My eyes are alive. I can see colours and shades and light painted around me in an impression of life. But most of all, I can see her. She lies in the vibrant grass, shades of emerald and jade twining in the strands of her hair, reaching towards the myriad of colour above us. The flowers grow and stretch around her, outlining her in a picture of fresh aliveness. The nature around us calls and she listens with a gentle ear. She does not criticise the dirt under her nails nor the spider on her hand, trying to cling to life in a way so similar to us, attempting to build a home, yet constantly being demolished by destructive hands. She is the epitome of kindness and light and life and joy. She is everything. The trees bend to her will, the skies bow to her whims. She was like the moon, the depth of her beauty could be viewed only with the raw, emphatic eye, the ridges and dents and lineaments only noticeable under a tender, vigilant gaze.

“We should head inside soon,” I say, my fortuitous eyes never leaving her, “rain is due.” She doesn’t look at me. Yet, I can still feel her attention. Feel the heart inside of my chest trying to break through my ribs and tissue and skin just to get slightly closer to her. She does not need to look at me to make me feel seen. The silence stretches on; the kind I am content to bask in for all my days if that is what pleases her. We have never needed words in order to understand each other, our brains rewiring themselves to intrinsically connect to the others. I lay back down. My eyes on her. Always on her. The wind sings for her as it whistles past in a blur, ruffling my hair but somehow having the cordiality to just make hers more devastatingly delightful. There are birds chirping in the background, accompanied by the stillness that creates a melody conductors would envy forevermore. My mind is a jungle of adjectives, every one of them dedicated to creating a word great enough to describe her. It has been ten years and my mind is still failing me in this regard. The raging war that waged itself inside my skull in the past has calmed to a lovely plateau where peace exists at last. The sky starts its storm, warm rain falling down her face, trailing the elegant bridge of her nose, catching itself in the weave of her eyelashes. She looks radiant. I yet again await the day when my perfect, peaceful illusion is broken, because there is no way somebody so pure is real and mine and here. 

My illusion is broken in a flash of thunder and a storm of heavy footsteps behind us. 

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?” A raging voice slices through our peace like a knife. A young man with the likeness to a deranged animal enters my vision. His stormy, blunt eyes speak of horrors in a way his mouth never could. He looks tired, distraught, scared. He reminds me of bloody knuckles and smashed mirrors and a life I have long forgotten. She could help him. The thought surges through my mind unbidden, along with the white hot jealousy and possessiveness that accompanies it. I blink back the sudden emotions, and my eyes drift their attention back to her, she continues to lie on the grass, however her skin has taken on a more grey and pallid tone. The thought of this intruder scaring her has my blood boiling in my veins and my legs standing of their own accord to face this alien figure. He continues to stare at me, a sea of emotions raging through his eyes as his calloused hands shake in curled fists at his sides. 

“ Get. Away.” The warning and indignation in my voice is clear and I can feel the violent, dangerous beast crawling beneath my skin begin to resurface; claws sharp, teeth gleaming. 

“James,” His gravelly voice scratches uncomfortably down my spine as he recites my name. I fleetingly wonder how a stranger could know my name but the beast runs its claws down my mind, silencing all but the animosity cemented into my very being. “James, please, what did you do?” His voice breaks on my name as his eyes take on a pleading tone. 

I tilt my head at his query, briefly recognising the wild predatoriness in the gesture as I reply, “I have done nothing. YOU are the intruder. YOU are the one who has scared her. YOU need to get out.” I spit the syllables at him, my words climbing the scale of volume like a mountain. I am shaking. I am angry. 

He pauses and looks at me in confusion and horror, “James. She- she-” His mouth stutters and his eyes flutter as they move intensely and rapidly between me and her. His dull, dimming eyes on her just further induces my rage.

“She what?” my voice is a promise of torture and terror as his eyes focus back on me. 

“James, she’s- James, she’s dead.” I still at his statement, at his testimony, at his lies. No. I do not believe in magic, yet there is no other explanation for the words that curled swiftly through the air and transformed into destructive and deadly knives, slashing comprehensively through my heart. The words shatter me as they retaliate against all the sharp edges kept hidden for too long. It tears me apart, starting with my lungs, scratching down them until the idea of breathing is a far, foreign concept. It slithers to my eyes, biting and tearing until they bleed endless streams of agony down my face. It marches through my body, shutting down all my systems in a second until I am a husk of a person. Not a person at all.

“You- You’re lying - this can’t.” My voice is an octave higher, rivalling the birds whose songs now sound more like funeral hymns.

“Open your eyes, James! Look at her!” And so I do. The rose-coloured glasses I have donned splinter along with the all colours of the world. The leaves on the trees crinkle and wrinkle and fall in the blink of an eye. The grass decays and dries and dies. The wind whips and stings and screams.

 The flowers remain. They surround her in a circle, the only colour left in my faded world. She lies there, beautiful as always, her constantly gentle hands by her sides, flowing through the flowers, never again feeling them. Her skin is grey, her face sagging in a way I only wished it to do when we were old and happy. Yet none of this compares to the stabbing pain that ricochets through my body as I take in her eyes. Her eyes, once so full of life and love, that projected warmth onto everything they touch. These once coveted vessels now sit empty in their sockets, buried around the sagging flesh staring lifelessly up at the canopy above.

Bile races up my throat in a competition with my heart as I empty the contents of my stomach promptly over the dead grass beside me, as my poignant eyes fall on the heinous crime only I could have logically committed. The blood stains her abdomen in a ring of treachery and hate. It taunts my eyes with its vibrant colour, the tang of its disgusting odour reaching my nose at last. You did this, it whispers, the wind and birds joining its cackles and jeers. 

The piercing scream I let out shrieks and screams and claws its way down to the core of the Earth itself.