Author's Note: Good evening fellow readers and authors. Please sit back and make yourself comfortable. I wish that you shall enjoy my tale of love and vengeance. Please feel free to submit a review of your choice. I beg of thee DO NOT BE GENTLE WITH YOUR REVIEWS. I am strong and can handle harsh words. Yours Truly,

Hope Corven

The Heartbreak of Salvation

People once believed that when someone dies a crow carries their soul to the Land of the Dead. But sometimes something so bad happens that a terrible sadness is carried with it and the soul can't rest. Sometimes, just sometimes, a crow could bring that soul back to set the wrong things right.

"Johnny!" Hope Corven jerked awake screaming from a disturbing dream about her murdered boyfriend Johnny Webster. The dream was always the same. The dream always started with her standing beside Johnny's grave. Suddenly the world would shattered and she found herself standing under a giant oak. Above her was Johnny reaching down for her. Yet it wasn't him, it seemed as if his face had been burned away. Hope tried to grab Johnny's hands but missed each time. Johnny would disappear as a tightness a formed around her neck. The ground would drop from under her feet as a crow flew into her line of vision. The dream would end after that. Sometimes she would wake up screaming other times in a cold sweat.

She couldn't understand why she kept having that dream unless it Johnny was sending her a warning from the grave. Unfortunately, she would never receive that message until it was too late.

"Well maybe I'll understand his message when I see him" Hope whispered to no one. She decided the day before that maybe every year on the day he died she should visit him. This would be a year since she went there. Besides it was October 31. Johnny's favorite holiday and her twenty-first birthday.

She got up out of bed, As she was making her bed up, she tried to decide what to wear when she went to his grave. Finally she decided to her favorite outfit. A pair of black leather pants, a specially made black leather shirt, Johnny's black leather trench coat and her black leather boots.

Johnny would tell her she looked like a "black-winged angel" in that outfit. It really made her snow-white skin, jade-colored eyes, and night sky black hair stand out.

A small smile touched Hope's rose red lips as she thought about Johnny's beauty. "His hair was pure sunlight, his eyes were the daytime sky, and his skin was a golden brown. He was truly an earth bound angel. Now he is a light shining down upon the earth." she whispered softly.

Hope started to get dressed when a mask feel out onto the floor. It was the mask Johnny had given her for her eighteenth birthday. It was a mask of tragedy except there were vertical lines running up and down both eyes and two lines running across the lips. Johnny also had given her a miniature version of the mask on a velvet chocker "What a perfect addition to my outfit" Hope whispered. Then she finished getting dressed.

Soon Hope was passing old sights driving her Harley Davison towards the cemetery. Once at the cemetery Hope slowly made her towards Johnny's grave.

Hope's breath was taken away the moment her eyes seen Johnny's tombstone. It appeared so life-like. Whomever had carved the really captured Johnny's spirit in the stone. The statute stood looking at something in his hand yet it wasn't him. Instead it was Johnny's angelic form. Hope stepped closer toward the replica and saw a miniature version of herself in it's hands.
"Hello Hope" a voice whispered in her ear. She turned quickly to find the source. She couldn't believe her eyes. Johnny stood before her, a faint smile on his face. "Happy to see me?" Johnny asked sweetly.

Hope removed her mask before speaking, "More than what words can describe", tears began streaming down her face.

Johnny gently wiped away her tears as he softly spoke to her "Hope please stop living this fantasy. You need to accept the task appointed to you. Once you have completed it then we can be together forever." "Johnny what are you talking about?" she asked.

"I'm sorry Hope, but this is how it must be." Johnny whispered. Pain filled Johnny's eyes as he pushed Hope backwards into a dark abyss. "Farwell beloved" he whispered as she fell.

Hope would never remember those moments or dreams.