It was dark. I didn't feel anything. It was all quiet. Was this what death was like? Just drifting off into a deep, endless void?
There was no air to breathe. I couldn't move whatsoever, which makes no sense considering I was in presumably an endless vacuum. A weird sense of déjà vu struck me, as if I'd gone through this several times before.
I couldn't even move, which was peculiar. It was as if my entire body had disintegrated, and only my consciousness was floating around. Actually, that would explain the darkness, since I had no actual eyes to take in light with... Oh well.
Enough with my current theories. I experienced a sudden urge in... Hopelessness? Apathy? Honestly I'm not sure what happened. Long story short, I slowly opened my (physical) eyes, only to see a horrific scene unfold.
I think half of me was buried under parts of rubble, but my memory of that occurrence is fuzzy and I couldn't feel my legs, so I'm not sure.
My vision was blackened, but I could breathe and pain was starting to erupt all over my body, my chest in particular. I groaned, and stood up. Once my vision cleared, I saw the clouded sky through what was once the ceiling. The pain was intensifying, and I put up a blood covered hand to my chest, only to find a massive hole there. I looked down, and on the floor lay a large metal spike, covered in coagulating blood. If I wouldn't have such wounds, I would've gasped.
I remembered what seemed like moments ago. This... Man had threatened Reece and forced me into the floor, however that worked, the concrete had suddenly released me, then the man just... Stabbed me. A large, metal spike had penetrated my chest, and suddenly I found myself here.
I looked around, The walls, the ceiling, it all had collapsed onto itself until the cafeteria, and probably several other parts of the school as well. My eyes hurt as they moved, like salt was continuously dropping into them. I looked around the rubble. The man was nowhere to be seen. Several students who didn't manage to get out in time were unconscious, or... I rejected the thought of it.
Beneath a plank and a few pieces of roof plating, there lay a short, brown-haired girl with a monochrome dress. Reece was barely breathing, and she had some nasty wounds around her ribs. Naturally, I was worried. I pulled her out of there, an action which caused her dress to rip in several places. I tried to drag her out, but my arms wouldn't obey.
I tried again, but once again, the attempt drained what semblance of energy I had left.
"... Esme?"
The voice came from behind me. It was vaguely familiar, actually. It sounded like the person in question had swallowed several gallons of sand. It was coarse, and anything but deep. I sighed, knowing all too well the owner of it.
I turned with a groan, only to be met with the horrifying sight of... Alexander. The boy who'd been working on that one WWII group project a while back along with me, Reece and that one other girl whose name I forgot by now. The still-thirteen year old boy was looking rougher than ever, his face covered in dust and his sand coloured hair messy like after a long night's sleep. His once-cobalt jeans were ripped, showing small red cuts in the flesh here and there, and his forest green shirt looked more like an actual forest than ever.
"What... What happened back there?" He asked me, his tone shaking with what seemed like nervousity. Or fear. Or both. Knowing Alexander, it was probably both.
"No idea. Help me get Reece to safety before police arrive." I responded. Alexander sighed, but obeyed and soon we were both dragging the unconscious Reece to the nearby batch of forest. It was a small bunch of trees. The school had kept it as a place for children to play hide and seek. As it was, I could only imagine children playing hide and hope not to be found and murdered right now.
However, low budgets and negligence of said forest had led to it spreading like a family of bunnies, quickly becoming a maze of trees and bushes and moss and rocks that spread stories of monsters among the kids. Not many people would imagine that as a hiding place.
Once we'd managed to get Reece to a slightly uncomfortable moss patch, I collapsed onto the ground, breathing heavily. Then I remembered. I had a massive hole in my chest. How in the world was I breathing when my lungs had been penetrated by iron? I recalled the moments after getting stabbed, the voice I'd been hearing for... Almost two days now had spoke to me.
Idiot child. I warned you about this. Remember these words when you return, Esme, I'll make sure you do. The words were still echoing in my empty mind.
"Idiot child... Warned me? Did it really?" I mumbled to myself. In my head, I asked what claimed to be my subconscious, what did you do?
It did not hesitate to answer. What I had to do.
Yeah. No. This was definitely not my subconscious. I'm not charismatic enough to force stubborn Esme to shut up with five words.
I sighed. "So you saw what happened?" I asked Alexander, mostly to break the silence.
The boy nodded. " I didn't get out in time. The man came in, he talked for a bit, then..." I swallowed. "Then you literally blew up." He said, as if that was something that happened every day.
I pretended to be surprised. I raised my eyebrows to the point of pain, said aloud "WHAT?" and raised myself to a sitting position, an action that felt like ice being poured all over my back. In reality, I expected that. Like I'd seen it time and time again... Like I'd lived through it several times. A shadow of concern was growing inside me.
Alexander, who'd believed my semi-bluff, said, "Yeah. Some gold light erupted from you, and then... Well, It crushed the ceiling and I was sure it would destroy everything. And then... it collapsed. That spike you had in your chest just slid out. Both you and Reece fell unconscious from the explosion, and that man... He just vanished." I realized I probably knew the situation better than someone who barely knew what was going on, but I digress.
At least I had a vague idea. Vague, but an idea was an idea nonetheless.
"Oh. That's... Yeah, I'm confused too." I admitted. After this, I needed a chat with my uncle.
That was when Reece awoke, with, cliché as it may be, a cough. She tried to sit up, but relatably enough, she lay down again. She went back to her previous position with an "Ugh...", eyes closed. I exhaled in relief. At least she wasn't dead. That was something we hadn't lost.
We. The concept of a we was weird. Me and Reece had been assaulted by a man who seemed to be able to put everything and anything under his command. Alexander was the reason Reece was still alive, how short-lived that may be. Alexander wasn't a part of the group, nor was he just a stranger. I didn't consider him our friend, or really just a companion. He was more so a useless package. Maybe if I hadn't been such a shithole, circumstances would be different.
I'm getting off topic.
She managed to get out a few words: "What in the world...?" Happened was the final, unspoken word, I was confident in saying. Still am.
"I... Um... Have no idea." I responded as I lay in the wet moss, truthfully.
I tried to sit up again. It hurt, but thankfully not as much as my last attempt did. With a groan, I examined my scratches and wounds. Some were just small cuts and stitches, but I had some nasty looking wounds on my right leg and well... A gaping, bleeding hole through my chest, where I'd been stabbed. The weirdest part was that it didn't hurt. It was just a hole through my chest, dripping warm, crimson blood and colouring my shirt red.
"Wonderful." Reece said, being awfully uncharacteristic for the sweet, optimistic Reece I usually saw. "What's he doing here?" Emphasis was on 'he'. Alexander.
The boy looked down. "I... Um..."
I cut in. "He saw what happened. Helped me drag you here." I said, how ridiculous it may have sounded. The boy looked at me with thankful eyes. I rejected his gaze.
"Oh. I see." Reece said as she got up from the moss patch, her dark purple eyes scanning the nearby surroundings. It wasn't much to look at. However, she stopped at what was supposed to be my liver; the mark from the iron spike. Her eyes met mine. "Your chest..." She didn't finish the sentence, clearly grossed out.
I grimaced. "It's weird. Doesn't hurt, it's just.. there." I told her. She just nodded.
Then she did something that didn't at all surprise me. Reece simply gave herself a hard slap across her cheekbone, leaving a red mark across her face. She mumbled and held herself there, noticing she'd slapped an open wound. Then she fainted, either because of blood loss, or because of the sheer overwhelming slightly incendiary event that just transpired.
I sighed as I stood up. My legs hurt like a thousand nails had penetrated them, but I stood up regardless. There was something I had to do. Something that had been gnawing in the back of my mind. A fear, a worry. I needed to know if it was still true.
I told Alexander to wait in the small batch of trees, while I struggled my way out of there.
As I walked, I held my hand against my chest, both to keep the blood inside me, and to hide the gaping hole. I had a feeling I'd be taken directly to the hospital instead of where I intended to go if someone saw it.
The local police station was about as close to my school as it was close to my uncle's house. I'm not sure how I made it there. Perhaps it was simple determination. Perhaps it was something keeping me alive. Regardless, I arrived there after what felt like years, but was in reality only half an hour.
It was empty. It seemed everyone had gone to the calamity at the school, but that was up to discussion since I saw no one on the road. In spite of that, I walked a path I had only ever seen once. There was a row of cells, a corridor, if you will, a few meters left of the entrance, conveniently close to the interrogation room or whatever it's called.
And, confirming both my suspicions and my worst nightmares, there lay a corpse on the floor, at the end of said corridor. The corpse of a slightly fat, dark-skinned man with apathetically empty eyes, devoid of life, penetrated by a large metal spike.
That moment shattered everything. Everything I had known for the past five years, it was all gone. I'd be forced to move again, to someone capable of taking care of me. Who was I kidding? No one would accept some selfish and quite frankly rude Egyptian girl in their home. No one, except possibly my grandparents. Two old people with dementia, who could barely take care of themselves anymore. Suuure. While we're at it, why not just hang the poor little girl?
No. I wasn't going through this a second time. I just wasn't. I wanted things to stay as they'd been for FIVE BLOODY SECONDS. Apparently, nothing, not even life, would give me something I truly needed.
I'd lived mostly happy in London for nine years. Then, my parents were murdered. I moved to an uncle who didn't care, in a small village in the middle of nowhere. That had been my life since I was nine. Five long years, all spent in a living hell. And just as I'd gotten used to it, everything crumbled down on me, like it was some kind of joke.
I was no joke.
I buried my face in my palms, as I wept in grief over the corpse of my dead uncle.
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