The searing stinging pain only lasted a second before the sweet relief sank in. Blood, ruby-red, welled in the shallow cuts. It seemed to turn black as more of the liquid rose to the surface before his eyes. He sighed as the dark feelings escaped, fluttering away like a cardinal, from the locked box within his being. A small shudder shook his body as the dark feelings flew back to their nest within the locked box again. He grew slightly miserable again as reality slapped him in his chisled face. His cruel parents and his intolerable sister. The screams and insults they threw at him. The only person in his world was his girlfriend. She was the sun in his sky. She never failed to listen and show her sympathy, to simply be there for him. She was his everything. She alone held the rusted key to his locked box. She brought warmth and strength to his gray and dismal life. When she broke the news that she was moving across the country. . .it crushed him. It stamped his world into a ball and buried it in a hole under a rock. Over 3,000 miles apart, he could no longer run down the road into her comforting embrace. He could no longer whisper 'i love you' into her ear. Her words that for so long had sought comfort and had planted seeds of hope in him now had to find their way through a thick fog of gloam and despair and sprout their flowers. Sometimes. . . the fog was too thick and it killed the flowers. It was then that the dark feelings she used to ward off became too much. They had to be released from his locked heart. . .