I want you to suffer just a little bit more, in this beautiful place I've set up for you. Look at this lovely kingdom of ice, cold like your eyes as you try to stab me with your glares, but I don't feel pain, not anymore.

We're too far removed from the world, no one will find you, not even while you freeze, bound to a tree fidgeting and trembling as a little kitten might inside a bag to be tossed into the stream. You can't scream, I'm sure you've figured out that I'd drugged your morning coffee, rendering you this helpless little thing before me, trying to put off that air of superiority that first attracted me to you, a beautiful man who thought only of work and perfection. You desired to be so great and ended up as what? You lost everything to your foolish ideals, and now you will loose your life to me, your dearest lover.

What? You never loved me?

I've known that all along. You brush away from my touch, and your eyes hold too much malice...might I ask what I ever meant to you?

...Poison? A toxic addiction, you mean? You could never get enough of me...as I never had enough of you. We hurt each other so much that it was only natural one of us was going to end up dead, I just happened to come out on top.

I'll cut your bonds and watch as you try and crawl away. Seeing you so far under me makes me feel like I'm scrutinizing a little creature on a lab table. Perhaps I could strap you down and dissect you? What a pity I don't have a knife.

Do you want to know how I'm going to kill you? You're the only one who will ever know. I'm going to leave tomorrow morning and go to another country, a place without winter, without ice, without you. They'll find what's left of you, but no one will ever find me.

And so I begin. First, I throw this ice water on you so you might freeze here, unable to move as my enchanting ice sculpture.

It's cold? Nothing is as cold as your skin beneath my fingers, or your hatred towards me for so long. It's your poison; the addictive bitter taste from your lips, the taste of deceit as we pretended to be in love like everyone else, but you love nothing at all... Love was irrelevant and unnecessary in our sadomasochistic little secret, a scandalous tryst that I was wise not to brag about, and you've lived without emotion for so long it's plausible that you didn't have a heart to love me if you wanted to.

I love no one but myself?

Indeed, haven't you figured it out yet? You can't leave me. You can't decide you want out just because your research is picking up in your shallow world of science and rationality. I liked you infinitely better as you came crawling to me for support and stability, outside my door during the first rain of spring just begging me to let you in. I liked you when you were willing to come to my bed in exchange for the food you couldn't get yourself. I liked you when you were fragile and helpless and indisputably mine. You're still mine. So when I say 'jump', you ask 'how high' and when I say stay you stay. See what happens when you don't listen to me? See what happens when you try and run back to your little fantasy of being important, respected, and independent? You are nothing unless I say otherwise, and now I say that you are a disobedient creature to be slaughtered.

Are you cold yet? I can see you shaking. I can see that you're being bitten with your own poison, the ice that attracted me to you is now helping me destroy you. And now, I will end this. See this blade of ice? As you would say, it's a tapering spike of ice formed by falling or dripping water, but I know you and this are the same. Both are cold, unfeeling, and soon to be no more. The sun is rising, the ice will melt, no one will know what happened here, for dead men tell no tales.

I pin you against the tree, weakened as you are, and I shove the blade through your heart. Seeing you stutter, and seeing the blood fall from your breast and out from your lips...your lips... I need to taste them while they bleed. You've never been sweeter, my dear...

What's that? Have I no heart?

No.

You thought that ice would kill all the delicate flowers in the world, but you forgot that winter always succumbs to the spring.