Pink Ice, Rose Gold: The Diary of Rosie Howlter

Prologue

     Sometimes, when I'm alone, I wonder if I'm the only person who exists. If everybody else is just a fever dream while I marinate in this wonderfully cruel world.

    I watch the things that were once beautiful shrivel and die before me. Flowers, birds, bees, butterflies...the list could go on forever. There's nothing stranger than the feeling you get when you're holding a dying creature. You can feel the pulse, the intakes of breath, and it spikes for only a moment before going still.

And just like that.

The life is gone.

     You sit there for moments afterward. You can feel the blood cooling on your palm and the stillness of the creature frightens you. It was just there. It was just alive! You watched the light in its eyes be extinguished...like a spark in a storm.

     At first, you don't believe it—I...don't believe it. The seconds are ticking away and just moments ago, it was alive. It was part of this world. Time doesn't care. Time will go on without it! Sometimes, you can't believe it! That time would abandon such a beautiful thing! It just, continued to fly on, like a living bird. It stopped for you, though. It stopped, and trapped you in that moment. Reliving it over and over again.

     No matter how much you want to not care, that feeling will always reside within you, weighing down your soul. The feeling of death. You can't shake it. It stands beside you eternally like a shadow...waiting. The dying creature was just a part of this world.

Now it's gone...

And it's all your fault.

. . .

...There's nothing more beautiful in this world

...than death...