A Recipe For Revenge.

He was her beginning, her middle and her end, though of course, she never imagined it would be so at the time.

There was never a flame. No spark to speak of. He penetrated her life at first, only as a number. The newest mandroid to roll off the end of a well-versed production line.

Oh, she primped and flattered, of course. Blushed when the occassion called for it, and flashed a thigh when she thought it would benefit. Her's was a well choreographed routine...she, the beholder of a golden agenda.

He knew what she was all about, and swaggered to the batting plate with a smirk and a hike of the pants. He knew the rules alright, but he never was one to play by them.

He caught her off-guard.

There was never a flame. No spark to speak of. But all at once, she found herself at the centre of a firestorm.

It raged around her; flooded every delicate blue vein until she herself was boiling with it. It put light behind her eyes...in fact, they danced with it. The embers felled her wooden sanctuary. They charred her cool facade of indifference; burnt away her sleeves...turned every trick to cinders.

In a fever, she emerged from the sinister ashes of her former self as would a phoenix.

The rebirth did not suit him.

Sincerity complicates things.

He was water in her hands...bit by bit he trickled through the gaps...clung to the creases in her palms and slipped away. She could not hold him. Down, down, down he fell, onto her black, patent leather shoes until her nimble feet became water-logged with the sheer weight of him.

Every step dragged...each one an effort. There was no escaping him, or at least, not at first. Her mind was still alight with him. She was entranced...encapsulated...pyromanic.

He succeeded in the end. Her wet feet soon became cold feet. They were ice cold...the kind that spreads like a lethal virus. It slipped into the bloodstream like coolant into anti-freeze and pumped with every heart-wrench, until the fire went out with a hiss that was really a sob, and a great deal of black smoke.

She became infected with it - with the very idea of him. Her every thought of him festered like a bullet wound...rotted her mind against him, and turned her heart gangrene. The bitterness was solvent...abundant...destructive.

He was carefree once more. He drove her to the alps of her own heartland and buried her in heavy snow. There was no escaping. There was never any escaping him.

She was trickless...loveless...heartless. She was hollow...a crisp, terracotta shell fresh from the kiln, and gutted from the inside...covetous of vengeance, and determined to wreak havoc.

There was never a flame. No spark to speak of. A cup of wan smiles and a bucketful of empty promises...a sprinkling of affections here and there, blood brought to boil, and a heart left to simmer till golden brown in the family frying pan. To marinate in it's own juices until bone dry, only to be sealed away in a bland packed stamped 'Will Freeze Well'. They were right about that.

It had all come to nothing.