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𝑂𝑛𝑒.
The date wasDecember 31st, and for the first time in years, Melanie wasn't acting like it.
The primary reason, much like everything else, came to her while she laid in her bed at exactly four-thirty a.m., marking eight hours from the moment she'd planned to sleep the night prior. For a reason unbeknownst to her, she always recognized the passage of time.
Perhaps it was a result of the deep, deep aching that lived inside of her that reminded her of what time she still had left. Or, as Melanie preferred to tell herself, everything just seems all the more interesting when you're suffering from chronic insomnia and the onlything that reminds you of your consciousness is the tick-tock of your bedside clock.
Dissimilar to all of the nights prior, Melanie realized that she was no longer afraid of each passing minute. Instead, she'd finally come to terms with the fact that the time was going to pass regardless, and it was her responsibility to make do with what she had left. (Which wouldn't be very much, she imagined, but that could just be her pessimism talking.)
Of course, this realization hadn't come to her naturally, though she was inclined to accredit the stroke of genius to none other than her restless mind.
Much to her dismay, she had her sister's abductor to thank. Or more rather, The Doberman as she'd found herself calling him.
As a profiler, she knew it was wrong to assign a nickname to the man who thrived on the existence of her misery, but it was a better alternative to addressing him only as the man who had ruined her life. Besides, it wasn't like she ever talked about the case with anyone other than herself. (Aside from, on occasion, her Bombay cat named Oliver.)
Though she'd never admit it to anyone but herself (as established, she doesn't have much of a choice in that department), The Doberman was a mastermind.
He resurrected the game each year on New Year's Eve, drawing Melanie back in and forcing her on yet another three hundred and sixty-five days of relentless pursuit only to repeat the cycle again with nothing but another letter to show for it.
For now, the letters lived in harmony with the other skeletons she kept hidden in her closet. Only unfortunately for him, Melanie's closet was getting quite full. There wasn't much more she could take (both for her own sanity and storage purposes).
It wasn't a conscious decision for Melanie to crawl out of bed and take the forsaken box of letters into her grasp, but the damage was already done, and now she needed to face her demons.
She knew that she needed to, but she couldn't find the courage to open the box.
For now, all she could do was stare at it and hope it would somehow disappear.
