• When I knew you, I couldn’t imagine a world without you, even though before then, I’d never even met you. Now you’re gone, and there’s a black space that you should fill, both in my heart and in my surroundings. But you can’t now. You’re too far away and you’re not coming back here. Not for a long time, if ever.

    There’s a hazy darkness in the corridors where you should be walking. There’s a clouded figure sitting where you should be in each classroom. There’s a blurry outline of you standing at each place you used to haunt. There’s a smudged handprint on the bright red locker you hid your artwork and hoodies in. There’s a thin mist highlighting the many paths you walked along, even on top of the wall twice your height that you liked to climb and sit on. There’s a translucent shadow here where you should be sitting beside me on this bus. On the window I can see the outline of a star just like the one you drew on the steamy glass months ago.

    Even though I know you’re far beyond my reach, I can still sense your presence, whether it be my imagination, my memory or your subconscious spirit escaped from its living embodiment. I can still smell you, though the scent is stale and masked by time and other innocent people. But I can find you, no matter how faint the trace. Everything about you is distinct and imprinted on my senses, all six of them. Yes, even on my own clothing, your scent still lingers, masked by time and perfume, but still remaining. Fire, ink and something earthly. I remember it well. Sometimes I even catch it on the breeze, causing me to look up in hope, but every time I’m disappointed, because you’re never there.

    I can still see you in my mind’s eye, somehow clear and solid before me, yet not solid enough. I can’t feel your warm embrace anymore, no, I can only imagine. I can only remember. And I can hear you as if you were right there, whispering in my ear or laughing with your friends. I can even remember the things you used to say, be it an overused phrase or part of some random conversation. Sometimes your voice is so distant I fear I might even lose the last traces of you which I still have.

    You’ve escaped my life, and if you were to escape my mind too, I don’t know what I’d do. I’m at a loss without your presence, so I’d be nothing but a hollow shell if I couldn’t even remember you. Yes, I have a family and I have friends, but sometimes even they don’t mater when I sit on the floor, locked in the bathroom, playing with the razor blade. You became my all, the essence of my being. I know not how you did so, but it has happened and such a change is irreversible. And that’s probably because I won’t let it be reversed.

    Am I obsessed? Insane? I’m in love with the shadow of a memory, not even who you are now, but who you used to be, before you became so corrupt. They warned me not to fall into your trap, and I ignored them. How stupid of me. And do I regret it? I don’t thinks so…or do I? I don’t know anymore. I really don’t. Of course, I regret some things, like not taking it further when I had the chance like not following my impulsive tendencies when they really should have been used. Like not making myself clear enough. You made my life such an exciting misery, now it’s just plain misery.

    I’m sitting on my windowsill now, precariously balanced, staring down at the road I’ve walked across so many times. One day I walked along it for half an hour. It was silent, deserted, and then I saw a shadow behind the tree, something humanoid. I’d been thinking of you at the time…was this your way of trying to contact me? Is this the ghost of you, faded, masked? Do you grow darker and dimmer with each passing day? Will it come to a point when you are no longer the near tangible figure in my mind, but simply a human shaped haze in the distance? Please, don’t let it ever come to that. Or maybe it wasn’t you I saw, but one of your messengers.
    I still wonder…

    I’ve moved to my bed. Countless times I’ve dreamt of you while I lie asleep in it. You keep getting further away from me each night. Please don’t run from me, I beg you. Is this all you are? Al you were? Nothing but a dream. Have I deluded myself into thinking you were real? Were you always just a dream, or where you actually real? I’m confused now. There’s something missing from my head. Everything is fake around me. The only thing left I know to be real is the pen I hold and the book I write this in.

    I think ‘m losing my mind. I don’t know how much more of this I can take… I must go hunting. Yes, that’s what I must do. I need to prove to myself that you were real.

    How did it come to this?

    ---

    You’re definitely There’s no doubt about it. There are traces of you everywhere, even with a single glance around my room. There’s a picture of your Night Elf Hunter, Seshafi, on my notice-board. There’s a screen shot of her saved to my computer. There’s that picture of you that my kitten took when I introduced him to you on webcam. There’s a complete history of our MSN conversations saved on the pc. Your music is on my Zen. Your picture is on Bebo for everyone to see. People talk about you from time to time. Your ‘Hex’ script is written in the green book.

    My other wristband is missing. I remember giving it to you and wearing the same one the next day. You were so confused. It was cute. ‘Magick,’ I told you, that’s how I had it. Yes, you were definitely real. How could I ever have doubted that?

    What have you done to my head, that it becomes so confused at the thought of you? I scanned through our conversation. You said you loved me. 27/10/07. Halloween. I miss that week, more than you could ever imagine. And when it passed…oh, why couldn’t I have seized my opportunity. Once in a lifetime. I missed my only chance to be happy. I know now you’d just laugh in my face.

    You led me astray. I changed for you. How could I have been so stupid? Hell, I almost became you. Why did I lose so much of myself to you? Even to this day, I still harbour some of your traits: my love for energy drinks, of course. Hah. ‘Relentless’ was your favourite. Next came ‘Boost.’ Why do I remember such small things? I really was obsessed with you. I still am. There’s my violence fetish too – my disturbing needs and urges to cause pain. That one led to a lot of trouble. I miss them. My impulsive violence led to loss, one of my greatest fears, brought to life by my own hands. Quite literally, might I add. Of course, I was sorry, but some things can never be the same again. Some people can’t forgive and forget.

    We are Relentless. ‘We do not forget.’ I remember you wrote that. It’s true isn’t it? I was with you in that guild; I will never forget either. How could I? You are part of my Identity. A shard of you is forever implanted in my body. It will remain there until the end of time. Does that mean that part of me resides within you too? If so, which part? There’s definitely a piece of my heart stuck somewhere in you, probably in the back of your mind where it can’t bother you.

    The black hole in my heart appears somewhat similar to that space you should fill everywhere I walk. In my heart there is a blurry outline of a human figure, filled with a cloudy, hazy darkness. Right now, someone is trying to fill that. You used to know him. He tries desperately…but…to no avail. He’s not the right person. And though I hate to hurt him, I refuse to pretend to love him. I know how that feels, and never, ever, should anyone have to experience it. There’s only one person capable of filling that gap, and I may never see him again. I’m sure you’d try to avoid me anyway. It wouldn’t be surprising. But I live in Hope, and however small her light may be, I will follow it. A day will come, and no matter how long the space between now and then, I will wait for it.

    You know something? It was your lies that kept me living. I do wonder how I’m still here. It’s only been five months since you disappeared. Less than that: twenty one weeks. 147 days. That’s 3,528 hours…211,680 minutes…12,700,800 seconds we’ve been apart. When you look at it like tat, it’s been ages. It feels like ages. But it’s not really that long, is it? What would it matter to you though? You don’t count the days you’ve been away from any of us, let alone the minutes or seconds. You don’t care for the past, not this one anyway.

    So where are you now? What’s new? I ask you every now and again. You don’t say much anymore, if you bother to say anything. You don’t seem to contact any of us of your accord. You really care that little? I’m glad I didn’t receive that when you gave me part of your Identity. I have my days when I’m evil, hateful, a horrible little b***h. Don’t we all? Yours is quite permanent, though. I loved those days when you smiled, all bouncy and hyper, with that devilish feline grin of yours, a trademark thing. You blew me away, you really did.

    You took your week, you had your fun, and that was all you needed. Then you just threw me away. I think I’ve figured it out. Correct me if I’m wrong, but what I see is this: You feed off all we have to offer (all our love) and you throw us away when we’re empty, just like another useless vodka bottle. You never realised that I had a hell of a lot more to offer than the tiny capacity of a single bottle of vodka. You didn’t care to check. Didn’t care to pay that much attention. But still, not matter how many times you hurt me, no matter how much larger you tore open that black chasm inside my heart, I still loved you.

    My friends thought me insane. Obviously they’d never felt true love. I turned a blind eye to your faults, put my trust in you, and took the risk. That’s one risk I should never take again.
    But I know I will.

    ---
    I didn’t think you could ever make me hate you. I thought you’d managed to prove me wring that night, when I poured my heart out to you. I told you what I felt. I asked you what you felt. You never replied, but I got answer enough the next day. They say actions speak louder than words; I do agree. Tell me, was she pretty? Was she everything you’d ever hoped for? And more? What did she have that I didn’t?

    I’m sure you smiled when you tore the remains of my heart apart. I knew then that everything you’d ever said to me was a lie. And you showed no mercy when you took my heart and crushed it in front of me. You deceived me from the every beginning. I hope you enjoyed it, because I did too, at the time. Now I look back and wonder how I could have been so foolish. But I know now: I believed because I wanted to. I was blind to everything else. You showed me all of these magnificent dreams, and then you ignored them all, and my wishes for them to become a reality. You broke every promise.

    I really thought it was all over, that I wouldn’t have to remember you ever again. For a while, even the dreams of you stopped. I didn’t have to think about you for a few weeks. Then somebody else came along. Of course, I was still nursing my shattered heart, and when things started to happen, I was certain I was finally free. Turns out this new somebody was as just as much a lie as the first one. I thought he was my Broken-Hearted Saviour. But no; he was just like you. Built me up and tore me down. He picked apart my wounds, stealing the stitches from my crudely repaired heart.

    I guess that’s how I remembered you. But with this memory, so returned the rest. I promised myself I would never hate you, no matter what happened. And here I am, still in love, watching as you go through more people, breaking them too. Is this just the way of the world? It sends people to make you happy, and then they make you sad, almost suicidal sometimes. The number of times I thought of you and wanted to die: they were so numerous I lost count. This newcomer managed to do the same in the space of three days. Could they have picked a worse time?

    I’ve learned that there are no saviours in a world such as this. It is too corrupt. We’ve destroyed it beyond repair. One heart break is more than enough, and I’m running out of thread to fix it with. If this thread is my life, I’ll run out before I’m even 18. I can’t take anymore mindless killing and heartless destruction. Just because you don’t have a heart doesn’t mean you can break someone else’s. What is the world coming to> This is insanity! Why won’t it end?

    WHY WON’T EVER END?

    ---

    And I take it back.
    Every last word.
    Every last wrong.
    Every last wrong word.

    I remember writing something. It’s true, even now, when you’re not around:
    “I will always love him. It will only ever be the amount of love that I feel at any one time that will vary. And it will always be a lot.”
    Save for that one time during summer, it’s a promise I’ve managed to keep.

    ---

    It’s happening again.
    Why now? I’m busy. I have work to do. Right now. Why do you invade my head now of all times. Couldn’t you have waited a little longer? Twenty minutes and this class would be over. I’m dwelling on you in school now too? It only makes sense, I guess – this is where I saw you most. But…I don’t have time for this.

    Memories flash within my inner eye, so many I am rendered blind to the rest of the present. Ever dwelling upon the past, I see what I want to see and I see what I hate to see. All of the images, good, bad and painful, they continue on, appearing relentlessly like an endless film, reel. Over and over and over again. I see it all, but not only visions; your voice is there too.

    Still, the sound remains clear and unaffected by time’s gifts and curses. I’m listening. Both blind and deaf to the outer world I am now. How long will this synthetic ecstasy remain? If the images are endless, is this joyfully depressing numbness too? I think I hope so, but how can I be sure? You bring me both joy and pain, even now, when you’re but a shadow of what you once were. When a memory is all I have left, just a husk of a being, it is what I must survive on, and though it hurts me to remember, I will never forget. I promise you that.

    I’ve spent so much time dwelling upon you and you alone, that my own shadow has deserted me and yours has taken its place. Does this mean I am you? I don’t want to be you, I want to be with you, if only for a second. Even in my dreams we’re apart. I’m not sleeping now, and here you’re not. Why?

    If I was to ask you what love was, what would you say? Would you say ‘it’s when you meet someone and know immediately that she is the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, and eternity beyond?’ Would you say that ‘it’s when all your thoughts are of her and no-one else?’ Would you say ‘it’s when you know you could never hurt her, ever, no matter what the circumstances?’ Would you say that ‘it’s when you would give your life for her without question?’ Would you say that it’s when she is the light in the world of darkness we inhabit? I don’t think any of those words would come from your mouth. Not one. An answer more suitable for you would be something along the lines of ‘I don’t love’ or ‘what the hell are you talking about?’

    You say you love me, you say you love her…and her and her and gods know who else. But love in your eyes just means that she’s worth tampering with, worth breaking and corrupting. So you add her to your list. Cross off the names of all who suffered by your hand and of all who fell when you finished leeching the essence of each. How kind…