Phoenix

Having been frozen in the near-absolute zero of entropic Ennui and then shattered by Heartbreak, my chess avatar now lay in scattered shards of glittering pyrite atop the velvety black asphalt. I had neither energy nor will to gather the pieces, so I left them there and walked away. In the first fifty paces, I felt nothing, not a trace of regret. I walked twenty-five more and wondered if I'd ever feel normal again. On my hundredth step, I suddenly turned to look back. To my utter disbelief, the angled, crystalline fragments had melted into pools of mercury and were coalescing into larger and larger pools, guided by a sinister unseen force. I turned and began to run...