Chapter 1: Still Waters

She stared at that one line of words. Those innocent harbingers of terror that had broken her crippled heart, her soul, one month ago. Time was, is, will be, irrelevant. She lay on her bed, staring at her phone, but looking past it, the deep dark maelstrom of her conflicted thoughts reflected in her unfocused eyes. She smiled, but it was not one of vain, innocent happiness. It was of pure, dark, cruel contemplation. She had been beautiful, once. Her impeccable complexion had long since been covered with streaks of mascara where her tears had run, her once shapely figure now thin. There was a time where the city-goers would have smiled at her as she walked past. Now they barely glanced by at the shadow that was all that was left. She rose, heavy feet trudging slowly out of her apartment, into the night. The eerie glow cast by the flickering streetlamps embraced her flowing dark clothes seeming to beckon her to wherever it shone darkest, shadows clawing at her. Her long, messy platinum blonde hair trailed out behind her, catching the light with highlights like a fallen angel's halo. A black cat caterwauled in the distance, an unholy cry of terror and malice. The blood moon glowed red, casting a sickly crimson glow on the imposing outline of bare evergreen trees, like towering malevolent statues standing frozen in the darkness. The cold scarlet luminescence transformed the filthy frost on the potholed tarmac into streams of blood.

She found herself on the wet, rotten boards of the small dock overlooking the River Oathorae. She stood on the edge, swaying with uncomfortable emotion. They say that the depressed need to seek help, that they don't recognize it when it strikes. They're wrong. The depressed, more than anyone, know their predicament. Oh, they know better than anyone ever could. She didn't want help, for she didn't hate the world, merely loved it to the point that she was willing to let it go. For when the shadowy tendrils of loneliness tears away the few remaining strands of your humanity- your ability to appreciate the world with others- there is nothing left in life. There's no point dragging yourself through a monotone of fake smiles and insincere hugs, dragging yourself through the misery of life until you realise what you have been living is not life but death and that the two are one and the same, the shadows and light blending meaninglessly until neither existed any more. There's no point. One final tear collected in her bloodshot eyes, slowly but surely rolling down her face like a pearl made of her last remaining heartstrings, the rest torn to pieces that one month ago. The tear plunged into the dark, murky, still waters of the River Oathorae.

She followed.

The first thing she felt was an overwhelming sense of calm as she splashed down into the depths of the river, the sound splitting the night like an executioner's blade. Even as the terrible water made its way past her face, enveloping her, soaking her to the bone, creeping slowly into her lungs, she had never felt as peaceful. Like her last remnants of warmth, the cruel inner turmoils slipped away from her, the emotions she had compressed into her leaking heart finally finding an avenue to escape her battered self, escaping into the emotionless depths of the still waters.

The only thing left for her was the terrible cold. The cold that permeated her very being, chilling her body, her emotions, her thoughts, numbing her till only the cold remained.

It's… It's so cold…

So… So very cold…

Cold…