Collide

Prologue: Salem, 1681

He wrapped the coat around himself tighter to brace against the bitter wind. After a long day of chopping wood in the forest with his father, he looked forward to warming up around the fire and eating the meal his mother had made. The walk through town was chilly, but the thought of a warm fire was all he needed to forget the cold.

His eyes drifted over the house of Elizabeth Pride, and a smile came to his face. He knew it was a sin to sneak into the woods to spend “quality time” with her in the dead of night, but he could not help himself. He was madly in love with her, and she with him. It was a perfect sinner’s romance.

As a surprise, he decided to stop and deliver some firewood to her family. It was always nice to have extra fuel in the cold months, and he was always searching for excuses to visit her. He snuck off to the window at her bedroom to go see her first. Just thinking about her beautiful blond hair and thin, perfectly sculpted frame made his heart warm.

His fingers tapped on the rim of the icy window. A single candle lit the room inside. He glanced through it to see if she was coming to let him inside just as she had so many nights before. However, as he peered through the window, his eyes met a sight that he would have rather not seen. His Elizabeth exposed in her bed to another man!

He gasped and dropped the firewood in a pile on the ground. The loud clattering startled her, drawing her eyes out the window to meet his despairing gaze. He took a step back, moving his eyes away from the scene before him.

“Wait!” she called out.

“Why? Why stay and watch you expose yourself to another man?” he demanded, turning away from the window.

“Please! Don’t go!” she pleaded. She began to rise from the bed, but quickly realized her nudity and sank back out of view.

“You just could not stop yourself, could you? Once a sinner, always a sinner!” he spat.

He turned from the window to go home. The scene replayed in his head over and over. His love with another! What did he do to deserve this?

His heart shattered at the thought, and the memories came flooding back. This was entirely his fault. If he hadn’t been such an imbecile, Elizabeth wouldn’t have laid with another. Why had he been so foolish?

There was only one answer. The pain would not end until he did something drastic. The only cure to his broken heart would be to end himself. He knew it all too well.

As quickly as his world had turned upside down, he left town to run back to the forest. When he was alone deep in the woods, he stripped off his coat. This was the only way to fix the problem.

He laid down on the snowy ground and closed his eyes. The chill burned his skin, but soon it was replaced by numbness. His limbs and eyelids became weighed down by the frozen loss of consciousness. The pain of the cold was intense, but not nearly as horrible as remembering his stupidity and seeing Elizabeth’s betrayal.

Slowly, he fell asleep, knowing he wouldn’t wake again. And when dawn arrived, he was nothing but a frozen corpse in the snow.