Chapter 21
Warning: topics of suicide

Emptiness and overload battle in my head. It feels like a compilation of every sorrow known to man is running through my head, out to get me and to drown me, and to one day kill me. That's where this is headed. It always is.

My minds eye stands in a field, an empty one, a shell of what it once was. I look out over green and I see a face so like mine. The figure reaches out a hand, screaming a sound of endless agony and she slowly disintegrates, falling the the ground, becoming ash, no blood anywhere, just ash.

I scream too. I touch my lips as I let out the obnoxious sounds of a dying bird. No. No. No. I do not scream. I do not cry. I do not live. She does not live. Why am I alive?

A sound echos through the empty world around me. Is this sound coming from me? Why is this sound coming from me?

I walk, no, I run. I'll die before they can catch me. My feet pick up in speed as footsteps thunder behind me, like a thousand guns being shot off at once over and over and over again.

My feet slip as I'm now falling, careening every which way, trying to grasp empty air.

There is no up, there is no down. The world doesn't exist.

A clear, warm, voice reaches my ears. How lovely it sounds, how wicked and cruel and how everything I love. The voice hums a soft melody. The voice perfectly matches my shouts of terror. Nothing exists but our disaster or violence and beauty. We are all that is right and all that is wrong. We are the good and the bad. The guardian angel and the sinner demon.

The voice falls away and I stop in my own noise. There can be no me without whoever that was. I must be falling. I can't not be falling. The world is back. I have to stand. I have to breath. I have to act like some part of me is good and I'm not pure, unadulterated, evil.

I reach up to touch my cheek. It's wet. I look up to the sky, but it's not raining. How strange.

I hear an echo of that voice and an echo of screams. The place I am is filled with white and green and very, very, beautiful decorations and lavender flowers that make the wetness stop pouring down my cheeks and a soft smile come to lips.

I touch then, almost stunned at the emotion trying to escape. I gently touch a silk ribbon. It's smooth, like water falling through my fingers. Perfect. Everything is so perfect.

A pang hits me in the chest. I hear the voice again. This time I can make out two words, "I do."

It sounds like a confession whispered by a ghost into the silence of night, that ghost afraid someone will hear and come for them.

It sounds so familiar, so warm and lovely and like a thousand kisses hitting my cheek and lips an all over my skin.

I whisper two words back at the maybe figment of my imagination, "I do."

It feels so good, so natural. My words a match to the ghosts. I feel like bricks weigh on my chest as I hear those words again and again, echoing through the scene of white brilliance.

I pass through the isles of chairs, trailing the pads of my finger tips to one of them.

I close my eyes, soaking in the world that's so perfect I can barely stand it. I open them. It's no longer empty.

There are ghosts filling the chairs.

I smile. Irene. I read out for her, a smile bursting out of me, sunshine filling every inch of my sinned body, "Rini."

She turns to face me. I smile. I'll be able to see her again. Her face, her face, her face. I've missed if so much.

She faces me fully. The screaming starts anew. My knees give out. So much blood.

Scarlet pools and crimson stains coating every inch of everything and everyone. I claw at the ground, trying to crawl to her, but I can't because I'm being dragged back down.

I barely restrain a gasp as I face off with my Bex. My dead Bex. "Bexie. You came back."

I touch her face, tracing it, remembering the contours and touching her like I'm greeting an old friend. I press my palm against her unholy, soft, cheek.

I close my eyes, sighing again. My joy bursting from me. I'm light. I'm like the oxygen of the worlds and a ballon that's floating and full and do very light.

I feel something wet sliding against my palm. I snap my eyes open. I stare at my hand as I take it away from a now blood covered Bex.

I fall to my knees, wiping my hand in the grass, clawing at the dirt, ripping at my fingernails and scraping my skin raw.

Bex is gone just as soon as she came. The scene fades.

I'm on a cliff. The wind is whipping my pale face. My eyes darken. Everyone is dead and I am here, alive. I really shouldn't be alive.

Aches and pains spread through me as I try to grasp onto any semblance of rational thought and reason, but I can't. All I want to do is jump.

Guttural, animalistic noises tear though my throat. It's all my fault. Every bad thing in the world is bad because I'm nog good enough to stop bad things from happening. I'm never good enough and I never will be.

It feels like I'm being whipped. Just like Aries used to do. There is a burning pain in my back, but I ignore it because pain doesn't matter, at least not the physical kind.

You ruined your mother. You were nothing more than a lapse in judgement. No one will ever love you enough to fight for you.

No one survives you. Not your mother, not your sisters and now I can't kill you, but know that you are nothing.

The winds pick up as rain eats at me. The world falls away. It's just me and a ledge that I concur you tumble off of in the next two seconds.

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