Floating half a meter above the ground, therising heat cooked the soles of my feet. Yet the land filled itself with ablinding snow. Here and there a few charred bones and visibly frozen fleshstuck out from beneath the snow.

In the distance, between the hazes of heata woman appeared, clothed in a purple, smouldering dress, dragging red-hotchains behind her. Elegantly, but also cautiously she started walking towardsme, almost as if she’d never seen another human before and wanted to let meknow this was her domain.

Once she got close she started walkingcircles around me, with every step she took she pulled one of her frostbitten feetoff of the snow, strands of burning flesh started peeling off and sticking tothe snow like melting cheese to a grill. Every time her foot left the snow a stenchkicked me. I wanted to vomit, but there was nothing left in my stomach.

Then she stood in front of me and bent her,hardly describable face only centimeters off of mine. Most of her features, excepther eyes, seemed burned off, frozen over or both. Her eyes though, with a colddead look they stared into mine, the white in her eyes turned purple, exactlylike her dress, and the iris looked greyish.

"Thou hadst entered mine domain." The figure resembling a woman straightened to her full height, casting shadows over my form like a goliath in comparison to my shrunken body. Her guttural growl of a voice danced across my nerves, vibrating my teeth and making them clack quietly against each other. I squeezed my mouth shut tighter, hoping not to aggravate the being.

Her lips, or rather its lips, for it seemed hardly human, curled upwards in what appeared to be an imitation of a grin, revealing rows upon rows of tiny, sharpened teeth. Where was I? Who was this beast?

The only thing I could recall from my past was falling asleep on the evening of Christmas Eve after a worn out day at working at the department store. I racked my memories in the brief moment the 'woman' gave me, but I couldn't summon anything more from my muddled mind.

"Inferno. Purgatorio. Paradiso." It raised its' bony arms to the sky, the chains sizzling in her fists. The bright thing in the sky, I knew it could not be my sun. Whatever it was, it energised the being, a new glow emanating from the chains. It began to chant the same three words in a staccato rhythm. I suddenly felt the indescribable instinct that I should run.