Forever is described as an essence of perfection, but what if they have it wrong...?
~     ~
P R O L O G U E

The seemingly endless ticking of the clock at his bedside roused him from his silent reveries. He was one who believed in and longed for forever--love and perfection--but was that all that would accompany him? Was all he had until the end of forever just the ticking of time pressing forward--with or without him?
     It wasn't worth it, he thought as he hurled the clock at the ground. It just wasn't worth it. The infernal ticking hadn't died when the clock itself had been rendered lifeless by his fury.
     The sound of time was in his mind. He asked himself, does time even have a sound? Of course it does, he reasoned, what else is this aggravating 'tick tock tick tock' raiding my thoughts? Why is there never any silence?
     And so he stood up, threw on his coat and left his apartment for the last time, even if he was unaware of that particular fact. Fuming and distracted by personal thoughts of hatred and disappointment towards the concept of forever, he stepped into the road. There was a load roar, something separate from the marking of time and his own thoughts. He glanced up in time to see a teenage girl on the far side of the road; her face was emotionless, and her figure was straight, standing tall with perfect posture. She stared him right in the face with cold, lifeless eyes just before the city bus shattered all his thoughts of forever--and all thoughts in general.
     She and her gray lifeless eyes turned away shamelessly, not that anyone could see her in the first place. That girl was a ghost; she was a particular ghost that some called the Perfection Thief. It is said that living people see her within seconds before their death--hovering over them or standing at a distance or even just out of sight--observing them.
     This poor restless soul had once been that of an average person. She had thoughts and dreams of her own before her own perfection--her forever--had been stolen by her predecessor. She was chosen to replace him as he had regained his forever and was prepared to claim his reward for it.
     She, however, was not so lucky.
~     ~
C H A P T E R ~ O N E

My head ached, throbbing like a ticking clock. I sat up slowly from where i found myself lying on the dusty remains of an off-white tile floor, gaping horrified at my surroundings. People were scattered on the ground--some on dirt, some on tiles, and some on a combination of both--caked in their own blood, dirt, and soot. They were all in heaps--a mass of twisted limbs and a torso--unmoving.
     My hand flew to my pulsing skull. Thick, warm liquid seeped from the source of the beating--like a second heartbeat. I pulled back my hand, letting it hover in front of my nose so that i might see what was wrong with me. The faint light reflected off of my fingers, which were glistening with red liquid. Cringing, i wiped them on my clothes.
     There was a huge crater around which all the chaos centered. Holes littered the surrounding area along with corpses. The building we had all been inside lay in ruins around us, artifacts littering the ground and the walls in crumbled wrecks in a do-not-cross border around the scene.
     The corpses were all quite fresh.
~     ~