Tick Tock

When Time Stops

Death is cold.

It's waking up to ice kissing your skin over and over again.

Death is relentless.

The worst thing though, about being dead, is realizing that I was in love with the person that put me here.

It's realizing that I'm in love with my murderer.

Another snow flake touches my eyelashes and I force my eyes open.

Cold.

The ice hits again and my eyes find themselves shut once more.

People say that when a relationship isn't as it should be, they see red flags.

Fate gave me no warning.

I wish that when I saw him I heard a whisper of instinct saying, "Not him. He's going to kill you." Instead, when I saw him, my heart learned how to sing.

Maybe it was his eyes.

Yes, that would make the most sense.

Maybe it was the way I couldn't identify a color, making simply staring into them a mystery.

Possibly, it was the way his eyes didn't light up to the spectacles that everybody else found amusement in.
His eyes didn't stalk the short uniform skirts in the hallway or crinkle in laughter at the jokes the guys would try to tell him. His eyes would linger to the unfinished book in his backpack and the tangled up headphones screaming to be listened to.

Or maybe it was how his eyes look at me.

Me.

The girl nobody saw. The girl that's been invisible since freshmen year.

But he saw me.

Those beautiful eyes chose me.

The memory jerks my eyes open.

If I were to imagine what death was like in my old life, it would be kind of something like this. White, cold, but peaceful.

Snow lies beneath me and around me as it dances gracefully to the ground.

There are trees, but they are like me, dead, consumed by this coldness.

I raise my hand over my head just to see if I can. I can. But it feels too light, as if I would keep it up for any longer it would just float away.

I slowly sit up.

That's when I hear it.

The gentle tics of a clock surround me. I hear it in different places and it makes me want to get up and chase the sound.

And so I do.

I get lost in the sound.

A tic to my left and a toc to my right.

I chase time as if I can grasp it with my hands.

And then I do.

I open my hands to see pieces of crumbled paper.
It tells a story. It tells my story.

And my story starts with him.