Leo Mathers was by all accounts the textbook definition of the word ‘dull’. Just another faceless individual going unnoticed in the hustle and bustle of life.

And she was anything but. She was a woman that simply took his breath away. 

Quite literally.

He couldn’t breathe. He wasn’t able to. Not from the chokehold squeezing away all life from his eyes. 

That captivating smile of hers, now with clearer, bleaker eyes, was in all actuality, a masterclass in the arts of deception. Feigned kindness that could fool anyone. Certainly fooled him. 

The slender hand on his throat that once held his… once upon a time. Right then, to him, it felt like a lifetime ago despite it being just a couple of hours before. 

So gentle and warm, hand in hand, enjoying the chilly breeze of evening’s dawn. The dry deserted sidewalk, the cold humid air… and her shoulders touching his, smiling so contently as her gleaming crimson eyes looked back at the fondness in his own. 

He remembered thinking if he had died right then and there, he’d have died happy.

Now death was coming and he couldn’t find the words to take it back, nor even express them out loud if he could. 

An alleyway out of sight. Not the most befitting place for a deathbed, certainly so, especially when it’s within the dead of night with only the dim shade of the pale crescent moonlight beneath murky clouds as his only source of light. 

Through vision gradually fading, he could barely make out the bouquet of roses that he had bought for her. What joy sparked in her eyes once they found their way into her hands. Now they lay disposed and scattered, stems broken, petals wilted, awaiting a death atop a dirty gravel street. 

He felt saliva dribbling down his chin, running past his gaping lips and expelled a gurgling choking noise as the pressure on his throat intensified by a million. 

Instantly his tear-filled eyes fell back to her… the women that turned his life upside down in more ways than one. 

Back then and even now, everything about her just screamed ethereal. From the silky weaves of her blazing red hair to the enthralling way her soft voice swayed in the air, down to the very aura she permeated that followed in her wake.

Beauty and elegance were but simple understatements. There was just no straightforward way of describing her. 

Doom and gloom were what life was for him before she came around. Monotony in the everyday with no significant happenings to color his daily routine. Doom and gloom for the past twenty years. Doom and gloom forevermore. 

Then she came, she saw, and she damn well conquered. 

Christa was her name. He never quite found out what her last name was. 

In times between the happiness and joy ever since they met, he still found it downright baffling how the turn of events came to be. She could have had anybody in the world but she chose him. (in the end)

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Life didn’t seem so bad anymore. For once, life felt… nice, when she was there by his side. Despite himself, he hoped, he prayed. May life always be like this for as long as he lived.

A crack, a snap… then his struggle ceased. His hands that were attempting to pry away from her clutches sagged and fell lifelessly to his side. A single teardrop rolled down his left cheek as his vacant stare, empty as can be, peered into the cold apathetic eyes of the only person he ever truly felt something for. 

Christa finally released her hold and Leo collapsed with a thud onto the cold empty pavement.

Even in death, she thought to herself, he still looked so defenseless, so frail… weak as weak can be.

He was just perfect. Regrettably perfect.

She crouched down on bended knees, her head angling sideways, and felt a strange sort of amusement from the corpse lying before her very eyes. 

“It wasn’t supposed to be you,” she muttered to no one in particular.

A sudden surge of endearment had her lips curving upwards and she felt her hand gravitate towards his blackened disheveled hair and in spite of herself, she began to gently caress it, as she had so many times before.  

“You told me you were unlucky,” she went on, shifting herself closer to his paper-white skin. “That God must have cursed you or something.”

From the corner of her eyes, she could see his glasses, slanted, way off to the side, a hinge loose on one end, and a cracked frame on the other. A victim to the violent, almost frantic struggle that arose as she darted for his throat. 

He had fight in him. That was insightful.

The glistening, bleeding scratch marks deeply engraved on her skin would show for that.

Again, another wave of fondness came crashing onto her being as she recalled all the times she witnessed him constantly adjusting and readjusting his glasses, whining about how it would always somehow find its way teetering over the tip of his nose.

He joked once about simply gluing the lenses to his eyes as a remedy to his problem.

She suggested contacts.

With one memory came another and vividly she recounted how timid he was at first encounter. Minute details that she found simply precious. His downcast gaze, directing all focus to the nervous shuffling of his feet, reluctance in the way his voice shook as he asked her out for dinner for the first time.

Dinner sounded nice. 

Regret, perhaps, was what she felt right then, exhaling a heavy sigh.

“You were on to something there, Leo,” She withdrew her hand back. “You really are unlucky.”

She stood up.

“More than you could ever know.”

Then, just as sudden as death could ever be, the girl named Christa dissipated into thin air, leaving no trace behind in the quiet night.

Gone as if she never really existed. 

As if she never really had.

Because she never really did.

Christa was never really real.

Morning would soon come, and passersby trudging about their routine would inevitably happen upon the gruesome, pitiful sight of a dead body all by its lonesome, its glow of life snuffed away so swift and just. 

Eventually, the police would be notified, the alley sealed off, the body wheeled away to a nearby hospital for autopsy and soon the body had a name, an age and a cause.

Leo Mathers. Age 20. Cause of death: Asphyxiation.

His parents would be called, his possessions handed over to them and in them, they would happen upon his phone - unlocked… his background wallpaper displaying only him, smiling contently, but with an empty space to his right as if someone originally stood by his side.

In it, they would find notes, mementos, logs even. All detailing about the sad unfortunate tale of Leo and Christa. 

They met on a Monday, shared laughs on a Tuesday, went out on a Wednesday, held hands on a Thursday, hugged by Friday, his first kiss was on a dazzling Saturday afternoon…

Leo Mathers met his doom on a gloomy Sunday night.