Crimson Lake

He was seeing someone for the first time since his wife's death. It had taken him several months of depression and a couple of therapy sessions to grow out of his grief. He was ready to do it all over again --- the dating, the "falling in love" and all the worldly stuff that follows hereafter.

He was to pick up his date from her house at eight that evening. She was a trainee cop; his friends had provided necessary information. They were the ones who set him up.

He met her on her front porch. She was dressed in a dainty white dress, diamond drops, a sleek bracelet and her throat was slit open. She lay in a pool of her own blood, stone dead; the colour quite similar to the crimson on her lips.

They were complete strangers. He had never met her before; but the fact of losing someone yet again terrified him. He did not want to know what had led to such circumstances, all he wished for was that she could live and live to be his.