They didn’t live anymore in a world where life was to be colorful and celebrated. Life had become something you clung to, that you bit down hard on against the pain, like the rubber block in a session of electroshock therapy.

Ethan jarred open the Jeep’s door with his shoulder and stepped down onto the street.

The neighborhood stood silent.

Joyless.

Tense.

There were no bodies visible, but a large bloodstain still marred the pavement nearby. It would take a day of solid rain to wash it away.

He stepped over the curb.

From the front yard at least, his house looked intact.

No windows broken.

No door smashed down.

He walked the flagstone path and stepped up onto the porch. The floorboards creaked.

He pulled open the screen door, pushed open the solid wood door.

It was dark and cold inside, and Adam Hassler sat in the rocking chair beside the dormant woodstove, looking like a wasted version of the man Ethan remembered.

“What the hell are you doing in my house?” Ethan’s voice came out like a low growl.

Hassler looked over, his cheekbones and orbital rims pronounced from starvation.

He answered, “Believe me, I was just as surprised to see you.”

Suddenly, they were on the floor, Ethan struggling to get his hands around Hassler’s neck so he could squeeze the fucking life right out of him. He’d assumed that Hassler’s emaciated state would make overpowering him simple, but the man’s wiry strength was resilient.

Hassler torqued his hips and flipped Ethan onto his back.

Ethan swung, his fist glancing off Hassler’s shoulder.

Hassler returned with a hard, stunning blow.

Ethan’s world went pyrotechnic.

He tasted blood, felt it sliding down his face as his nose burned.

Hassler said, “You never knew what you had.”

He threw another punch, but Ethan caught his arm at the elbow and jerked it the wrong way.

Hassler cried out as the ligaments stretched.

Ethan shoved him into the toppled rocking chair and scrambled up, looking for a weapon, something hard and heavy.

Hassler regained his feet, advanced in a boxer’s stance.

Too dark in the living room for Ethan to see the punches coming.

Hassler connected a jab, then a hard right hook that might have turned Ethan’s lights out if Hassler wasn’t in such a weakened state.

Still, it snapped Ethan’s neck and spun him ninety degrees as Hassler delivered a devastating kidney shot.

Ethan screamed out, stumbling back into the foyer as Hassler kept coming, calm and controlled.

“It’s a mismatch,” Hassler said. “I’m just better than you. Always was.”

Ethan’s fingers wrapped around the iron coatrack.

“I even loved your wife better than you could,” Hassler said.

Ethan sent the hard, metal base arcing through the air.

Hassler ducked.

It punched a hole through the drywall.