It was a Monday morning when he got the dreaded call.

The moment he woke from his restless slumber and realized that the ringing was coming from his phone and not some dark recess in his mind...

He knew.

This was the life shattering call that would turn his life upside down the moment he answers.

He knew that she had gone where he can not go.

The woman with the hugs that could staunch the flow of a billion childhood tears, the woman who possessed kisses that salved the wounds growing up inflicted on the soul... was gone.

He felt nothing and everything when he at last answered the phone.

He died a thousand deaths that morning.

The Universe broke while the birds sang outside his window.

He felt trapped.
A memorial took place.
An odd sort of affair.

Pictures, flowers... People speaking kindness he could
not comprehend.

"She was beautiful... She was so kind... She was good."

It did not distract from the void he now carried.

She was sick, she was flawed... She loved him, she was gone.

He was not the one who winked out of existence, yet he felt
missing, lost, unformed.
Faded.

He had to get away from the people who lived before they
noticed that he had become a spectre.

He did not want to hear the words, he could not feel them.

He found a well. A deep, dark thing.

Looking into the well, he heard a familiar voice:

Come sit in the dark with me.

Yes. Yes... I think I will. Do I even have a choice? He thought.

He jumped.

Every bone shattered when he hit the bottom.
He had expected it and did not care.
He thought that he might have died.

The Well smelled of sadness, damp and her favourite
perfume.

He laid in the dark realizing that he was alone, but not.
There was a presence there, that voice in the dark.

"I am grief," the voice said, "I am sorrow, I am the void you feel.
I am depression. I am anxiety. I am pain, I am fear.

You are welcome to stay as long as you like. However, your injuries will eventually mend, although not without scars,
and one day the door at the bottom of this well will open and you may leave."

"But I am weak... so weak," He said, "And I fear I may be dead."

"Death does not live here, my Friend," The voice answered,
"And neither does weakness. This is a place for the living who are
brave enough to feel."

He lived in the well, for years... for seconds.
Forever... a mere moment.
Time can heal anything... Time did not exist here.

He raged, he cried... He beat his already broken fists against the moss covered wall.

He remembered a time before the well.
He remembered her. The memories broke his heart.
He stayed.... falling apart over and over again.

He never slept, yet he dreamed.

Oh, how he dreamed. Of love... of Happiness. Of loss.
Curled up in the dark.

He heard voices of loved ones. He did not want to hear the words.
He resented them. They could not understand....

How could they?
He did not invite them in.
Why would they sit in the dark with him?
He did not want them to. The dark was his.

An eternity went by, no time at all.
He started to heal...
His bones mended.
His heart pulled itself together.
His skin itched. His soul bore the scars.

One day he did not fall apart...

The pain was there but it was not the consuming pain it once was.

The sorrow was still there but did not stab As viciously at his heart.
The tears fell but did not stay long upon his cheeks.

He stood up on shaky legs and knocked on the small door in the
bottom of the well.

The door swung open and light poured into the well.

"Come sit in the light with me," A familiar voice said.

He looked back at the glowing eyes in the last dark part of
the well.

"It's time," The Darkness said.

"...But I am not completely healed," He said.

"And you never will be. You can only... carry on as if you are."

He turned back to the door...

"Yes... Yes, I think I will," He said and stepped into the light,
carrying every broken part with him.