With snapshots left behind from my eyes, my mind had created this world, fuelled by every one of my senses, immersing me in warm air redolent of brackish seawater, sweet Night Jessamine, and her shallow breath.

She was stark naked, bedaubed in tribal paints, sitting by a campfire trying to keep warm. And she was crying. The closer I moved, the harder she wept, the less vibrant the colours over her undulating body became. The oranges melted with the crackling fire; the blues and purples with the blinking night sky; the greens with the verdant slopes of the hilltops.

But the reds––they just intensified. With every step I took, more and more of this thick red paint trickled over her body.

When I was within touching distance, I noticed the red paint was not merely trickling over her body but was spewing from a bullet hole in her chest. I tried to help her, I really did, but I couldn’t understand how. The more I pressed my hands against her icy chest to stop the bleeding, the bigger the wound became until my hands were completely submerged in her body, my fingers splaying through her ribs, experiencing the beating of her heart before it finally expired.

Only when awake did I realise that all I had to do to keep her alive was move backwards. I just had to stay away from her. But I can selfishly confess that I did not want to leave her side. I’ve grown so accustomed to the sight of blood that it doesn’t even matter anymore.

It’s as though being away from her is a fate worse than her death...