cover image from travel dot nationalgeographic dot com.

warning: implied rape, implied child abuse.

other than this chapter, there will not be implied rape nor child abuse again in this story.

notes: clara frost will be the name of jack's younger sister.

chapter one (prologue, of sorts): I AM LONELINESS

Hello there. My name is Loneliness. I am your Narrator.

That's how it usually goes, right?

Let me tell you a little bit about myself. Listen, please? I hope you will, because nowadays people don't really listen anymore. It breaks my heart, to be honest.

I am Loneliness. I visit people a lot. All the people in the world, actually. I like stories, and it's interesting, because humans, being humans, are walking words. I could sit here and gush about every story I've ever heard, ever seen, ever touched, but then we'll be here until the end of Time, and Time, I know, doesn't stop for anyone.

So today, I'll pick one out of billions. There's no special reason, why I chose this one out of everyone else's. Except for the fact that all of them are so, so fascinating that they are all special, in their own way. I suppose that sounds a little clichéd, don't you think? I would apologise, but apologising isn't really something that comes naturally to me.

I am Loneliness. Loneliness doesn't apologise.

Back to the matter at hand: I will tell you about a girl named Elsa Queen.

Think about it. Listen.

Elsa Queen. Elsa Queen. El-sah Kw-ee-n.

It's very ordinary. Elsa Queen.

But after you say her name (come, say it. El-sah. Kw-ee-n), it becomes strange on your tongue, as if it's been twisted and plunged into a distorted liquid, and while it's still the same (Elsa Queen), at the same time, it's not (El-sah Kw-ee-n).

Elsa Queen's life has two parts. I like to call it pre-Jack, and after-Jack. It makes it a little bit more attention grabbing than 'from birth till thirteen' and 'from thirteen till the end of her life', don't you think? It makes you wonder who Jack is. Her brother? Her lover? Her enemy? Her friend? Her classmate? No one at all?

Pre-Jack, Elsa had a very normal childhood. Well, as normal as one's can get. She has a younger sister named Anna, four years her junior. She went to a good school, got good grades, and even managed to score a boyfriend here and there. Though being only ten (her first one) and twelve (her second), they didn't do much outside of holding hands and taking walks in the park. I know this, because I am always there. Elsa had few friends, and spent most of her day in the silence of the library.

Her parents loved her very much. It was a little bit sickening to see. But then again, Love is my enemy. Everything she does sickens me.

I am Loneliness, and Loneliness is banished by Love.

But at thirteen, Elsa comes home one day with Anna in tow, to find her housekeeper Gerda crying into the kitchen table.

Despair is my closest friend; he often comes with me, arms linked. That day, Despair blanketed the Queen household, now missing two members. Death, an acquaintance of mine, had taken her mother and father.

I will skip the part where Elsa and Anna cry. I will skip the part where they struggle to live without their guiding figures. I will skip six months, because that time, while I thrived and flourished within dark corners and under beds, is something I believe Elsa never wishes for anyone to know. Never say that I am not a courteous fellow.

At eight months, things settle down.

But it's become habit for Elsa to wander the streets at night after dropping Anna off at an empty home. They live in an apartment near the city, so she will make her slow way past all sorts of things that never close until the light of day. There are many people who enjoy the nightlife.

Elsa finds it very hard to come home before ten o'clock in the evening. There is just something about that time, about the colour of the sky at that moment, about the ten strikes that chime from the city's tower clock, that renders her unable to move her feet towards her waiting sister, and she's stuck forever darting in and out of side streets and alleys and loitering before giant lit-up stores whose colourful lights reflect in her eyes.

But at thirteen, nearing fourteen, she is still young and vulnerable. Adolescence claws in her body, and it's dangerous for her to be out alone.

So it's one night in thousands, blurring by like a speeding train, here and then gone again. And yet this night differs from the rest, in that Gerda opens the door at midnight, worry darkening her face like a cloud and a phone clutched in her hand like a lifeline, and she sees Elsa standing there, face white like snow.

There is blood on her skirt and it's drying on her legs, and Elsa looks like she wants to cry. Except she doesn't, not until Gerda has ushered her inside. Not until she throws away the clothes and gives her a bath and tucks her into bed. Not until Gerda is tossing fitfully in their shared room, that Elsa weeps quietly into her pillow and curls up into a ball and holds her hands close to her chest, as if she is trying to keep the pieces of her shattered heart together.

The next morning, Gerda goes to the police and takes Elsa to the hospital. Anna is only nine (almost ten) and she doesn't understand. Elsa doesn't tell her, only murmurs that she's a little bit hurt today. Anna gasps and pressed a Hello Kitty Band-Aid into her sister's palm, and the act is so childlike and innocent that Elsa wants, crazily, to laugh, but she manages something mixed between a chuckle and a sob instead, and ends up bawling her eyes out.

Anna just hugs her and pats her head and tells her it's going to be alright. Elsa has prayed to 'be alright' for months already.

(She's beginning to lose faith.)

Let me tell you, in the years after her parent's death and before meeting Jack, I was a constant guest in this house. Consequently, I know it very well.

Here, in this doorway, Gerda first invited me in. I flitted past the policeman at the door, who broke the news that Mr and Mrs Queen were dead, and when Gerda moaned and clapped a hand over her mouth, I was there, hovering at her side. Despair is crueler though, and he pushes her down, sinks her knees into the rough red carpet, and he sighs with content as Gerda wails.

After that, I occupy everything. My presence soaks into the walls and the furniture; I lay on the floor and hang from the ceiling like a grotesque bat. In the living room, I age the wooden table and creak the chairs. In the hallway, I am the reason why it seems to take forever to walk from one end to the other. But where I live, truly, is inside.

I inhabit minds; I play games with them, much like humans play scissors-paper-rock, or tic-tac-toe. I am a hallucination, an illusion, a product of the brain, but at the same time, I am the realest thing you will ever meet.

(Sometimes, I am Loneliness. Other times, I am Fear.)

But I rather like being Loneliness. I am a patient creature, I like to bide my time. Loneliness is slow. Fear, while it can creep up and pause and wait a while, is ultimately something that comes in a flash and leaves. The result, while a lot of people mistake it for my other half, is really isolation and insecurity.

Elsa, in a way, welcomed me. I grew very close to her, found out her deepest, darkest secrets, things she would whisper soundlessly into the velvet of the night, things that no one else can hear except for me. Elsa, in the rough transition between pre-Jack and after-Jack and the after-effects of That Night, loses her words. There are times when she goes weeks without saying anything.

She's like winter, a little bit. That's what I often compare her to. Frozen and cold, cracked and silent. But then, when an avalanche comes or the ice breaks, it explodes with a fury that surprises even me.

But then, we'll have to wait. Her detonation hasn't started yet.

Now, we'll take a break from Elsa. Now, I'll tell you a little bit about Jack. His story is one that can be found in any city around the world: he grew up without a father and with a hooker for a mother. His mother, Vanessa Frost, had dark mahogany hair and lips perpetually stained red. She disappeared almost every night, and when she was home, she slapped around her two children like a small girl might throw around her rag doll.

But the truth of the matter is that Vanessa really did love Jack and Clara Frost. She really, truly did. Isn't it ironic? Because as the two of them lay still on the dirty floor, smashed dinner plates scattered like sand across the room, both nursing blossoming bruises and cut lips, Despair lurks over them, while I stand there quietly in the corner, as both Loneliness and Fear, and hand in hand with me is Love, crying silent tears all down her face. At this time, Love will look a little too much like Vanessa, who will always be slumped up against the wall opposite them.

This is Jack's story, from birth till the day he likes to call The Day My Mother Was Killed. It happens at approximately eleven years old. Clara is perhaps seven. Both of them don't miss her much. Vanessa may have loved them, but they never loved her in return, quite understandably so.

Social workers come to visit them all the time. In a city like this though, there is no support system. Maybe, if they had been born somewhere else, they would have been put in an orphanage and given the possibility of an adoption. But the reality is that the government is corrupt and its officials are just starving dogs sniffing around for meat. The reality is that in a city like this, no one cares, and those who do are looking for something to steal off of you.

Jack and Clara make do on their own. I can't tell you exactly what they did; that would ruin the story. You'll find out later on. It might surprise you, it might not. It might disgust you, it might not. Either way, this is but a small peek into Jack's past. It might make his later actions a little more logical, it might not. But you cannot judge him until you know his full story.

(And you probably never will.)

[present day]

It's ten o'clock again. Ten o'clock at night, and everything is a deep, manic grey, the sort of grey that feels dark and oppressive and clinks like silvery chains. There's a slight storm coming from the west, and a harsh breeze whips through Elsa's hair as she sits at a twenty-four hour café and idly stirs a cup of lukewarm coffee.

Her phone vibrates.

Text message from: Anna

Elsa! Where are you?
You know I don't like you
staying out late :(

Blue eyes scan the text idly, and Elsa tucks her phone back into her pocket and dismisses it.

She nods to the exhausted waiter and shoulders her bag, merging easily with the crowd and picking her way daintily through the throng of people.

She's just about to step onto the road when something slams into her with all the force of a rhino, and Elsa gasps and then the pavement is rushing up to her face. With fast reflexes, she manages to catch herself in time before her nose is crushed, and then she flips around and gets up and snaps at the attacker, who's picking himself off the ground as well.

"Watch where you're going," she snarls. He's a boy, maybe her age, with dyed white hair and blue eyes. He's standing like he's been cornered, knees bent and eyes flickering this way and that.

"Fuck," he hisses, and he spins full circle, as if he is trying to look for something. "Fuck, shit, fuck fuck fuck."

Elsa scoffs and turns to leave, because she has better things to do than mess with someone who's obviously already in trouble. Gang members, most likely. She doesn't see a tattoo on him, but he's wearing a sleeved blue hoodie and long black jeans and boots, so it's probably hidden.

This is the first time Elsa Queen encounters Jack Frost. She forgets about him completely in the span of an hour, when she comes home to find Anna with tears pricking the corners of her eyes, sitting at the dinner table, and shackled and sniffling with Worry.

author's note:

our narrator is both loneliness and fear. i guess you could almost say that pitch black is the narrator lol omg.

i sort of needed a narrator because a) i've never written a story with a narrator before and i wanted to try it and b) i needed a random third party observer because then i can do things like switch around and stuff more easily. lol, i gave Death an honourable mention in this chapter, kudos to you markus zusak bc loneliness is like a sad ripoff of him.

also, i had sworn to myself that i would never write another multi-chapter here on again because of the disastrous results from my previous attempts. but i have a good feeling about this fic, so i'll hopefully stay with it until the end.

other than this chapter, there will not be implied rape nor child abuse again in this story.