My dear Julia…

  Plato once said,

  I had already written thousands of stanzas for her. But why did she stop reading them?

  No… that’s not right. She didn’t stop. She couldn’t. She was gone.

  Cancer is a cruel thing. A year ago, she was laughing in the kitchen, teasing me about my awful cooking. And now... now she lay before me. Ah… my beautiful Julia.

  “May pain never find you again, my love,” I whispered, brushing a strand of her dark red hair from her face as I gazed into the stillness of the casket and just watched her sleeping.

  She was only twenty-seven when the doctors spoke the word leukemia. Third stage. It was found too late. And now, a year later, she was gone.

  Just as Teddy Roosevelt once said, after losing both his mother and wife on the same day:

  And so it did from mine too.

  I never had much in the way of happiness.

  Just an orphan left behind by teenage parents who couldn’t handle my conditions, nor a child for that matter.

  Still, I grew up as nothing more than a target.

  My earliest memory? A boy who was painting my albino hair black with a bucket of paint, then screaming when I burst into tears of blood from my pink-red eyes.

  ‘The Son of Dracul,’ they started calling me the moment they learned a bit of history. A vampire. A freak. Anything but what I truly was: a child who never asked to be this way.

  Two conditions: Albinism and haemolacria. That was my curse.

  They never cared for the medical reasons; all they cared for was to have some fun. They never stopped having fun. Seventy-four children, tormenting me from the moment they could fucking talk, all the way into high school.

  But I pushed myself. Despite it all. Despite every whisper, every beating, every goddamn reminder that I didn’t belong among abandoned, unloved freaks… I pushed. All because I wanted something more from this life than just white hair, red eyes, sensitivity to the sun’s light, and bloody tears.

  And somehow, I did it. I got into a good university and studied what I’ve always loved: Literature, philosophy, and ancient history. And there… yes, that was where I met her.

  My Julia, a computer science student in her second year of university.

  It was a random, silly encounter. During a break before an important exam, I was sprinting down the hallway toward the bathroom, ready to burst. Then, right as I turned the corner, boom.

  A leaking ceiling, a slick puddle, a passing woman, and my own bad timing collided all at once like the Winged Hussars over Vienna. Only a strangled little “Ah!” escaped me as my feet slid out from under me.

  My head hit the floor, and everything went black.

  When I woke up, I was lying in a bed in the university’s medical ward, silently cursing my luck. If I hadn’t already been noticeable enough, this mishap had ensured it. I knew the bullying would only get worse.

  Then... I heard it, a soft chuckle nearby.

  I turned toward the sound and saw her. The same woman I’d collided with, before promptly sending myself to dreamland.

  She was scrolling through cat memes on her phone, laughing to herself. And for some reason, I just lay there, watching her in silence.

  When she finally looked up, she caught me staring. She didn’t scream or panic when she saw my eyes. She simply offered a warm smile.

  “How was your nap?” she asked gently.

  "Best I've ever had," I lied, turning to look for the nurse. "What did they say?

  “The nurse said you’re fine, but… You can say ‘sayonara’ to the exams.”

  I sighed, hearing her words. I could already imagine the professors chewing me out for it, but for some reason, I didn't feel bad for myself. But for her.

  "I’m sorry I made you miss them,” I said quietly.

  After a brief pause, she started laughing. It was a warm, unrestrained, far too joyful laugh for the circumstances we were finding ourselves in.

  “It’s fine,” she sniffed. “I probably would’ve skipped them anyway.” Then she turned back to me, eyes watery with laughter, her smile impossibly wide. “So, now that we've taken a swim together, I deserve to know your name, don't you think?”

  The answer slipped out of my mouth before I could stop myself, like I was under a spell.

  “Elio Welchia.”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Eastern European?” she squinted playfully. “Fancy.”

  I shrugged. “No one fancy gets a concussion in the middle of exams.”

  “Touche,” she murmured, standing and offering me her hand. “I’m Julia. You’ll be seeing more of me, Elio.”

  Two years later, as a celebration of our graduation, under a full moon with the Icelandic aurora borealis dancing above us, I knelt in the deep snow, shivering my absolute balls off, and asked her to marry me.

  She was so beautiful that night. Gods, she was gorgeous, her green eyes reflecting the aurora, her red hair burning against the white. She never judged me for my looks. She made me feel like they didn’t matter. The light of my life.

  But now… now even that light was gone. Now, nothing mattered anymore.

  All that mattered was in that casket now. Silent. Dead.

  I’d done everything I could, paid every bill, signed every paper, just to give her the funeral she’d asked for.

  Now all that was left was to wait for her family. My family.

  “God, I need to sit down,” I muttered, staggering to the first row of chairs and slumping on the first one that caught my eye.

  I hadn’t slept properly in days. The apartment we bought felt hollow without her. It was cold and deserted.

  So I came here to the funeral home, after the last of the arrangements were made, to sit with her one last time.

  “Haaah…” I exhaled, leaning forward, elbows on my knees, chin resting in my hands, eyes fixed on the dark-brown casket before me. Holding back the tears.

  “Say, Julia,” I whispered, hoping she would answer, “Do you remember that time I took you to the library and started rambling about the fall of the Roman Empire?”

  Only the air conditioner answered, a dull hum in the corner of the room, drilling into my skull.

  Still, I tried again. “Or that time we went hiking, and I lost my sunglasses and couldn’t see because the sun was too bright for my eyes? You had to pull me down the mountain by the hand. God, how much I cried that day, huh?”

  Julia stayed silent.

  “Please, Julia,” I begged, eyes squeezing shut to dam the tears. “Don’t leave me here. Alone. What am I supposed to do now? Without you?”

  But Julia was long gone.

  So I wept like a child. Like the boy who once wore paint in his hair while blood tears streamed down his face. They streamed down my cheeks now, too.

  My wife was dead. The only happiness in my life was dead.

  [This world has wronged You.]

  “It did, didn’t it?” I sniffed, thinking she’d finally answered. “Why did you leave me then?”

  [We were always here.]

  [Watching.]

  “We?” I muttered, wiping my eyes of blood, squinting to see who that “we” was.

  [You are not needed Here Anymore.]

  [The Custodians require your assistance.]

  [Elsewhere.]

  “Custodians? What Custodians?” My voice cracked as panic rose. Blood stung my eyes as I tried to open them; I couldn’t see. Who would play a prank like this? In a place like this?

  I wiped harder, probably smearing my black suit with red. Who cared?

  “There,” I muttered, finally able to make out the sleeve of my costume.

  I sprang to my feet, disgust and anger boiling up. “Have you no… shame?” I shouted. Then I froze, the words failing me.

  This wasn’t the funeral home. The casket was gone. The air conditioner was silent. The air smelled different. Colder. The walls… weren’t the same walls I stared at aimlessly for half a day.

  “Where am I?” My voice trembled as I spun around. “Where is Julia’s casket? Where is my wife?”

  There was no one to answer me. No one to prank me.

  And maybe it would’ve been better if I were to be mocked, to be pranked. That was something I was used to living with, easier to move past, but anything would’ve been easier to stomach than what I saw before me.

  I stood alone in a vast hall, its silence so deep it pressed against my ears. Pillars of white marble rose higher than my eyes could follow without tilting my head. But I did.

  Balconies, bridges, endless flights of stairs that went into other parts of this... building, and above it all, windows made of glass, up and up, and up, painting the dome-shaped roof into a harsh, blinding light.

  Still, despite its suffocating glamour and obvious beauty, the place felt abandoned, with many spots on the walls and the bridges below covered in spider webs.

  But then, I properly looked around, firstly deciding to look downward, at what my feet were standing on.

  The floor beneath me was smooth as glass, reflecting myself, my misery painted in that horrid expression, and the distorted glamour above me.

  And in front stood a spectacular hardwood table, fourteen chairs surrounding its sides.

  But what stood behind it was the most beautiful thing there was in that place. A throne. It was of a black, somehow darker than black, with red stones scattered around the weird color.

  It was difficult to tell from that distance what materials the throne was made from. And it was not because I couldn’t approach it. I was sure I could, but instead, I stood in the same place I found myself in. Frozen. All I could do was spin around. Nothing else. I was afraid to do anything else.

  The place I was in was a combination of a ruin, a cathedral, and a castle all at the same time.

  It felt off. I felt off. Out of place.

  After all, the most important part of me remained where I was earlier.

  My Julia…

  What reasons did I have to remain here? In this place? In this life? None.

  So, I finally moved. Walking up the first flight of stairs, I saw without care where it led. Then I started running, caring less and less about my body with each step I took.

  I wasn’t much of an athlete in this life of mine, but I ran like a gazelle that day, reaching the high tops of the long staircase in what felt like a minute, barely able to draw breath.

  “Won’t be needing it for much longer anyway,” I gasped, looking down past the silver bars that kept me from a free fall straight back on the reflective floor.

  From that height, I looked like a flea. But in a way, I was one my whole life. Unable to jump higher than what the world decided without my consent. Only one person made me feel like I could jump higher. And I did… for a while. Until I saw her crashing to the ground, never to jump again.

  I kept repeating inside my head as my feet climbed the silver bars.

  I was trembling. My heart was racing. My skin was tingling. Sweaty.

  I… was afraid to die.

  But yet, a life without her made me dread it even more.

  So, in the same old fashion, I fell into a pool of my own piss and fell in love with the woman who joined me for a swim, as I climbed past the tallest of the bars, my lack of flexibility finally caught up to my still-exhausted body, and, despite my fears, I slipped. Falling easily a hundred feet straight to the reflective floor.

  It is such a weird feeling to watch your own reflection as you fall to your doom.

  It all happened in slow-motion, really, giving me enough time to realize what the fuck I was doing.

  In a way, I was happy to rejoin Julia so soon, but more than that, the animal instincts, the primal urge embedded into my fucked body, took over in that fraction of a second, and I knew… I was bloody terrified.

  All the way to the ground, terror ruled my mind until I felt my body smashing on the reflective floor.

  All went numb. All went black.

  Peaceful nothingness.

  Death felt more comforting than I could have ever hoped for, really.

  [Subject registered: Elio Welchia]

  [Status: Dead]

  [Reign Index Initialized: 0.00%]

  [Deviation Logged: Custodian’s Request Denied.]

  [Deviation Rejected.]

  [Rejected by: The Custodian of Death.]

  [New Directive: Continue Existing.]

  [Reconstructing.]

  God. Fucking. Damnit.