Prologue
Teeny Tiny Twilight
What is it, which defines Hell?
I knew myself of comeuppance for it, images of fire and brimstone being the most essential characteristic of Hell. The suffering and torture, the absolute absence of good but for that last piece of self that screams for it. If only these were described, it would take little insight to imagine that one was speaking of the tortures of life after evil.
But what of those who loved to burn?
I knew purgatory. I know heaven—of that I'm sure. I usually imagined myself in hell when I fretted and worried the constant precarious placement of her feet upon such smooth and predictable surfaces would lead her to a fate worse than death.
My greedy arms.
Purgatory was easily defined. It was the ceaseless, insistent ticking of a clock that marked not a thing for me, but rather marked the one I doted for. Each second stealing pieces of her, slowly gathering her up for the time she would be no more. Each second tempting and trying my control. To walk that line between heaven and hell. To let her live, or to take her life. Hell had a second option. I could just kill her.
Heaven also seemed to depend on time. The absence of it. Measured in moments rather than the unreliable seconds that in her presence could both fly and slow immeasurably, making time itself a whole unreliable estimation on the length and importance of it's individual moments.
Hell though? What of it?
Heaven seared me thoroughly, so was hell cold? It was hard to imagine something more terrible than the lack of her. The loss of her.
Perhaps then, Hell was simply that. Just as darkness is the absence of light, cold the absence of heat, then Hell is the absence of Heaven.
It was not the fires that seared my throat, but the chill of her destitution. Not the haunting of my past, but the horrors of the future. Hell was breathing freely, without fear. In Hell, I drowned with no hopes of sinking further into her. Hell was walking the righteous path, a parallel to the one I had walked from birth.
Heaven was burning. Heaven was feeling the crushing weight of her presence on my heart, her own beat echoing in the hollow silence of my chest. Heaven was the great compliment of my vices, pulling together into a great siege of pleasure.
And her? What of she? What of I? She put all of me into question, pulling our truth and knowledge in the wake of her passage. simultaneously, she shrouded herself in the enigma of chime. Of Annabel.
The thoughts of her, the ever compelling desire to untangle her from everything that clung to her as stubbornly as I.
And suddenly I was halfway to my car, the lingering scent of her provoking the enticing memory of her. I was going to see her.
I couldn't help but grin at the giddy anticipation of it all. My next thought was a jovial one.
I was going to burn.
A/N: Hey!! Sorry for this, but since fanfiction is apparently threatening to pull stories that have mature content, (Prostitution and sex being mature) I left the forward here for people who are interested in reading it on Twilighted (dot) net. Hope you enjoy the rest of the story. (And I'm desperately looking for beta's)