PART ONE
discovery

Once there was a man. He was married to a woman who didn't make him happy. Every day he lived his life in a bleak, zombie-like state. But the woman, she was content and lively, filled with a fire that could not be quenched.

One day, the man had had enough of his dull half-life. He lied to his wife and went into the first bar he could find. It was lifeless and bland, but it had a certain draw to it, a vacuum that pulled him in like the dirt he knew himself to be. He opened the grey door with the name in bold letters, and revealed the place that would soon become home.

The first thing he noticed was the smell. His nose was filled with the stench of drugs, smoke, alcohol and vomit. Then there was the central point of the room, a bright neon sign with the word "open." It was the only colour in a colourless room, a beacon of light. The rest of the room was grimy and dirty. There were a few old, rickety tables with mismatching chairs, and at the bar upfront there were uncomfortable looking barstools that seemed seconds away from breaking. Even the people in this establishment were bleak, as zombie-like as the man himself, and there was no music because they wouldn't lie to themselves about their sorrow, or try to cover it up with pointless noise.

The man stayed all night; he felt more at home here than he felt at the house he shared with his wife. There, he was trapped and misunderstood, here, he belonged and felt free.

So the next night, even though his wife was angry, he returned. He came back every night for a week until one time, he noticed a woman enter the bar.

She had hair as black as the night. Her skin was pale, and her eyes dark. Later on, when the man had begun a conversation with her, he noticed black makeup smudged around her eyes. He saw her almost every night for the next month. She was a portal to a better world, where he could be free, and his wife was a cage in which he didn't even have room to breathe. For the first time since he could remember, he felt happy and free.

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PART TWO
truth

The man's wife was worried. Almost every night for the last month her husband had disappeared.

One night, alone in her bed with nothing but empty sheets keeping her company, she decided to find out where he'd been going, so she followed him. She watched him enter a building that looked abandoned, and waited for a half hour before summoning the courage to walk in after him.

The room was downright depressing, and everyone inside it looked lost. All heads turned to her, because she was different. She was bright and happy, wild red hair as foreign to the place as a giraffe would be to Antarctica.

Her eyes scanned the room, until they landed on her husband, locked in an embrace with a dark-haired woman. For a moment she didn't understand, and then it clicked and tears began to roll down her face. She turned to go, but was stopped by her husband gripping her arm so tight she was sure he'd leave bruises.

He dragged her to a back room that she hadn't noticed before and threw her to the floor. The dark-haired woman slipped in behind him and shut the door. She handed the man a knife.

The woman couldn't stop crying. Her heart was shattered into enough pieces that she could've given one to every single person in the world. She felt as if her light had gone out, and maybe now she did belong in this dark, dark place.

Her husband said one last thing before plunging the knife into her, "You shouldn't have come here." And then she was gone, dead.

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PART THREE
retribution

The woman was dead, but her soul remained trapped there. One day, months later, her husband returned with the dark-haired woman, wedding bands adorning both their ring fingers. Her heart broke all over again. Then came the anger; a fire burned deep in her chest, and an idea came to her. She grabbed a bottle of alcohol and a match. Then she watched as flames ate at the wooden floor, and spread until everything was consumed by them: the furniture, the people, and the sign that read "open." That sign was no longer the only brightness in the room. The fire was a magnificent beast that devoured all the darkness of that place, and replaced it with light.

The woman smiled.