Warning: death, mental breakdown

~

Lyra was tumbling in an endless void of pitch black. She wanted it to stop. She wanted to wake up. She wanted to wake up now.

"Guh!"

Lyra gasped for air as she sat up, sweat sliding down her face and her hands clenched in fists. In and out she heaved, desperate for oxygen. She was no longer in pain, and she could no longer feel blood cutting pathways down her face. But she felt as though some parts of her were . . . missing. What had happened? Where? Who? Why? When?

As Lyra tried to figure out where she was and what had happened, she came to realize that she was sitting on something soft and gritty. As she looked down, she found herself sitting in a grassy field. The environment seemed gloomy, yet peaceful.

Lyra staggered to her feet as she finally began to catch her breath. Everywhere she looked, tombstones stared back, the names stamped upon them glaring in the sunlight. She was in the local cemetery. Why the hell was she in the cemetery? Shouldn't she be in the hospital after that horrific crash?

Dreading what she might find, Lyra slowly turned around, and her heart seemed to explode from shock. Just a meter in front of her sat a gravestone labeled the following:

Lyra Artemis Rogers

Lyra felt her head begin to spin. Her heart raced. What the fuck was going on?

Lyra grappled at her chest as she struggled to breathe. This was all a nightmare, right? Any second now, she would wake up in a hospital bed with her mother beside her and the beeping of a heart monitor echoing in her ears. But this seemed so vivid, so real.

After several long moments of trying to let everything settle in, Lyra's eyes drifted to another tombstone beside hers. This one bore the name of her father. What was happening!?

She needed to go home. Yes, everything would make sense if she just went home to Connie.

Swallowing the lump now settled in her throat, Lyra turned on her heel and began to run out of the cemetery, climbing up over the gate and letting herself fall onto the sidewalk. But strangely, she didn't feel that familiar sensation of a small jolt of pain zipping up her legs: she was numb to it.

But Lyra chose not to dwell on it. She began to run once again, dashing around the corner and down the sidewalk towards her house. But as she turned the corner, she felt as though her feet had left the ground. And when she looked down, she realized that they had and she had started to float up into the air.

"Woah, woah, wooaaahh!" Lyra exclaimed as she floated higher and higher. After a moment, the sound of flapping wings registered, and she looked up to realize that a pair of black feathered wings had sprouted from her shoulder blades. She began to panic, and she wagged her legs round and round as though she were riding a bicycle. Eventually, she landed back on solid ground. But how did she have wings? Why?

As Lyra landed back on the sidewalk, she realized that something about her head felt . . . different. As she lifted her hands to check, she found herself grabbing hold of two horns seemingly made of bone poking out of her scalp.

"What the fuck!?" Lyra shrieked. She began to feel dizzy from shock. This had to be a dream.

At this point, Lyra was desperate to get home to her mother. Deciding to try and do the impossible, she channeled her energy until she was able to flap her wings at will and gather enough force to lift herself into the air.

Lyra couldn't help but lose herself in the majesty of it all as she began to soar above Glengrave. It was as though she was looking out of a plane down at the earth below. People became little dark specks on the streets, like ants on an anthill, and the cars looked like toys. She flew over the old Woods family house, which had been abandoned after the parents were murdered and both sons went missing. She passed over Nathan and Crystal's home and Winona's apartment building. She passed the pub her father always went to. It wasn't too long before Lyra began to recognize the terrain: she was almost home.

Lyra touched down a block away from her house and tried to catch her breath. She felt lightheaded, and she no longer felt the wings protruding from her back. She had registered that this was only a dream: there was no way this was real. It simply couldn't be.

But as Lyra turned the corner onto her street, she felt astonished once again. Her vision of her home street had been shattered, as it no longer existed: every single house was burned to the ground.

Everything became a blur. As Lyra stumbled forward, she began to blindly stroll among the wreckage until she had arrived at what remained of her home. The smells of smoke and gasoline slashed at her lungs. Everything was gone: the wooden fences, the porches, the front yards, and Lyra could see furniture speckled around. The neighborhood was unrecognizable. She couldn't help but be reminded of broken dollhouses as her eyes darted in every direction.

As Lyra's breath became quicker and more tense, she fumbled for her cell phone and whipped it out. As her thumb flew across the cracked screen, her eyes widened as she realized the date: the car crash had occurred two months ago. Her heart began to pound as she realized that this wasn't a dream - it was too real to be a dream.

Desperately, Lyra went to Google and searched up the local news. She didn't have to scroll too far down to find something from about a month previously. But it was the headline that rendered her completely speechless:

Teenager Burns Down Neighborhood, Mother Survives

What . . . ?

Lyra kept reading, her eyes welling up with tears. This couldn't be happening. . . .

The last thing we expect children to do is murder another human being, especially a family member. But as history has proven, we always have to expect the unexpected.
Just one week ago at approximately 11:42 pm, police were called to say fires had been ignited with gasoline on Duchess St. in Glengrave, Michigan. After hours of rescues and attempts to put out the fires by brave first responders, only one survivor was saved from the wreckage, though she was covered with second degree burns. After an investigation was conducted, it was decided upon that the prime subject was 17-year-old Tobias Rogers, as he was reported missing from the site. And when she came to, his mother - Connie Rogers, 43 - the sole survivor, affirmed that it had been her teenage son to start the blaze.
23 people were killed in the disastrous fire, including Frank Rogers, Connie's husband and Tobias's father, whom Connie claimed had been murdered by Toby with a kitchen knife. Investigations are currently ongoing.

On and on the article stretched, but Lyra's vision was too blurred from tears to keep going. How could this have happened? Had she not helped Toby enough? Had he simply snapped?

Or . . . had they always been like that?

Lyra began to feel dizzy once again. Her whole body was shaking. Unable to keep standing due to her trembling legs, she fell backwards into a sitting position on a piece of singed wood. Tears streamed down her face, and she began to sob. Why did this have to happen? Her neighbors didn't deserve this. Her mother didn't deserve this. How could Toby have done such a thing?

As Lyra continued to weep, she could feel anger bubbling within her stomach until it had surged throughout her entire body. She dropped her phone, grabbing at the sides of her head and letting out a loud scream that shattered the sky. When she opened her eyes again, she found that her voice seemed to have moved some of the debris, like a sonic scream from a TV show. As Lyra put her phone back in her pocket and stood up, she found something poking out of the wreck:

Her old baseball bat, seemingly untouched by the flames except for the ash that coated it in a thick layer. It was like it was waiting for her.

Face stained with tears, Lyra picked up her bat. Her head was throbbing with fury as she went over every single thing Toby said about her in her head. She and her mother had sacrificed the world for him, protected them with everything. And he repaid them by leaving Lyra to bleed out and then fleeing the scene while Connie was in danger of burning to death? They repaid them by berating them day in and day out and using them as meat shields?

Lyra began to squeeze her baseball bat so firmly her blood-stained knuckles had gone white. She had murdered Nico for what he had done to her, beaten him to death with her own hands. She could do the same to Toby, no problem. Oh, yes. She could snap their neck like a glowstick, rip him limb from limb, and tear their head from his shoulders. . . .

The thought excited Lyra. She wanted to feel that power again. She craved it, she needed it.

Out of the corner of her eye, Lyra spotted something reflecting the sunshine. Walking over to it, she found a shard from a broken mirror poking out of the wreckage, and she picked it up to examine herself.

Her eyes had gone from sky blue to a glowing, blank white. Scars decorated her body and face, and her clothes were torn. A chunk of her nose was missing. But she was still beautiful, she reminded herself. The beautiful champion her mother had always told her she was. Lyra took the shard of glass and, with one swipe, chopped her hair short. As her ponytail of sunflower blonde hair fell to the ground, she felt as though a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

Lyra had had enough of being used. Nico and Frank were gone. Now it was up to her to finish the job.