Monday, January 11, 2010 | 3:19 PM |

Chapter 1

"No reason to live without you."

AUTHOR'S NOTE (from "Forewords"): 4. I’m not sure if it fits exactly with the atmosphere of my one-shot, but if the avid readers wish to play Epik High’s Owls. Shadows. Tears. in the background (on repeat, of course, due to the short length) while reading this, feel free to do so. I will try to find a song, hopefully soon, that will fit this story. Meanwhile, you can suggest some songs, if you wish, by posting a comment.
Here’s a link to Epik High’s Owls. Shadows. Tears. (on YouTube.com - cr: angeluis23).
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Even within the firm clutches of hell, she was beautiful.The young man gazed down at her face and body, endlessly and hungrily. Everything about the young woman portrayed the delicacy of a bleeding heart; she wore a simple strapless red dress, the bottom flowing and free like the uncensored wind. Her pale skin complemented the dress; her left hand more so as it lay lifelessly on her stomach, smooth and soft. Her long silky raven-black hair was spread messily around her head, appearing like wild tentacles to a bystander. A few strands were covering her mouth; the young man bent down to reveal that the woman’s once rosy red lips had turned a pale blue in the winter’s harsh unforgiving atmosphere. While shifting her hair, the man’s hand brushed against her lips, sending a tingly shiver up his spine. He closed his deep dark eyes gently, slowly slaying each strand of the shiver with his mind. At the moment the man reopened his eyelids, he noticed, for the first time, the crown she was wearing.
It was the most entrancing yet horribly excruciating crown the young man had witnessed in his short lifetime. At the ends, the dark red crown wavered in and out like the ends of flower petals. It encircled the woman’s entire head and against the fresh white snow, it appeared to astonishingly, be growing. The ends crept farther away from each other like terrified spiders. The man bent down for the second time, piling the untouched clean snow around the crown, attempting desperately to contain it. His efforts were wasted; the crown kept seeping through his snow-walls, mocking him, laughing evilly and maniacally in his stupid face. The man was too pathetically desperate; he picked up the girl’s head, his hands searching for the crown’s source of energy, slapping away, cold tears flowing and flowing endlessly from his large and astonished eyes. All he could produce was the reality of two hands drenched in warm, viscous, dark red blood.
The man luckily found the paper crumpled in the woman’s right hand before he had the opportunity to go insane.
“Dear,
Discover a new life. You disgust me; no one can ever love someone as dependent or repulsive as you. Leave me alone.
Sincerely,
Your former lover”
The young man’s potential irrationality conformed itself to furious enragement immediately. It was all his doing. He caused her suicide. He stole her from me, the man thought. Flashbacks flickered through his mind like a twisted cruel film; she was walking with the other man, talking to him, holding his hand, smiling with him. In return, he was touching her, feeling her, kissing her… A war of epic proportions was beginning to commence amongst the man’s emotions. All at once he felt passion, love, lust, horror, fright, terror, astonishment, shock, insanity, nausea, rage, hatred, but above all other emotions, he felt lost pain. Without you, I am nothing and I feel nothing, he thought gazing down at her bloody body. I need you to be with me, I need you to let me feel you; I need to hold you in my arms. I won’t let him hurt you again; I’ll protect you forever if only you would return to me. Please don’t leave me again. I need to touch your breathing body; let me love you. Without you…
The young man finally spotted her weapon of choice; a silver gun had been resting underneath the folds of her dress at the left side. He picked it up, studying it with the intensity of an enthusiast. He opened the catch and discovered, to his luck, there was a single bullet left. Before he commenced further, the man picked two cherry blossoms from the over-hanging tree; cherry blossoms had been her favourite flower. “I don’t think they ever die,” she had said. “They merely disappear for some time, preserving their magnificence for when you truly miss them… only then they will return and surprise you in reward for your devoted love.” As the young man remembered this, he thought, than why aren’t you returning to me? Why did you never belong to me when I was here everyday, only waiting for you?
He placed one cherry blossom in the woman’s hair and the other in his jacket pocket so it just peered through the opening. The cherry blossom in her hair had already turned completely red, drenched in the pool of blood; the man appeared to disregard it. Then, slowly, he brought the gun up to the side of his head and whispered:
“No reason to live when I am already dead without you.”
His right index finger pulled the trigger, some red liquid spraying as a result of the backfire before he fell down on to the frozen red snow. The pain was unbearable but thankfully it was subsiding rapidly. A crown began to form around the young man’s head, just as enchanting as the woman’s, and he too began turning pale gradually. He turned his head slowly with all the strength he could muster to face the woman; before he breathed his last, the abused lover murmured the most beautiful words that his torn soul-mate would never hear:
“I will never stop loving you.”

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