A WOLF AMONG MEN, tom riddle era

INTRODUCTION: A SINNER'S MINUTE

INTRODUCTION
a sinner's minute

A few more minutes, and Maris would be dead.

It started with the cold. It always did when she tried to kill herself in the water. A fleeting tendril of icy air, grasping onto her lungs. A layer of frost interspersed between her capillaries and her rib cage. A numbness grasping onto her limbs, seeping through her skin and twisting into her bones until she couldn't move.

The cold laid stilly. She had long stopped breathing. She could almost track her life marbling away in the glassy water. Not veins of crimson, like a violent demise would bring. She had tried that once, the wicked crack, the sudden limpness. No, this was a serene offering, to whoever was willing to collect what was left of her being. She couldn't see these veins streaking through the water. These were wisps of her essence, leaving her in a dreamlike glide, tauntingly slow.

Do it, Maris. Do it now. Breathe in. Wouldn't you like to know what death tastes like?

Yes. She did want to know. She was ravenous to feel her life slip out of her bony fingers. Hesitant, she remained still and held her breath. A few more minutes, and she would drown. Three, she reckoned. Three more minutes and she would forget.

Water entered her lungs relentlessly, pouring into every crevice of her body. It wrapped around her like a warm blanket, and sung her a lullaby until she succumbed into the biting pressure. The sound of the water rushing her ears was like a song, one last hymn of melancholy. A few minutes longer, and anything she used to be would be replaced by a disorientating nothingness.

Two more minutes.

She opened her eyes, welcoming the harsh sting of the water with a fondness. She was met with her arms, hovering above her, as if the water held them in some sort of limbo. Her fingers had long lost the ghostly pale they normally inhabited, replaced with an ugly blue. Those fingers alone held her demise in their hands. One slight movement, the lifting of an arm, and she could drag herself out of the tub, and serve the life she so desperately wanted to escape from. But she didn't move. She wanted to escape. Just for a moment, to forget him, and that moment that had left a stain on her soul. Oh, the things she would do to forget him.

     Maris blinked and shot her eyes away from them. She looked instead at the way her hair had risen upwards, like dark strands of seaweed that had rotted in poisoned water. Then past her hair at the rippling surface of the water, at the window above her. It had frost creeping up the edges of it like a spider's web. She gazed at the bare willows that clicked against it, scratching against the pane, eager to penetrate the glass so that the branches could watch her demise, too.

Fine. She welcomed the world around her to watch her. To peer into the bathtub and watch her fail to succeed. She would fail, she always did.

One more minute, and her body would give in. A coward, Maris, You're a coward.

She shut her eyes again. It was easier that way. Easier to not hunger at the act of living. She shut out her thoughts, they invaded her mind like a hostile parasite, consuming her whole. They tried desperately to claw their way out of the glass cage of her own skull. If she shut her eyes, it was almost like she was dead already.

But the darkness didn't matter. It had a face, and it was staring right at Maris. It stared at her, taunting to grasp her and imprison her forever. Blood pounded behind her eyes and her body started to thrash in the water, against the heavy veil of her submerged robes. She let the water hold her. It was as soft as hands, a comfort she's never quite known. It made her forget where she was for a second.