Crashing Down Into Flames

Chapter 4

Chapter Song: Addicted- Saving Abel

Monday- Morning

-Cole-

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When I last saw her, she was breaking down in front of me with water spewing from her eyes- full of betrayal and heartbreak. Her knees wanted to buckle beneath her and fall to the ground as if she were fighting her inner self to go. It almost makes you want to feel for the woman. Pitty her even.

A curse was cast on my life when she entered it, metaphorically speaking. She planted a wretched part of herself in my home, on my workers, and in my soul. But I can't say that the Temptress hasn't occupied my mind the night she left.

Now, I can't say that when she left, an irritating stinging sensation didn't appear in my chest for a couple of weeks. It almost felt like I was stabbed in the chest with a knife, and I should know how that feels because I have been stabbed and shot in the chest, and lived. But this feeling felt different from a pain you can take away with whiskey. So, I just claimed it as indigestion, but my housemaid/ chief, Mrs. Dontia, said it was someone who was finally picking at my icy, cold, dead heart.

She's on my mind. Like a man in a madhouse, I constantly think of her. Everywhere I look, I see a trace of her as if she was there.

Whether it be her horrible fashion that pops out from my laundry, still to this day, or my henchmen that still blabber her name now and then, she's metaphorically everywhere. Leaving behind her sweet peppermint and sweet champagne fragrance that has seared its way into my coats and never coming out no matter how many times I wash them.

It's like seeing the shadow of her ghost where she used to be in my bed and my life. The shadow of the impact that she's made. I still, to this day, even find her ridiculous decorations that she covered my house with.

When she bumped into me, as her clumsy self would do, I felt the whipping flash come back. Maybe it's desire. Maybe it's an obsession.

I'm not going to be one of those men that say it's a demon, or a monster inside me that wants this because that sounds like shit. But it's a mania so deep- it wants to make me grab myself by the throat and drag my attention to only her. It's the uncontrollable pull to kill anyone who lays their hand on her and to shield her away from other on-looking eyes.

And, of course, when I had My Temptress in my hands, I couldn't help but get a taste of her of what I'd lost. Her lips taste like the sweetest pool of bourbon with a strawberry sunshine smell. A charming taste that makes you want to go back for more, but with the guilt of knowing you're going to regret it the next day.

But with loss, shall come a redemption. And it's time for that redemption.

So now, as I stand here, almost late from being early to the meeting I have soon, I've suddenly decided to stop and stare at my treasure. My game. My prize. My Temptress.

There's a change in her. She's a lot more... confident, blunt, arrogant... different. She's back to the woman who I met. Not the emotionally unstable person she became when she was pregnant but the woman she was when I met her. Confident. Independent. More of herself.

The sunlight in the mid-sky behind her, almost rising to high noon, pours into the window and onto her radiant ivory skin and unperfect makeup face, which frowns in a way that pinches my insides as she stares at her shirt covered in recent coffee spillage.

The sunlight mixed with the small square screens to make a larger square screen behind her -which displays different colors of light blue, lime green, and bright orange- on ambient display brightens the small details of features of her face.