A Man, A Woman.

In an ideal world, racism would not exist, there would be no famine, there would be no poverty. Rape, abuse and murder would be unheard of. However, it is not an ideal world.

And as her eyes adjusted to the light, it slowly became more and more apparent, because you see, in an ideal world, a hangover would not be so bloody annoying, there would not be an unusually large, hairy, naked man, lying next to her snoring so loudly she could no longer hear the construction work next door and best of all in an ideal world, she would be dead.

It took her a little over fifteen minutes to get the huge thing, apparently called Bob, out of her house and she now sat in a warm, lavender scented bath nursing her hangover with a strong cup of coffee.

Dragging her aching limbs out of the soothing water, she reached for her favourite blue gray bathrobe and wrapped it around her body, she sat at the dining table, a ballpoint pen poised over the crisp pages of her diary. She massaged her left temple with the tips of her fingers trying, and failing to recall the events of the following evening.

The sound of her door bell felt like an earthquake and the hangover seemed to be getting worse and worse. She groaned and got to her feet stumbling over to her door. A miserable box sat at the front of her door, she looked up and saw a silver Land Rover speeding off. It was her boyfriend's car.

She bent down to pick up the box wondering why Brian went off without coming in. And then she remembered the slob she woke up with. She was not her usual self, she could think on her feet twice as fast three people put together, and she hardly ever got drunk.

She shook her head and set the box down on her dining table and opened it as slowly as possible seeing as it already looked like it was about to fall apart. She was greeted by an envelope, equally shabby, with her name written in bright red across the front. Now she wasn't superstitious but she did vaguely remember a friend telling her that the Chinese believed that if a person's name was written in red ink, that person would soon die.

She took a sip of her coffee and sat down to open the letter. It was in her own handwriting.

Almost lethal,
Like a poisoned wine,
The way that you touch me,
Sends shivers up my spine

I've been wanting to tell you,
To speak my mind,
So without further ado,
'I love you, valentine'

While she was smart, literature was not one of her vices and she had painstakingly written that poem for Valentine's day this year. It took her two whole months, and now she held it in her hands. Her heart suddenly felt heavy, she overturned the box emptying its contents over the table. Brian was a keeper, he kept every single thing she'd ever given him, and it was all there, right in front of her, including Lenny, a horrible clay pot she gave him after her first pottery class. It was meant to be a joke.

Suddenly, she felt shooting pains in her left arm, and she felt short of breath. Her heart felt like it was pounding against her rib cage. She stood up and reached for her phone and woke up in a strange smelling bed.

It was the smell of a hospital. She hated hospitals. She could make out a round ball of a human coming towards her. And it was letting off a foul odor.

It was...Bob. "Hello sweetheart. Looks like your heart couldn't bear being away from me, eh?"