brother in that abandoned building and he turned and lunged violently at me. These reminders of my youth reassured me I was still in my own mind. My blood went cold. The big, solitary oak tree had been in my families back yard, and my grandfather had taken me fishing on many occasions, but I did not have an older brother, or any siblings for that matter. That was not my memory. Or was it. I could picture him clearly, his long black hair, his grin exposing pointed incisors and long, sharp canines, his dark red glowing eyes. I laughed out loud, a sinister laugh that was not my own, and just as my vision faded to black I saw the body that stood lifeless across the room fall to the ground with a sickening thud.