The floorboards creak outside the broom closet’s door, a girl cowers behind a rolling bucket, the stench of chemicals burning her nose.

“Alyssa,” she hears him coo softly, his Nikes squeaking on the school’s polished floors. “I know you’re here. I just know…”

She hears the scrape of his pocketknife on the painted cement blocks as he turns the corner, only inches from where she hides. She squeezes her eyes shut and holds her breath as he approaches.

“Come out, come out wherever you are,” he says softly, chuckling at his own joke.

The door to the closet pops open, the silhouette of his figure propped against the frame. “Alyssa, come here…”

The knife clicks against the metal trim like a clock, ticking down her minutes of life. He slides forward, pushes back the bucket, yanks her by the hair, throwing her into the school hallway.

“Jermaine, please,” she wails as he pulls her and slams her on the floor, a knee at her throat.

“Did you go with him?” He says in an arid tone, eyes nearly empty.

“No, nooo…” “I saw the pictures, Alyssa.” “They were fake, fake!” She wails. “Do you know what I could do to you?” “Please Jermaine, please…”

“Do you know?” He yells, knife shaking in his right fist as his knee smashes her windpipe, cutting off her airways.

She doesn’t say anything as he pulls away, rubbing his stubbly chin, leaving her laying on the hallway floor.

He spins around suddenly, his cold blue eyes boring into her as she lays perfectly still against the polished white marble.

“You’re so small… I should crush you like the roach you are,” he whispers, grasping her hair and pulling her to her feet. “Or I could open you an like a can of beans and devour every. inch. of. you.”

He pushes the blade against her jugular vein, feeling the throb of her racing pulse against his forefinger.

“One push and you could die, Alyssa. How does it feel to be scared? How does it feel to know you’re going to lose something, babe?”

“Please, don’t-“

The blade cuts across, a tingling sensation at first, until the blood rushes down like fire, burning it’s way down her shirt, like a tall glass of alcohol.

“God, I love you,” he whispers, kneeling down beside her as the life bleeds from her bones.

Strangely, Alyssa doesn’t cry. She simply holds a hand to her throat, choking sounds gurgling from her raw windpipe and she struggles to breathe. She’s drowning in her own blood.

“You look so pretty,” he whispers, brushing back her hair as she slumps, her lifeless eyes gazing at something she can no longer see.

Lifeless thoughts Bring arid truths About loneliness And thoughtlessness Of those who condemn In order to win Again, and again, With their cold eyes Disguised Behind friendly smiles Made of white tiles That are fake And who take Your souls And burn them like coal Until there is nothing But lifeless thoughts Tessa🦋

I fell victim to death on a cold, arid day where color was mute and the symphony of the birds was lifeless.

Isla had gone just a week before. I was wearing ragged, sole less sneakers and my feet were frozen but I refused to change them because they used to be my father’s.

It happened almost too sudden. I felt the hot breath of demise on the back of my neck, a quick calm in a snowstorm.

By the time I had the thought of pulling away, it was too late. It’s claws dug into my skin, effacing the last of my memories. Life flashed before my eyes—it left too soon.

My body went numb as the hours passed and my attempts at fighting failed. A tear froze on my eyelashes and my hands unwillingly gripped the snow.

I caught a glimpse of who murdered me: a pale figure of sadness, bony hands with nails too long, choppy blonde hair, and blue eyes.

It was obvious who that was, a moment of clarity so overwhelming that I felt mocked—it was me. A poorly painted portrait yet I couldn’t mistake it for anyone else.

Everything became calm again. I relinquished my grasp on life, exhaling a cold breath from my chapped lips. In my last moments I welcomed death with open arms.

It somehow brought peace knowing that I was my own killer.

She's freezing, her clothes are wet. The cold leaves its mark on her as she shivers. She looks around the pool she just swam out of. Empty. The usually crowded pool is devoid of people. The room itself has an eerie quality to it and everything feels unreal. Her head moves upward and it hurts.

It feels so heavy, her eyes feel so drowsy. And her body...it aches. There's also a stuffy feeling brewing in her head which makes her ears feel plugged. She looks at the row of windows which showcase the starless night sky. And the moon looks at her as if it knows all of her secrets. She finds herself wishing it would tell them to her because all of her mind is a blur.

It's dark but the lights in the pool are shining. It's her only guide out of here. She doesn't remember how she got here. She doesn't remember the past few days at all. Her nose starts to bleed like it does whenever the air is too dry but then she realizes that's not the only part of her bleeding. Lifting her hand to cover her nose, she notices marks on her arm that look like zig-zag slashes. Was she in a fight?

She takes off her wet shirt, using it to wrap her arm. Once she's sure it's secure, she walks. Her feet are bare. Heavy like her head. Her wet clothes leave a soggy trail wherever she moves. Finally, she reaches an exit of the building and is in an alleyway. She hears someone coughing, a homeless man who she's spoken to before. His name is Morris and there was a time he was a train conductor. He lived in his glory days often but those days were so far gone. She wonders for a horrifying moment if her days were also gone. Isn't it funny how when things feel finite time feels numbered? She thinks about tomorrow but her minutes feel fleeting. Has she done anything impactful? Will anyone remember her laugh? These are the things she thinks of as she looks at Morris as if he’s a mirage. She pictures him as he once was. A fancy hat with his railroad company on it instead of the dirty beanie on his head. She imagines him wearing suspenders like conductors of old instead of a shirt full of holes. But then reality comes into play and she sees a broken man sitting on a cardboard box. He's half-asleep using another flattened box to cover himself with. She keeps meaning to buy him a blanket but she always forgets.

“Do you--” she starts but becomes wobbly.

The homeless man jolts out of his half-asleep state, bolting towards her and helping to keep her steady.

“You alright there Ms. Blake?” he asks, his eyebrows drawing together.

She tries to answer but her mind is an arid wasteland where no thoughts could flourish. Finally, she finds something to say.

“Yeah, Morris, I’m--” She never finishes her sentence.

Her eyes close. Her body drops and she becomes lifeless in Morris’s arms.

The blackened, dead grass crunched underneath my feet. It was night. Or at least I thought it was. The sky was a blank dark blue, but not navy like it should have been. It was a royal blue, too vibrant to be natural. As I looked up, I felt the cold air sting my cheeks. The cold was all-consuming, sending ice into my bones. I looked out in front of me to see miles and miles of the same arid, lifeless grass I was standing on. Something terrible had happened here. I felt the hair stand up on my arms, but it wasn’t from the cold. I spun around, trying to find a place to hide, but there was nothing in this vast, open landscape. I started to run.

My body shivered, muscles quaking, teeth chattering. I had no idea where I was. And there seemed to be no land marks. Every direction I looked in was filled with empty, dead, fields. Fields that had once probably flourished with corn, or wheat, or soy beans, now, just barren. I knew I needed to get out of here. I had to run. To save my own life. To live. I had to find my way out of this wasteland and to civilization. My feet shuffled against the dirt. I couldn’t remember the last time that I had been outside. I wasn’t used to moving around that much. My body felt weak. I looked up at the sky, the moon hung low and large in the sky. And out here, in the middle of nowhere the stars twinkled brightly. I didn’t know which way to go. So I decided to trace the constellations until I found Ursa Major and the North Star. North seemed as good a way as any. It had worked for the Wise Men once. Maybe North could also lead me to salvation.

Lifeless, his body lay there clammy and cold, this was not part of the dream he was sold. His environment matched his predicament. A soulless room, lacking the promise it once held. The sent of regret suffocating every last last bit of hope. An arid aura sorrow hung in the air.

The cold wind cut through the landscape, making it harsher. Not that it needed to be. The place was completely lifeless. Nothing seemed to touch it. A barren circle inside a copse of dead scraggly trees. It seemed that no rain wanted to fall on this spot, as if everything that could give life wanted to avoid it. An arid wasteland. The area seemed cursed, and that was where they had decided to meet.

She woke up from her nightmare, abruptly, gasping for air. She squinted her eyes a few times, allowing them to adjust to the stark darkness of the room. She placed her index finger and middle finger on her neck, feeling the rhythm of her heart begin to slow its pace, and she became more calm.

Suddenly aware of the fact that in her hastened awakening, she may have disrupted her sleeping husband, she glanced at the clock on her bedside table, revealing the hour to be midnight. Concerned about the time, she turned toward the man laying next to her in bed, ready to adamantly apologize for any disruption she may have caused to his sleep.

As she reached out with her left hand, feeling for her husband, however, she was startled, when what she felt laying next to her in bed was not the warm body of the man she had fallen asleep next to more times than she could count but instead, a cold, arid, lifeless corpse.

Still struggling to see in the bleak darkness of the room, she squinted her eyes a few times, desperately willing them to adjust to the all encompassing blackness that surrounded her and the dead body laying next to her in bed. As slowly, she began to be able to start to see in what had once been a place of tranquility for she and her husband but was now an atmosphere overcast with gloom, she saw the pool of blood on the white duvet that she and her husband were sleeping under. Confused and horrified, she began to scream.

“Really, Liz, I would much prefer you didn’t do that,” she heard a male voice state, calmly. “You know no one will be able to hear you. Your nearest neighbors live miles away.”

The sound of his voice, a voice she had not heard in so very long but could identify anywhere, sent shivers down her spine, and she looked in the direction it had come from. She blinked a few times, wiping away the large tears on her face, now making out the figure of the man sitting in the oversized leather chair in the corner of the room.

“What have you done?” She asked him, unable to hide the trembling terror in her voice.

“I’ve done what you’ve always known I would do,” he calmly replied, leaning back in the chair, making himself more comfortable.

I’d run to you, Barefoot, On a crisp winter afternoon, Silver layers on grass, That feel like running on broken glass, Shivering in the cold, Watching your smile, No longer lifeless, No longer a dream, No longer a memory, No longer in pain, Sending warmth straight through me, Enough to thaw my frozen heart.