Day 3 in August 17, 2017
Time: Unknown

Daylight broke in through the windows. Yellow parted green as the unseen sun rose somewhere they couldn't see. The shift in light woke Sammy up and her hand quickly dove underneath her pillow, trying to get a hold of the knife that she hid there last night. But she couldn't find it. Her eyes grew wide and she overturned the whole thing, still not finding it there, it didn't even left a print on the mattres. A relization hit her and dread came after it like a truck with no breaks. They can't permanently change anything in this world. Any thing they touched will go back to it's rightful place including the weapons they'd accumulated, leaving them a moment of invulnerability. If monsters chose to attack at that moment they'd be...

She couldn't finish her internal monologue and came running for the door. She didn't have the luxury to be flustered when her blanket slid off and revealed that she was now only wearing her sleeveless shirt and shorts underneath. Her hand just grab a hold of her blouse and skirt as she passed by, clipping it and buttoning it up at every step she took. Everyone woke up by the noise she made but she didn't even laid an eye on them. They were supposed to make a rotation of watchmen last night but they forgot to do so, leaving Laine and Josh out there all night. She also wanted to bash herself into the wall by failing to fulfill the task she made for herself. She told herself that she won't sleep and she will wait until the shift happens, desperate to watch the resetting of this world with her very own eyes. But exhaustion overpowered her and she missed her opportunity.

She opened the door with a thump.

"Laine, Josh--" She stopped herself when she saw Laine in deep sleep. She slept on the floor with only the wall to prop herself up. Her uniform was automatically dressed on her due to the fact that she wore it on underneath of her tracksuit last night. Sammy stared at Laine's hand, it was gripping Josh' shirt tightly and Sammy wondered how he still had his tracksuit on him. When her eyes traced Laine's hand and travelled all the way up to Josh's shoulder-- she thought everything was normal, but then, she took a step forward and her perspective took a whole new angle. She was now facing Josh and her eyes went wide when she saw that his left side had completely merged itself into the shelf, leaving only his left leg trailing on the floor. Her breath was caught on her throat and she screamed in horror.

There was no blood. It was just flesh morphed to accomodate the shape of the furniture, like he was a character in a game that glitched right into it. That was the reason why his right side was too close to the shelf. Sammy's rapid heartbeat rocked her eyes from it's socket and she couldn't breath. She couldn't breath and he was way too close to it.

Way too close--

Laine yelled all of a sudden, startling her out of her downward spiral.

Laine's eyes we're bulging at the condition of the body that was laying beside her, her shaking became uncontrollable that the intake of air became imposible, her mind racing at the possiblities that allowed this to happen. She was the one who was next to him this whole time. How did this happened? Did it happened in the middle of their sleep? Was it in the beginning of their sleep? Neither of those two made her feel better. It didn't change the fact that she slept through the night with a corpse next to her and she may be in denial but she knew it was her fault. The voice inside her head said so and it only grew louder when the others ran out of the room and they looked at her like how you would look at a murderer for the second time.

There was a second of silence, before everything went out the window.

James' eyes came from shellshocked to a seething range in a matter of seconds and he lunged at her, lifting her off the floor by her collar.

"What did you do?!" he yelled at her and she shook her head, her face dangerously red. She didn't feel the tears gushed out of her eyes and she failed to notice that her hand was still grabbing on to Josh like a lifeline.

She let out a shaking noise before she could manage to get a word out. "I didn't do anything. I didn't kill him. Please believe me. I would nev--" Her words choked her and she only realized now that she was already crying, her eyes were blurred by tears and her lips wobbled in overwhelming emotions. "I would never. I would never. Not anymore." Her head moved on it's own, feigning innocence as it shook left and right-- a universal language for the word "no". But they couldn't seem to understand her, like there was a wall between them and she kept on repeating it over and over again.

"I will not be a murderer for the second time. Please just give me a chance to explain. Please, let me explain," she begged, as Josh' words echoed inside her head.

He said they'd build a whole new trust to bridge their gap to the others. That's what she was doing now, why wouldn't they listen to her? Why are they looking at her like it was already set in stone?

"Why would we believe you?! This..." He pointed at Josh' state, refusing to look at it too long. "This only happened when he was alone with you. And if you didn't kill him. How can you explain this, huh?! Are you gonna chuck it all up as a coincidence? 'Cause if you do, don't even try! You're filled with bullshit!" James spat at her, shaking her harshly.

That's right.

Something in her grew weak all of a sudden. There's the lack of reason again. Maybe this was not a coincidence. Maybe she did cause his death even in the most indirect way possible. Maybe just being around her gets people killed. Death followed her but instead of lunging up to her, it took the one next to her instead, making a comedy out of her misery. Josh was gone. His body was permanently stuck to the shelf now and his eyes were already dead, the glasses that she fixed won't serve it's purpose anymore. He said he liked it. He fucking liked the thing even though it was a bit too tacky for him. But he was gone there was no "we" anymore. Their silly little endeavor on getting her head straight was cut short. There was no farther than this. No one would grab her hand and walk her out of her darker sides and no one would take the first step to believe her anymore. It was yelled at her face hundreds of times, why did she waited to be battered up like this just to understand?

Her body went slack and her hand finally let go of Josh. James felt the shift in Laine's weight and before he could react, Laine started muttering, "I'm sorry" several times . It was slow and on repeat, it's tone begging and her voice cracking. She seemed to accept that she killed him in some ways and could do nothing but apologise.

James instinctively let go of her,  plopping her down to her previous sitting position. Laine was in a different haedspace all this time and he might've said something that finally broke her. She even refused to simply sit on the floor and insisted on bending her body, lowering her head down to the floor and was full on groveling.

"Please, stop that." Sammy approached her. Her face was unnervingly blank as she touched her shoulders. "You didn't do it, right?" she asked, her voice bland.

"I didn't but... I don't know anymore." Her voice came out as a whisper.

"Did he happen to move that shelf last night?" Sammy added, pointing at the grotesque furniture.

Laine could only nod at her.

Sammy nodded back. "Then that means it wasn't your fault. The shelf moved back to it's place when the reset happened and Josh just happens to be in it's place. It kind of just..." she closed her eyes and she started shaking. A tear fell down from her closed lids and she looked away. "How can I speak critically at a time like this?" she said, asking no one in particular as she looked out the window. She tried blinking the tears off her eyeslids but it kept coming. She hated the way how she sounded. She hated the way she was looking at Josh' corpse as if she was observing the outcome of an experiment. She hated how she leaned to the logic and not into words that rang emotions. She didn't sound like a human now, just a scientist who was astounded to their findings and she despised the idea.

"This is all my fault. I should've thought about this. I tried to stay up last night but failed to do so, I shoud've warned you more. I should've done more," she said, her face still not turned towards them, only her voice was bridging the gap between them all. "And Laine..." She finally turned her head, but it directed itself only to Laine. "I know you didn't push him into that position nor you held him down to stay. You're hand gripped his sleeves as if you're pulling him closer."

Laine's eyes widened and a spark glistened on it as Sammy's words unveiled her truth.

She tilted her head and she smiled at her, her eyes sorrowful, an understanding forming beneath them. There was a moment of silence before she said: "You wanted him to lay his head on your shoulders... didn't you?"

And just like that, a dam that's inside Laine broke free and she finally let out a cry. A shriek of painful sobs came out of her mouth and tears fell in buckets, dotting the floor underneath. Her hand grasped her chest, hurt and happy that someone noticed her subtle gestures towards him.

She did try to make him lay his head on her shoulders.

She did try to pull him closer to her.

She did thought about holding his hand once.

And only now did she realised that she liked Josh all this time.