He had resolved love's truest existence within stillness: the tape stopped forever at its perfect note, existing outside this world's distortion. Cassette, his muse, his drone, shone too bright for the tarnishing of time; her laughter, her sigh, her heartbeat—melodies to be cradled in his arms for eternity. "You're too pure for this noise, Cassette; a song I'll pause infinite," he mused, watching her sleep with her chest gently rising beneath the quilt, her hair like a dark spill over the pillow. He had brewed the arsenic earlier—crystals dissolved very carefully in her cup of tea, a faint shimmer masked under honey, sweet enough to match her skin.
He woke her up gently with an effortless stroke on her cheek, and, as her eyes fluttered open, she stared at him warmly and trustingly. "Tea, my muse," he murmured, handing her the cup, his voice a velvet shroud. She smiled sleepily, sipping very slowly, her lips shiny as she leaned into him while the quilt slid down to her bare shoulder. "You're my everything, Mann," she whispered, and he kissed her—softly, deeply, tasting of the edges of poison concealed by sweetness, lingering as her breath hitched, signalling the beginning of the end. "And you're mine, Cassette, past endings," he thought, framing her face with his hands, his thumbs brushing the pulse beneath—now beginning to slow.
The arsenic initially worked in silence—she sipped again, and her sigh was a note he cherished. She trembled, and a frown creased her brow. "Mann, I feel..." she said, and the cup slipped from grip, shattering on the floor into a small lake of blood-red tea, as she clutched her stomach, letting out a gasp. He held her tighter against his chest as her convulsions started, tremors lacing soft and violent through her body, nails digging into his arms, shredding red lines he would carry as vows. "Shh, my love, I have you," he murmured, cradling her and rocking her in a lullaby over her whimpers, her face pale, drenched in sweat, and icy cold.
She widened her eyes, her pupils dilated, searching his—there passed fear, then recognition, then faded into a glazed, hollow expression as the poison advanced with fury. Blood specked her lips; a thin trickle seeped down her nose, and he kissed it away, his tongue tasting copper and her flavor, tracing the seam of her mouth as she choked, wet gurgles rising. Her chest heaved, ribs caged cracking as she convulsed, arched in his grasp, and at last, rasped what felt like the fading farewell of a scream; he drank it, the final note. "You're too perfect, Cassette, a refrain the world would scratch. I stop your tape, so no one else can play you—my love's the final chord, my muse's eternal hush."
He lowered her back to the bed, her body limp, still warm; he ripped her naked—slowly, reverently, peeling her nightgown to kiss her now-cooling skin, from her throat and breasts to her belly, his lips dripping with tears and her blood. "My cathedral, my hymn," he whispered, his hands unsteady as he reached for lavender-dried blooms he had crushed, their scent bitter and mournful. A knife cut across her belly—sliding in soft rip, with blood welled dark and thick, spreading over the sheets as he stuffed her with flowers, their petals clinging to the inside of her like a purple burial. He stared into the emptiness of her eyes, and, replacing them with glass-blue orbs of his choosing, heard them click into their sockets with a faint pop; her gaze now to be kept for his possession.
It collapsed into the very height of intimacy, a dark, wetting requiem. He straddled her still body, clashing their blood-slickened hands together; he kissed her once more-hard, possessive, her lips slack, yet soft-his tongue plunging deep and tasting death, tasting her echo. "Forever, you are mine, Cassette, eternally wound into me," he growled, shedding his clothes, pressing his bare body against hers-cold now, damp with sweat and gore, her stillness a canvas for his love. Stabbing into her with wildness, non-forgiving, inhaling raspy gulps as he held her hands and entwined their fingers in his; her blood smeared across his chest and thighs, a wet, crimson bond formed. "Decay will not touch you, my muse," he hissed, pounding in worn rhythm, her silence a song he fucked into being-one final shudder soaked with ecstasy through them both, dark and warm, staining her corpse.
He dressed her in white lace, propping her against the table while her body stiffened, her glass eyes glinting in the lamplight. He served her coffee every day-black, steaming, her cup untouched as he sat across from her, whispering, "My Cassette, my stopped reel", occasionally brushing his fingers against her cold cheek, her smell of lavender mixed with decay. The whole poetry of it consumed him: "I free you from time's claw, my love so strong to halt your fade, a tomb of blooms cradeling your hum, my heart's only track forever looped in you."
After days, he sat in the café, sipping his coffee, a ghost of her memory, and soon his eyes were caught by another girl-who stirred her cup, her hum faint, new tape to rewind. "A new song starts," he murmured, lips curling, dark satisfaction revolving within him, hungry yet sated, Cassette's silence was a refrain he'd play forever in his mind.