The Tale #001

The end of her life cam in icy blues and shrouds of snow.

She breathed out.

This wasn’t really the first time they had done this, although it was admittedly cleaner – neater – than their last attempt.

Hell was colder than she expected. It actually wouldn’t have been that hard for it to freeze over. People needed to stop saying that, she thought to herself. Faces folded in on one another in harmony; in beautiful synchronization and in dreadful despair. Punishment came in tortuous pain, disguised as beauty, encased within the lust for life.

Hell was prettier than she expected.

They hid their faces in the leaves of trees, their eyes wrapped in the tangle of vines, and their sight woven into the roots winding through the murky soil.

The sky bled into the earth and the earth disappeared, but her feet stood as surely as the sun would never rise again. There was no sun. The water fell upwards.

     “I don’t quite think this is Hell,” murmured the larger of the two.

She glanced over at him, half of her wishing she could agree.

“I don’t quite think the two of us could’ve ended up anywhere else, really.”