Soulmates are such dangerous dance to live by.

They say soulmates live together, not in life, but in death.

There are worlds, I've heard, where love is not determined by some abstract force, some audacious concept, some crude construct —

— But rather by a choice.

Imagine that.

Oh, what a world that would be! But our world, this world, my world, is dangerous, courtesy of the line it walks between fate and freedom, concerning the matter of predestined love.

Imagine me this, now, a world where your last words are inked across the skin of your soulmate.

This is my world.

It begs the question, doesn't it?

Of whether the concept "soulmates" remains, if you do not meet them in your lifetime.

It would be strange, wouldn't it?

If your husband-wife-mistress-lover died before your eyes and the words on your skin were not theirs.

Not to worry, though.

Where most people have a word, a phrase, a sentence, you have a story. Scrawled down your spine in fine, blood red calligraphy.

It's a story taunting death.

You meet your soulmate on the last day of their life, and it's only after they've captured you, that you realize your shirt's been torn to shreds. You lie facedown on the floor, half conscious. But while your shirt is harmed, you are not.

You open an eye to find a person before you, a person who intends you to be a bargain with Death himself, so that they may escape him using the words on your back.

Your soulmate is me.

I can't deny it, I was intrigued by that captivating script, when I first saw it on you at that coffee shop.

I followed you, then, and I stole you.

Unorthodox and immoral, yes, I know. No need to tell me twice. Yet there is something delectably attractive about the mind-numbing honesty that comes with my brand of moral insanity, isn't there, love?

Now that I have you, I read your tattoo, out loud, word by irretrievable word. And how fitting it is for my dilemma.

I read and I read. As I reach the last paragraph, you come to your senses, and you can't decide between disgust and wonder.

I see it written all over your face.

But we've no time to speak. For the words I'd read, the words on your back, were the first and last you ever heard from me.

I close my eyes as you open yours.

Then Death comes down to kiss me, and you breathe the words, "So it was you."

I raise my hand in farewell, the faintest of smiles on my lips, and I doubt you can see them, but those words, your words, are etched about my ring finger, wrapped around it like a vice.

That's when Death takes you too.

So much for my bargain.

And here we are now, on the flip side of eternity, hand in hand.

Soulmates, for the rest of time.