Ficathon Challenge #1
Genre: Romance/Angst
Rating: T
Likes: Romance, small moments, original plots, and characters (maybe complicated), doses of reality, inner demons, beautiful details(ie. descriptions,dialogue), maybe a twist tragedy, smokers, dyed hair, something that'll make you think and leave you breathless.
Dislikes: Cliches, mary sues, homosexuals couplings, unrealistic happenings, unrealistic characters, fantasy, sci-fi, crime/thriller.
Words/phrases to use: "We are lovers in a frame." "If I were a needle..." "I'd rather be married to Hades than Hercules."

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Prologue: The Problematic Beginnings of Three

“Life is a clay urn on the mantle
And I am the fragments on the floor
Life is a clay urn on the mantle
And I am the ashes on the floor”

Agalloch, “…And The Great Cold Death of the Earth

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I sit beneath a tree, staring emptily out across the lake and into the distance, soundlessly mouthing an endless cycle of words; the only way to manifest the internal despairing struggles in my head. I have argued with myself this way, word for word, ever since I woke up. I can’t really remember when I woke up, and I don’t think I want to.
The sky slowly darkens behind me, night inexorably drawing her velvet curtain across the sky from the east. Faint blue meets the last vibrant rays of a burning sun as it struggles to fight, sinking ever lower by the moment, just as it dips beyond the horizon. Out of sight, out of mind, and the darkness takes over, faint stars appearing overhead.
The lake appears black and foreboding now, silver moonlight highlighting the ripples in the water. I regard it with a cool, blank stare; as if there were anything left to do. Its black depths appear unfathomable to me, even as logic tries to argue that a lake like this could not be very deep. I viciously remind myself that it was deep enough.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remember, and I dwell. This part of my mind used to be a kind of summer-home; I find now that I live here permanently.
It was mid-November.
I can remember the despair that hung around us like a cloud of insects. It was that kind of fall. Like slogging through a swamp. Now the only things that hang are a question, unanswerable, and a silence, so deep and so heavy so as not to be broken.
There was a CD, and there was a note, a note that posed more questions than it answered.

It begins to grow cold, the temperature rapidly dropping with the combined onset of night and the winter. I shiver, some distant part of my brain registering the cold tingling of my skin, having neglected to bring a coat of any kind. I don’t care about temperatures. Worrying about something like how cold it gets at night seems so silly now, so stupid; weather is predictable, people expect it to get cold at night. It’s nothing to get excited about.
‘Forget about me.’
Stupid, horrible words, worse than the dreaded ‘I love you.’ Three words, like third time’s the charm; I hate the number three, and I hate words, and I especially hate it when those things are combined. I couldn’t be expected to take a statement like that seriously. I hated how the harsh, blunt truths were cushioned by soft words of understanding and remorse. I couldn’t take any of it seriously. I hated that I had been so predictable.
I realize, what I really desire, is to go back to sleep. No matter what I ever thought I wanted, it had never been this. I cannot help but reflect that this is the fate of humanity. To go about their lives in a stupor or a dream. Most people aren’t awake, and most of them never will be. I wonder if I am still asleep, but that would be too difficult a thing to believe, so I stop wondering.
‘I’m sorry.’
I can hear that voice in my head, repeating all of these strange words to me, and I seek to drive it away, but I cannot help but be entranced and seduced by it, in my hatred and my fascination. And by that hanging question. I don’t believe anyone who did this could possibly know what it is to be sorry. Lies and deceit to make the impact bearable. It only makes it worse.

I begin to shiver uncontrollably, a mixture of the cold’s effect upon my ridiculously thin frame and the impact of my speculation on my nerves. I cannot help but believe that all this was my fault. All the ‘if onlys’ and the ‘what-ifs’ chase themselves around my head, the ones you hardly know exist until you’re looking back, wishing you could change something that had happened because of a bad decision that you unwittingly made.
The note does nothing to assuage the guilt; its assertions only make me acutely aware of the ache, adding weight to my already overwhelmed conscious. It seems like a passive-aggressive attempt at making me feel even guiltier, some kind of reverse psychology technique. I could never be sure if it was intended or not.
But that was the effect it had nonetheless. And now the sense of guilt pervades all conscious thought. And the sense of anger, like a burning, hard knot in the pit of my stomach, making me feel sick and nauseous, driving away all appetite for food. I can’t remember the last time I ate more than a few bites of a meal, or drank something other than water. I know, logically, that it cannot have been that long ago, but it seems like an eternity in the dark labyrinth of my thoughts. Every moment seems to last an eternity as I relive fragments of conversation, fragments of dream in which I experience the visitation of demons and commune with the dead. I always wake before I find the answer.
I can’t be sure if I’m angry with only myself.

Time seems frozen, suspended by the chill air, a dropped sheet of glass in itself, a nanosecond from reaching the cold, hard ground and shattering into a billion unfixable pieces.

I sink so deep into my thoughts that I cannot even remember now what it was I thought about, or if I thought at all. The next thing I know, I hear rocks and gravel crunching maybe ten yards away, and I am shaken from whatever black introspection I had engaged in, peering into the darkness for the source of the sound. Beneath the streetlight, a few feet away from the tree beneath which I sat, a young couple walks, their heads bowed, snatches of muted conversation drifting incoherently my way. I watch them intently until I cannot hear them anymore, and then I sigh deeply and rise to my feet, clinging to the tree for support. Its frail branches creak beneath my weight. Winter has already begun to wreak its havoc. This bitter realization makes me feel colder, until I swear I can feel it eating away into my skin like insects, a persistent itching sensation. I feel the urge to jump into the lake, try to shake this parasite, but I shudder in revulsion at the very thought before I can truly consider the idea, glancing at the deceptively calm water lapping the grassy shore and recoiling from it. I wonder how much time has passed. Not that it would matter all that much, but it would also be nice to know how long I had sat staring into nothing. Long enough, I think, noticing the stiffness in my lower back as I take a few uncertain steps.

I turn around to look at the nacreous lake once more. It glimmers sickeningly, makes me think of pollution and oil, repelling me even as it calls to me. I hate the water. I again shiver involuntarily, and turn around without a backward glance, beginning the walk home. I have spent enough time here tonight. Any time at all is generally more than enough, but today I had found it necessary to come. At the bottom of the lake were my answers, if only I could reach them.
I shuffle my feet, hands shoved as far into my pockets as they can go in a futile effort to protect them from the bitter chill of the air. My hands are always cold. I don’t know why I bother anymore. Force of habit, or out of deference to some memory, perhaps.
I make my way across the lawn, across the paved path that encircles the lake, and out onto the dark and quiet streets. The lamplight seems sickly and faint, jaundiced fog closing in around the posts, choking and obscuring them. I wonder for a moment how they would feel, if they had the capacity for emotion. Like me, maybe; like they were being slowly asphyxiated and had not the will to fight any longer.

It isn’t long before I reach my house. It’s a small little place, one level with a basement; only my mother, my stepfather, and I live there. The paint is a washed-out pastel blue, peeling and cracked and very filthy; the siding even falling off in some places. It’s an old place, but I’ve lived there for as long as I can remember. I always loved it, or at least never exactly minded it, until so very recently. Now it just makes my heart and my stomach clench up in tides of agony.
The windows are dark, which suits me just fine; I am not looking to be confronted by anyone in my particular negative mood. Aside from that, all anyone wants to talk to me about is ‘what happened.’ I can’t stand them and their expressions, their eyes big and wide and full of concern and sympathy, as if they could ever know how I feel. My feelings are too complicated and too specific and I don’t want to talk about them. I wish people would let me move on, let me forget and move on with my life. But just because my recent taciturnity has been so blatant and I have stopped appearing at meals, everyone acts like I’m going to go spiraling over the edge of sanity.
I’m tired of it. Very tired of it.
I suppose they never stopped to consider that I avoid them because I’m tired of their behavior toward me, treating me like a feral, unpredictable animal.
But this train of thought is only causing me to shake with rage, cold sweat engulfing my numb hands, pouring down my back; I can barely hold my hand steady as I insert my house key into the lock, so I discard it, turning my mind to other things.
Like how tired I am.
Except no matter what I think, it always comes back to the beginning of the circle and progresses from there. Rinse, wash, repeat. You’d think I’d be used to it, but it isn’t something you ever get used to. Not really.

I enter the house, navigating my way through the stifling darkness and silence down the cold concrete steps and into the basement, too tired to shower or change, even though I probably should. I haven’t done either of those things very recently. So instead I make my way over to the bed in a dark corner, in which there is also a desk and a lamp. I throw myself onto the bed, spread-eagled, without bothering with even the blankets. The bed creaks, announcing my presence to anyone who might be upstairs lying awake and unable to sleep. Cold sweat seeps into the pillow and the blankets upon which I lie as I stare up at the ceiling blankly, blissfully losing consciousness again, sinking into more unsettling dreams of hellish, labyrinthine interviews with my own ghosts in search of other clues.
But not before I think to myself that I have to accept it.
She’s gone and there’s nothing I can do.