Pomegranate Seeds (or Spider Lily, A Red Goodbye)

This was my suicide. It was how I'd always wanted to die - peacefully, and on my own damned terms.

Red the color of my blood clouded the water rushing from the overfilled bathtub. Spiderlilies painted the surface, rocking with the current of the running faucet. Within, a pale freckled corpse drowned in the bathwater and blood. Deep cuts sliced through my arms and legs, self-inflicted wounds from the butcher knife still clutched in my left hand.

That was my body sinking further into the tub. I was standing over it, barefoot and naked. Cold like ice spread through the room, and shadows rolled across the ceiling like thunderclouds. It was a comfortable cold, I decided, warranting no need to wrap my arms across my body in protection. It was a vulnerable cold, a lonely cold, cold like none I had ever experienced. The shadows collected in the corners of the room like cobwebs until I stood in a ghostly Otherrealm of my dormitory bathroom.

"You look beautiful in death."

A voice like ice pierced my ears, and I swiveled to face the bathroom counter, where a tall, dark, and handsome figure leaned casually against the countertop. He was a large, lithe being with skin as black as night and eyes like windows into the void itself. Shadows curled around him like a second skin, draping him in a cloak of pure darkness. The shadows clung to him, moving as he moved, and I realized they were a part of him, some extension of his being.

"You're here to collect my soul," I whispered.