Chapter 1
Do you Like ice-cream..??
Everybody likes ice-cream!
But, I wanna know about you.. do you like ice-cream??
Yes! I do.
Whats your favourite flavour than??
Cookies n’ Cream.. Maybe.”
It was a normal day like any other or it seemed that way, late afternoon was blending into lonely hour of evening. The sun bled through the window casting a glooming shadow of everything that came in its way. A sheer, cream colored curtain hung loosely to the side, the white wall was washed in deep burnt orange, thick with the silence of burning day. An urn alongside curtain with greens and colors in it, casting shapes on the bed in the middle of the room, there was a lamp on the other side of bed over the night stand. some space between the bed and the door and a study table opposite to door at the end of bed beside window. A low blow of Air filled the room while the geometric shadows of the window frame divided the warmth into neat quiet squares.
The whole room was trapped in the suffocating golden cage. It was the peak of evening, that precise and fleeting moment when the sun flares into a blinding desperate brilliance before dying. But inside these four walls, the beautiful light offered no comfort. It only amplified the silence. The silence tuned into a heaving chaos as Ann erupted through the threshold driving the door open with frantic, jarring and calculated force that it banged against the wall creating an unnerving crack that echoed like a gunshot in that confined space. In an instant the entire equilibrium of the room shifted. The room seemed to recoil from her presence, the heavy golden light catching the wild, unhinged panic written across her face. Every object in the room, the stacked book on Desk, the plants in the Urn, the quiet dust motes seemed suspended in the hyper aware anticipation as, if the room itself knew the breaking point was coming!!
A shadow fell across the threshold a second later as Mason Followed her.
As much he wanted to hold her but, he couldn’t as sheer gravity of her panic seemed to hold him at bay holding him emotionally trembling in the doorway. The amber light caught the sharp lines on his face casting his silhouette long and dark across the floorboards and bare white wall, his brown eyes eager and tired, weariness was visible from his posture. He took single cautious step forward, his eyes scanning the Golden honeyed room before settling on her trembling frame. There was a kinetic urgent, tension in the way he stood, braced, as if trying to shield her from a collapse that had already begun. The shield was useless against the storm that was burning inside Ann.
”were you there, when I needed you the most??!”
Ann Almost Grudged, breaking the Delusion of peace that was wrapping the evening somehow.
”Where were you when I thought my shift would end at 3? It always ended at 2 GODDAMNITT! It has always ended at 2“.
tears running through her face as the memory of that night struck her again.
It was months since her working hours had been changed and her shift ended at 2. she had been doing this same shift every single day from enough time to remember every hour. She knew those hours by heart. But , that day her mind completely broke its own routine, fracturing under a quiet, sinister trick of her own psychology.
She had taken break late around 1 to review a difficult client file while she ate in peace. In her mind she had mapped out a strict, calculated timeline: “if I start at 1:25 I’ll be done by the 3:00 easily and can go home”. Once done with her meal, she left the kitchen and moved toward her cabin. she sat on her computer and started reviewing a file while dialing a number to verify some details, after first few minutes, call connected to hold music. That was when her coworker, Sam, stopped by her desk.
"This call will take you more than an hour, Fiona just made a client call and it took her almost an hour to get in touch with a human”. Go home, you can do it tomorrow."
But in her head, the delusion held strong. She still truly believed she had until three o'clock. At 1:49 , while listening to the hollow drone of the hold music, she told herself, I've already been on hold for thirty-seven minutes. I can finish this and leave by three.
Then, the clock struck 2:00.
She looked up and saw everyone packing their bags. Confusion flooded her mind like ice water. Why is everyone leaving? she asked herself, looking around the emptying office. Is the manager so gracious today that he is letting us leave an hour early? Is it a holiday? As she tried to make sense of the sudden shift in reality, Shawn walked past her desk with his jacket on.
"Ann, aren't you going home? It's already two."
Ann had stared at him, her heart dropping.
"Shawn, what time does the shift end?"
"It's 2,". "Like always."
"So... it's not 3?"
"No,You better leave now."
Shawn stayed there standing in-front of her motionless for a while.
That was the exact second the perimeter breached. That was why, Sam told her to wait until tomorrow. That was why everyone already had their bags on their shoulders. She hadn't just made a simple mistake. She had been doing this exact shift for five months, and suddenly, her own mind had lied to her. A wave of panic had crashed over her, a terrifying realization that she could no longer trust her own brain. She had wanted to scream, to cry, to yell at everyone in the room. But she had forced the tears back down with a smile on her face while looking at Shawn. She was a warrior. She was strong. No one could see her cry, they didn’t have to see her like this, or the illusion will break and they would think she was weak.
She hung up the call, looking at her hands, they were sweaty and shivering. She was still sitting on her desk in her small cabin, which looked more like a murder scene currently, and she was the dead body, she was murderer and she was the investigator as well. She laughed a little.. on herself maybe and most probably.
Than she called the cab and gathered her things to leave for home, cuz what else she could do, cry in front of office colleague, they will mock her for opening up publicly about her continuously breaking mental state.
Now, standing in the suffocating gold of the bedroom, the tears finally won. She glared at Mason, her boyfriend, her eyes swollen and red under the harsh flare of the evening sun, her throat as it's gripped by a coil of sharp thorns
. The blood rushed to her cheeks, making her face burn against the amber backdrop. She aggressively wiped her skin as another tear followed the first one down her cheek, cutting through the dust motes hanging between them.
"You left me to collect the pieces of myself on my own,"
she whispered, her voice trembling, fracturing the last remnants of the room's silence. "And you claim to love me."
She was screaming these questions at him, throwing her pain like weapons into the small space between them, but deep down, a tragic truth began to surface. He had never abandoned her. Mason had spent months trying to reach her, trying to climb over the high, fortified walls she built around her heart. But she was the one who blocked his number. She was the one who locked the door, pushed him away, and then sat in the dark—desperately waiting for him to save her from herself.
Ann collapsed onto the corner of the mattress, drowning completely in the thoughts of her own tragic destiny. The heavy, unyielding sobs tore out of her, wracking her frame under the fading golden light. Mason didn't pull back. Instead, he sank to the floorboards, settling right at her feet in a gesture of absolute, quiet surrender.
He looked up at her, his eyes reflecting a profound, crushing sorrow, a gaze heavy with an infinite capacity for care, entirely mirroring her pain.
”what do you want me to do, just say the words”
”Mason! Its not that easy”.
she choked out. The anger had finally drained from her, leaving her voice hollow, thick with a deep pity for him and a suffocating grief for her own self.
”just tell me for once”.
Mason hushed. He metered the words with agonizing care, softening his delivery to a near-silent plea. He knew the volatile geography of her mind all too well; he knew that even a single misplaced syllable, a fraction too much weight in his tone, could shatter her completely, drifting her right back into the dark labyrinth of the her mind where she would inevitably blame herself all over again.
He loved Ann more than anything in the world. More than his own peace of mind, more than himself. He was acutely, painfully aware that she was destroying him—shredding his dignity with her razor-sharp words and volatile actions—but he stood there, entirely ready for the impact. For Mason, this was the definition of true love: a total, absolute assimilation. Becoming one with your partner until the boundaries blurred. Liking what she liked, sleeping only when she slept, wearing what she preferred to see on him, liking the icecream flavour,she liked even though he would never try anyother flavour rather than mango.
Every single axis of Mason’s life revolved around Ann. It had to always revolve around Ann. To his young heart, it made a desperate, flawless kind of sense. Ann was his first girlfriend, his first love, and he had willingly built his entire universe inside the cage of her storm.
Ann sat on the edge of the mattress, looking down at Mason. A sharp, physical pain flared in her chest—a sudden, suffocating ache. She loved Mason. She truly did. But her love was not the consuming, identity-erasing kind that held him to the floorboards. She leaned down, pressing a soft kiss against his forehead, her lips lingering for his, as she whispered directly into his ear.
"I love you always. Even when I am not with you."
Poor Mason. He smiled faintly against her skin, assuming she was speaking of a grand, poetic love that would outlast death itself. He had no idea she was speaking of a departure that was already happening. She looked deep into his eyes one last time. In the fading golden light of the bedroom, his brown eyes looked like a warm caramel ocean in the evening sun, his dusty skin glowing like fine desert sand His lips parted, longing for hers to touch his soul, reassure him she was his and will be his always, silently begging her to stay inside the safety of his universe. But Ann stood up. She forced her eyes away from the warmth, turned her back on him, and walked out of the room. She knew exactly what was coming next, and she was willingly walking straight into the fire.
Or rather, into the ice.
