Tartarus She writes how much she hates him on the steamed bathroom mirror, while he showers and tries not to touch himself. It is too cold to leave the house, and has been that way for seventeen days. Ever since they got here. Every time they open the door, an icy wind assaults them and they slam it shut, faces red, as if they have both been slapped. And so they are stranded here together. The villa makes quite a cozy prison; is a desirable ghostcode, they have been informed. They play Scrabble to pass the time; she cheats, and he lets her. Same as he says nothing when she digs her fingernails into his neck while he tries to sleep. He rarely sleeps, and never dreams. If he did, he knows it would be a fantasy in which he left her months ago - months before their car flew off the road and brought them to a villa in the middle of an icy waste. Staying with her for those extra months had felt like hell enough, but now he knows better. Dying was so much easier than this.