She sat in the cemetery under a weeping willow, her body hidden within the blackest of shadows.  Her hands, sheathed in black lace gloves, clasped pensively as she thought sorrowfully on her life.  She wanted to change but didn't know how. Something was destroying her life, and she suspected that that something was her. She had to change, she knew, else she might end up like Damon. A gust of wind whistled past the girl, shrieking ghostly lamentations.  Her black velvet dress billowed in the air.  Ebon hair wreathed her pale face in serpentine ringlets.  Her high brow creased in worry as her kohl-rimmed eyes darkened.  Rain cried. She had her whole life ahead of her but she was afraid that it would be as dark and dismal as the years she had already lived: years she had wasted in darkness.
    'What had gone wrong?'  She pondered to herself as she thought of her tragic life.
It seemed as if she had been cursed from the start.  In hindsight, Rain could see that a dark aura had hung over her life from her youth.  In kindergarten, she always used the black crayon.  It was her favorite color.  Even at such a young age, she had been drawn to the dark, as if by instinct.  Rain remembered passing the days of elementary and junior high in morbid abandon.  She had enjoyed herself immensely loitering in graveyards day and night and occasionally staying home to watch "Addams Family" reruns.  Fortunately, her parents had neither noticed nor cared. High school had been irritating.  During her freshman year, Rain discovered fashion and forsook her tomboy ways.  She remembered setting off high school metal detectors ten feet away with her numerous piercings and divers jewelry, not to mention having to walk from class to class in a corset and spiked heels.  However, at three o'clock every afternoon the bell rang, freeing her of the annoying day.  At home, she tortured the cat, read Poe, and played with her father's razorblades.  Sometimes she sat in the running shower, smoking clove cigarettes.
    Graduation was tough.  Rain stood outside during the grad ceremony, grateful to herself that she had taken the precaution of using SPF 50 before leaving the house.  Alas, it was no match for the noonday sun.  The teachers kept insisting on "one more picture" every time the students tried to make their escape.  The inevitable occurred.  She developed her first sun tan.  Rain screamed the next day when she woke to find that she had healthy-looking, tanned skin.  The wretched tan lasted the entire summer, ruining her usual corpse-like pallor.  She was so distraught that she considered suicide.
     Until she met him.
    He bought her dead roses. 
    His name was Damon and they met in September at her new college.  The season was darkening, the leaves were dying, and Rain felt wonderful.
    "Oh my goth!" she said in delight when he offered her the wilted bouquet. 
    They went on their first date the following night.  It took an hour and a half for her to get dressed (as usual), what with her collars, spiked cuffs, and PVC apparel- and it was all worth it.  Her date was wonderful. Damon was handsome and Rain had been entranced.  His alabaster-like skin was cold to the touch.  His face was wonderfully smooth and relaxed- his smile muscles must have atrophied.  He took her back to his place as Rain's mother stood on the porch and stared at the two in horror. Rain remembered the drunken night of hedonism she had spent with Damon in his dimly lit house.  Opening the refrigerator after donning a pair of sunglasses, Damon took out a bottle of Absinthe.  Within the hour, the two had become drunk. Later that night, Damon took her downstairs to his dungeon and tortured her to a climax of pain-filled bliss.
    However, after that night, things began to sour.
    "You're actually starting to cheer me up," he told her the next week.
    Rain was horrified.  "No," she denied.
    "Yes," he said.  "You make me too happy.  Go away."
    She tried to make it up to him by buying him flowers.  The florist screwed up her order.
    "You sent me live flowers," Damon said in disgust over the phone. She had called him in an attempt to mend the relationship, but nothing she did seemed to help.  Damon was growing tired of her.
    "I'm sorry, hon," he told her.  "Either we break up, or one of us dies."
    He committed suicide shortly thereafter.
    The wake had been beautiful, or so Rain had heard; Damon's parents had not allowed her to attend.
    Now she sat at his graveside, wondering where things had gone wrong.  Her life had been bad before, but now, without her superficial relationship with Damon, it was worse. 
    Rain sat by Damon's tombstone.  The wind continued to blow, causing her brocade-trimmed veil to billow in the air behind her.  The girl sighed as tears fell in profusion; Rain was grateful she'd worn waterproof mascara. She squinted as she looked at the harsh brightness of the day. From her vantagepoint, she saw the shimmering air swelter with the heat of a late Indian summer. 
    In the cool, soothing shadows of the dark copse she sat.  The darkness was relaxing. Comforting. Sunshine broke through the canopy of branches, threatening to envelop her in its brightness She tilted her fringed parasol, shielding herself from the rays of light. 
Rain closed her eyes and thought of the professional help she had recently sought.  She thought of the people at the suicide hotline who told her to stop calling them so incessantly.  She thought of the priests that demanded that she stop coming to confession.  She thought of the school counselors who ran from her shrieking when she asked them for guidance.  She thought on all of this as she sat at the gravesite, wrapped in misery and despair. 
    Rain smiled.
 
 
 

 Background by Jang Hee Yun