SHATTER

I settle the earpieces carefully, retrieve a battered Marlboro, hit play and I'm off. One deep drag after another and I'll concentrate on this seductive music and the sweet smoke, not the panic building inside me. Walk taller! Maybe today you'll be safe. No sleep again, but that's okay, at least she wasn't in your dreams. Just a case of getting to the library and back. Easy. Bitter, isn't it? I used to love this university, with its listed buildings and trees with squirrels. All the joy was stolen. Still, possibly today I'll even feel pretty in this costly new dress all velvet and lace,, perhaps I'll be able to smile like I used to.

Too close now. Here again, she's always around this bit... Don't make me look at that face today. My hands are numb, thick frost everywhere, and as I cringe around a corner my finger slips on the volume... and oh-no. The world goes still except for the yell of "I'd sooner slit my wrists and risk discovery of hell..." from inside my head because I've ran into her again. I join in with the singer and whisper "Than stay another moment here where certain Devils dwell..." my eyes locked on her swift-averted face, riding waves of horror, loathing and a dreadful jealous craving. My personal Devil haunts me with her perfect thinnes, glossy black hair and archetypal Gothic beauty, in the light of which I'm just a lumpy shadow. My nemesis.

The whole encounter was but ten seconds long but it's left me sick and shaking. I smile grimly; at least it's been so long since I ate that I won't throw up on the spot. I look at food and her bones mock me. So I sip wine or vodka and smoke endlessly. It's the least I can do.

My day's ruined now. Jealousy has drowned me, so I creep up the steps and flee to my favourite corner of the hushed library. I'm burning, consumed with knowing where she's gone to, if she's still playing with the love she stole from me, or if that's gone too. My mind won't stop.

Out of the window the world looks so perfect, the buildings bleached to bone-white, the valley cradling my isolated university ringed with blackened trees reaching like the hands of angels. Suddenly, I want that purity.

Up two more flights to the ninth storey and I'm out on the roof, so distant and cold. Far below, everyone looks like my black-clad nemesis against the white. It matters little which one she is - her passive malignancy turns everything sour and that pale little face hangs before me now as ever.

Tracing the barrier with my bare hands I'm cracking thorns of ice and I'm surprised to see blood delicately lacing the icicles. It seems she's stopped me feeling pain. I blink in sorrow and know she's even frozen my tears.

I don't want to live in a world where a stranger makes me feel inadequate. Who takes over my every move and twists each thought so all I do is compared to her. I hate her for all she has and I never did have and I'm so tired. She barely even knows me but as a figure who stares in horror at her from a distance, and I know she wouldn't care that I'm left bleeding in the cold. No more. Dimly I realise this tape reached its end and began replaying one final time. I suit my action to his lyrics...

"One step off the edge and the world will seem alright"

...... shatter .....

-Stephanie Gray