Hell's Bliss
Book I: Heavenly Glory

Prelude
Remnants

At night the relative calm is supposed to sooth the soul. Poets have written about it for generations. For me, having grown up in a city, the hustle and bustle of working hands and typing fingers is southing. Maybe that's why I feel so odd. As men passed me, I could see their frantic faces looking at me. I knew that there was something wrong with them… or me.

My eyes stared into the pocket mirror I held. A girl with shoulder length chocolate hair stared down at me. Her eyes, sapphires that changed shades whenever a new shade of light hit them, glimmered in the reflection. In truth, I had never thought of myself as pretty or normal. My hair had always been a mess no matter how I put it up and I was never one for fashion. Plain and elegant had been my style since I hit puberty. No one could change that part of me.

However, I always felt that I never knew the person that stared at me. While sometimes I knew what I felt, I didn't others. Others I would fall and human nature would create a whole new me. That's the way I felt this particular day.

It was night. Everything had settled down now that evening came. I stood up from my position at the traffic light. I had to go. Yet my body stood guard waiting for something to happen that I didn't know about consciously. So I obeyed, hoping something would indeed happen.

And it did.

There was a loud crash and everything around me swirled until it suddenly ceased. I fell backwards, tossing and turning, and a fleeting vision of a man calling out to me faded through my mind. A call for help or a façade for something in store? I didn't know what to think. It was at that moment that the place around me started to shift and change. Black ooze surrounded my city and I was lost within an endless circle of darkness.

I blacked out just as a man held his hand to grab me. The same man from my dream.