Reason I Run To {You} [Cass]

A fallen star,
Fell from your heart,
And landed in my eyes,
I screamed aloud,
As it tore through them,

One I was very little my grandad died. My mama spent days in her room crying and I didn’t know what to do so I stood there, standing beside the door frame, hands glued to the old, cleanly carved wood and I watched. I stood there for three whole days, only retiring to bed at night and when I awoke the next day I would resume my position, eyes staring ahead, staring at the weak, tiny figure of a woman that had been so strong just moments before. Dad told me I just needed to let her rest and to let her let it all out. Sometimes he would go in there and offer her food and water, and other times he would sit down beside her and wrap his strong arms around her and just hold her as she sobbed softly into his shoulder. It was odd - and my dad thought so to - that I felt nothing. That seeing that display of pure, broken emotions before me did not even affect me in the least. I did not shed a single tear; I did not show the kind of pain that both of them did. I knew my grandad; he had been a tall kind man, with eyes that crinkled all the way up when he smiled. There was always a warm light touch to that smile, and when you looked into his eyes there was always the roots of deep affection stretching out before you.

They were not the kind of eyes that hid anything for you and instead played every tiny emotion within them like a television. He never tried to hide what he thought or what he wanted to say. Most of the time they were like a warm kindling, always inviting you to come closer, to be closer, asking you to feel their warmth on your hands, to understand how it spreads through you and warms you and loves you and keeps you alive. And I loved them. I loved those eyes, and those lips, that goofy little smile and the crinkles on his face. I loved placing a hand against his old cheek, and feeling him hold my young smooth one. Sometimes he’d grab me and tickle me and he would not let go until I was squealing with delight and begging for air to breathe and even then I did not want it to stop. I missed him. I had felt that ache within the confines of my own chest the day dad came and told me he was no more. He’d grabbed my arm and tugged me into a tight hug, before letting go, drawing backwards and telling me he was dead. By that age I was no stranger to the underworld and death. My head was blooming with a thousand different stories, lives and tales, all warped into that one tiny little brain. When dad said he was dead I did not feel sad. I felt empty and hollow, but not sad. I did not take that loss to heart, to feel it rip into me.

I took it as I always had taken things. I put it aside and then when I was alone I’d grasp my favourite fairy tale book, the biggest one I owned, bound in leather and tied shut. I’d carefully open it, sliding my tiny little hands over the cover, feeling the power and the words that coursed through it, before gently sliding it open. Within moments I’d have flipped to the page I needed, whenever I was troubled, angry or sad I’d open this book and go to a story. My head and my heart directed me and I’d unconsciously turn to the tale that made sense, the one that would put my shaky mind to ease. After my dad had told me I found myself before the book, reading over and over and over again the story of a young orphan girl. She had had to cope with the death of both of her parents and had then again had to cope with being raised in an orphanage, bullied and picked on and always over-looked by adults looking for a child. She spoke of death and of the freedom it gave. Of the peace of mind given to those who achieve it, how it is the only absolute end to the world. But then after telling me how amazing death was and how perfect and forgiving it was she cried. The first time I had read it I felt as though her tears were embedded into the very paper.

And I would often see them spill across the page, filled with her own agony and misguided understanding to everything that had happened. She tried to understand it all, she tried to connect the dots and see why she was facing what she was facing. Why she wasn’t dead to and why the day she had tried to kill herself she couldn’t. At the very end she told me a secret and it is that secret that has kept me going since my parents died. It was that last little bit that has stopped me from killing myself and prevented me from slipping into the shadows of death like my parents. In the times when my world seems to collapse around me I look there. I grasp that book between shaky hands and an imagination so wild and crazy that it terrorises me and I read. I cry and sob, I cry and cry until I’m done, until the pages of the book are as litter with my own agony as they are with that girls. Because her and I are alike, and I want her help so I take it. I take those words from that page and repeat them over and over in my crazed mind, like some sick little chant, but no matter what anyway could ever think it helps. That blind rage and anger that had built itself within me slips away for another day.

Right now I’m sitting on the floor. My hands grasping the cool, worn book that had kept me alive. I’d awoken hours ago, the same nightmare tearing into my mind. The same blood stained hands jabbing into that man, the same blue, hollow eyes. The same dead bodies of my parents, but always, always a different, more sadistic way of killing that man. Never is it the same, my mind demands to torment me and throw me into a new situation where I must kill him, but then sometimes I can’t, sometimes I can’t and he turns around, cold, dead eyes staring into my own and he kills me. No matter what I do I’ll always get there when my parents are dead. I’ll always hear them scream, I’ll always hear them plead, and I’ll always hear Mama sob. I can never stop that. I can never stop the screams that come tumbling from my lips when it happens. It is like a disease it eats away at you, hollowing you out and it won’t stop until it has destroyed me.

Death is not something you cope with. It is real and it is raw. Murder is worse, and yet when you look at the two just as long as you can keep your head high and you can get through life it does not matter. As long as you can keep going you’ll be fine. The little girl in the story ended up killing herself. And by the end I was going to do the same. But I couldn’t. When I read the end of the story I felt betrayed and hurt. She’d spent most of her time telling me why not to do that, why I should live and fight, I got angry. I got so angry I had thrown the book and I had promised myself I would not be as self-fish and crude and mean as she had been. I promised myself that I would not do the same; I would not be like her. I would live, just to spite the little girl in the story. And I did just that. There were no words; there was no moral or fate. There was nothing, but her own contradiction. It was anger that did it. It is anger that saves you. I’m not sure if that is true or if that is simply just me, but it is anger that has healed me and helped me and it will keep me alive. I am more than positive that it is not a healthy way to do it, but it sure has kept me alive.

My head snaps up, a loud bang vibrating through the walls. The crack of lightning hits once more and I relax once more, wrapping tight, cold hands around the cover of my book. Not a few months ago this book would have been everything I would have relied on to keep me going. It would have been my life, my heart and my soul. And then I meet Simon. Charming, smart, angry, murderous Simon. The boy who had killed his own sister, the boy who had snapped and killed, and the boy who had done what I had done. Simon, the boy that had kissed me and held me and told me it was all going to be alright. After the first day I’d meet him I’d been gifted with a present I had not felt for over ten years. I had not had a nightmare. That night for some reason I cannot fathom my nightmares had melted away and I had slept, an entire night I had slept and for once the permanent markings beneath my eyes faded a touch. And the hollow, sad eyes that sit upon my face had seemed a little less sad, a little less hollow, as though there was more life in there. I’d been so very happy. I could still remember the warmth of his touch, his rough, warm hands against my cold ones and his beautiful blue eyes as pain filled and sad as my own. The smallest of smiles touches my face at the memory, and for a moment my hands tighten around the book, taking comfort for once in my head and rather with my mind. It was the only memory that seemed to cause me no pain.

Another bang sounds out and this time I step up, my hands wound tightly and almost defensively around the book. My blonde hair falls around my sharp featured face as I step closer to the room’s door. Another loud bang follows quickly with a series of more. Lightning crackles once more, but I’m already stepping into the hallway, head cocked, trying to listen as the cold sound of rain lashes against the lonely building. Echoing against the cold, ominous halls of the orphanage. Frowning slightly I turn left, the banging and smashing urging me onwards. After a few moments I realise where it is coming from and my steps hasten, my bare feet padding softly against the cold ground. My hands remain wrapped around the book as I stumble down the hall, racing to him, racing to his room. "Shut up! Shut up! I hear it okay?! I get it!" I don’t even flinch at the rage within those words. Instead I push his door open, the sound of banging and crashing and smashing growing louder. So that the rest of the orphanage is not awakened I hurriedly step into the room, closing the door soundlessly behind me.

To my horror Simon is standing in the room, fists pummelling the walls. I place a shocked hand against my mouth, bright blue eyes widening at the sight of the blood that smears the walls with each hit. They flicker away for the briefest of moments to see smashed glass, books and paper everywhere. I flipped mattress and mess, mess everywhere. Alarmed I race forwards, not caring, just not wanting to see him like this. I’d never tell him, but two days after we had met I had had a nightmare with him in it and it had been one of those ones where I hadn’t gotten there in time and the man had turned around and I had lashed out and hit him with a knife, and when I looked it hadn’t been the coal black eyes of him, but Simon, gasping for air and bleeding as the blood flowed through his fingers, before he fell and died right in front of me. Right before me, the bloodied knife still in my grasp. I’d killed him. I’d spilled his blood and ended his life. That had been hard, and I had had to force myself to even look at Simon, knowing that I should have just left, knowing that I should have just walked away and never spoken to him again, lest he end up as my next victim. But I hadn’t. And I wasn’t going to stop now. I wasn’t going to kill him, I wasn’t. I wasn’t. I would not let me do it.

Racing forwards and heedless of what damage I could do I grab him. I yank him around, tearing his arms away from the walls. Tearing those blood smeared, bruised hands away from the pummelling, away from the pain. “Simon stop, stop. You stop this right now!” I snap. ”It won’t help. It won’t stop those nightmares, it might make you feel better, but you don’t need to cause yourself that kind of pain. Stop, please. Look at me, look at me right now.” I demand, forcing him to focus on my eyes, forcing him to stop, because he has to. He needs to.

And I was in the darkness,
So darkness I became,
The stars, the moon,
They have all been blown out,
You left me in the dark

A fallen star,
Fell from your heart,
And landed in my eyes,
I screamed aloud,
As it tore through them,

”Child what happened?” the soft words of the orphanage elder had rung in the air. It had been a week since their deaths, a week of me running, feet bloodied, bruised and scratched before I had stumbled into the gloomy gates of Julia. A week since I had spilled blood, a day since my eighth birthday. At the tender age of eight I had killed, I had seen my parents murdered right in front of me and I had run the length of the entire district, unwilling to let myself cry, unwilling to let myself fall and let those nightmares, that guilt and that fear from catching me and dragging me down. It had taken a week for me to find this new home, to find a place that a child like me deserved, because someone like me did not deserve much. I deserved nothing and no one. Turning my sad blue eyes upwards I looked at the warden. Her face was etched with patience, but with the brusque manner that she had spoken with I knew instinctively that she was upset at me. She’d been asking me over and over again what happened, who was I, what was my name and the most painful of all where were my parents. And that one always made tears spring to my eyes, and I’d force myself to look away from her, because even at the age eight I had been too proud, and head strong to cry in front of others.

Now that seemed of little consequence, something that I could never stop. I’d just cry now. Careless of what anyone said about it or the pain that was beneath it. I didn’t smile at the warden, I did nothing. I only met her eyes and held it there for a fleeting moment before once more averting my gaze. “Child if you don’t speak, or at least tell us your name you can’t stay here.” She said. An edge of irritation entering that softly spoken tone. I flinch away from her; I was so not use to that kind of way of speaking. Mother and father had never spoken to me like that before, they were always kind and happy and smiling and laughing. If I did wrong they’d tell me so, but they would never get irritated, upset or mean. Yet the prospect of being thrown out of this place, this gloomy, sinister place was much more frightening then holding onto my silence. Biting my lip I turn to her once more. I just had to say something, anything and then I could stay and then I would never have to see that home again and I would never have to think of it all. I had believed that, a new home a new beginning. Being a naïve child I had fallen under the spell of believing that bad things go away over time and that they would not haunt me and follow me, they would disappear and I’d forgot. I’d forgot all those things I had done and no one would ever know.

”Esmera- Esme.” It was then I decided that I did not want to be that girl anymore. I’d once read a small story, it had been the shortest one I had ever seen, it was only a page long, small little words filled with magic embedded into that old paper. There had been a boy. He’d hated his name; he’d believed it had represented a part of him that was not true. He thought his parents had given him the wrong name; they’d given him one that mean power, courage and strength. The name of a prince. He was only a lowly farmer. So he decided to change his name and make it into something that fitted the person that he believed he was. That story had always struck me as odd. Because at the very end he calls himself by his original name, after finally understanding that that was his name, no matter what it meant. But Esmeralda no longer meant what it once had to me. It was that innocent little thing, that stupid little girl that was always off in fairy tale worlds. Esmeralda was sweet, kind and full of life. She was not this thing I was now, sad, cold and murderous. In those few seconds I had hesitated, the memories of that story flooding into my mind and making me stop, making me think. I couldn’t call myself Esmeralda, not anymore, not until I was that was who I was.

The warden nods her head evidently pleased with this small amount of progress she had made. Smiling gently down at me she offered me her hand. I look down at the old withered hand, callouses outlined the top of her palm. They were weathered hands, hands that had seen work and done work. They looked an awful lot like mothers. Biting back that image I hopped down from my chair, my saw feet protesting with the very movement, but I ignored them and I forced down the tears that sprung to my eyes before reaching forward and wrapping my tiny hand around three of her old fingers. My hand too small to hold hers completely I clung to those few fingers as though they were my life line, the only way I was to stay in this orphanage. Tugging me beside her she lead me into a small corridor, we walked down the twisting and turning halls until we stopped in front of one door. She pushed it open and we stepped inside. I looked at the bare room, a small bed and a small stand all that was there. My hand tightened on my ever present fairy tale book. The only thing I had from home and my family, the only thing I had taken. The warden kneels down beside me and I look at her. Smiling she says, “this is now your room. You will be staying here.” And with that she let go of my hand and walked out of the room closing it behind her.

I slid to the floor, drawing my knees right up to my chest, that hollow feeling in my chest eating away at me. I choked down a sob; I had never felt lonelier then in that moment.

I’d been in that same room ever since and it still held the exact same things, no more and no less. Just my fairy tale book, my bed and that night stand with the flimsy lamp. It was so unlike Simon’s room where books lay scattered everywhere. With a single glance I could see more books then I cared to count. Most of them looked like fairy tales, fantasy stories just like my own. His room looked as though someone lived here, as though there was a life here and at some points in that life there had been something that was worth living for. In some ways it had been shaped more into a life than mine ever would. I’d never tried to even attempt to recreate a past life. I’d never tried to get trinkets, or items, more books, papers and pens. I’d just left it as I’d found it, finding no need to make it into my own.

"Sorry. I'm sorry. So sorry." He finally turns his attention away from the blood smeared walls and I can’t help, but feel that warm sticky blood beneath my own fingers. As though it was his blood I was spilling, as though I was lifting a knife and driving it into him, and feeling it spill across my hands, across my palms, chest, legs and arms. And he was dying in front of me and all I could do was pick that knife up, or that statue, or that book or anything and I was plunging it down and down and down and he was bleeding, and he was dying because I was killing him. But he wasn’t dead and I had not done that to him, viciously I shake my head, throwing the very idea right from my mind. I couldn’t think about that now, not when Simon was like this. I couldn’t think about that nightmare when he was right in front of me. I wouldn’t be able to face him or even look at him. I shove it as far as I can from my mind. Trying to focus everything on this, on Simon, on his pain, on his fear and anger because he needs me. He can’t fight this by himself, no one can. I’d learnt that the hard way.

A war cannot be fought by one person, you always needed help and I wanted to help Simon and I would even if he did not want me to help him. Even if we fought and even if I dreamed of spilling his blood, as those nightmares ripped through my mind. That just made it more important to help him and to do what was right. Suddenly his grip tightens on me and he pulls me forwards, his arms wrapping around me. For a moment I’m startled, but then I wrap my own arms around him and I just hold him as he apologises. And I don’t know why he is saying this, and I don’t know what to say, so I just let him talk."I didn't mean to, I'm sorry. Please, I'm sorry. I didn't, please, I didn't." His arms tighten around me. ”Stop being sorry, why are you sorry?” But as the words leave my mouth Simon is pushing himself away from me. I stumble back a step at the abrupt movement, before turning to look at him. Alarmed I hesitate for only a second as he flees from the room, feet pounding against the broken glass; leaving small blood smears behind with each step. With growing alarm I run after him, ignoring the small stabs of pain in my feet as I step on the shattered glass. ”Simon!” I cry my steps fast and light on the ground. I know if he hears me he won’t stop, but I can’t help the desperate call and the need to yell, because I’m worried and this is scaring me.

Rain falls down the windows, icy, cold, wet sheets of it falling from the sky. The clouds pounding, the sky flashing with lightning and the air rumbling with the banging of thunder. The halls echo with my steps. And I push myself to run faster those few bits of glass digging deeper, but I’m so worried, and all I can see is Simon fleeing from the room, racing away from me, and away from anything as though he can’t stand the sight of me. Maybe I shouldn’t be running to him then, maybe I should just go back and not bother, but I know I can’t because I care about him. Because I understand everything he is going through and maybe I can help he get through this and I want to be able to do that. I want to make things better for him, because that makes things better for me. Seeing him stops that aching pain in my chest, seeing him makes me feel whole again and not so empty. I feel real and alive and I can’t lose that. Within seconds I’m at the doors leading to the orchard, I sprint out of them, into the pouring rain. It’s cold touch stings at first, and the lightning and thunder scream in my ears. Icy sheets of water plaster my clothes to my skin and my hair hangs limply around my face, but I don’t slow down. I run through the mud and through the lashing ran, the trees seem so desperately long.

I stumble right to him. His soaking frame on the ground, knees in the mud, the cold rain hitting him, beating against him. His clothes hanging against his frame and I can see him there, broken. I halt. I stop, my stinging feet slipping into the thick of the mud and I look at him, because everything about this scene is the same as so many I have found myself in and I can’t look at it. It is like I’m seeing myself, knees folding beneath me as I fall to the ground, in the mud and I sob. A nightmare still raging on in the fore front of my mind and all I can do is cling onto a small bit of sanity as the rest of me loses control. I stand there, unable to do a thing, unable to move, unable to stop myself from shaking, from the nightmares that threaten to overwhelm me, because I feel like this has all happened before and it has and it will happen again and again and I’ll never stop it, but I never wanted to see the same thing happen to another person.

Because I don’t know how to make this pain better, I don’t know how to make it go away. I don’t know anything. I don’t know what I’m doing or why I am here. But I can’t move. Slowly I sink to the ground not a metre away from the boy in front of me, my body shaking, my legs slipping from underneath me. “I don’t know what to do, Simon. I don’t know what to do anymore.”

And I was in the darkness,
So darkness I became,
The stars, the moon,
They have all been blown out,
You left me in the dark

A fallen star,
Fell from your heart,
And landed in my eyes,
I screamed aloud,
As it tore through them,

It was so easy to slip back into a time when things had not been difficult. When the hardest thing I had to do was stop laughing, when smiling and giggling where the only sounds that I ever made. Sometimes it would be one of disbelief or annoyance as my father told a story wrongly, or he switched it around because he did not like the ending. There were plenty of those ones. He hated the ones with violence, he said that violence was a continuous circle and that if someone did not step backwards and look at what was happening it would all just keep on going. It was impossible to not make it stop unless someone took that responsibility and made that choice. It was why he always refused to tell me the stories with violence, even though as a child I had loved them the best. The idea of a knight diving into the thick of the fray with bodies of all the evil towering around him as he fought to save his princess was something beautiful. I had thought it was at least. Father would screw up his face when I told him that, when I sat down beside him, snagging the book from his hands and letting myself get carried away in the words. He’d always listen as I read the story to him, blood, gore and everything. But there would always be a hesitancy as though he was ready to snatch the book right from my hands at the first hint of something he did not want me to read. I’d try to ignore it, but in the end I’d just flick through the pages, telling him the stories he wanted to hear.

Sometimes we’d share and we’d act it out. He’d be the princess, always pretending to be charming, flirty. He’d place on a fake voice, raising the pitch and I’d always lean back giggling at first, the sight of my dad doing something so profoundly amusing always did stun me. Now when I think back on it I can’t understand why. He did it enough times, almost every day. When he came home from work on a small farm nearby he’d always plop himself down on the carpet in the living room, I’d be ready and waiting the book opened out to the story I’d want told and he’d flick through it as though checking to make sure it was suitable for my ears. He was a protective man. He always tried to bar me from horrific scenes. I could remember when I was five he’d taken me to work one day, mother had gone all the way into town, she was spending the day shopping, getting presents and food for my father’s birthday, it was tomorrow. I’d gone in with him, we’d had to walk all the way there and although it wasn’t that far I’d pretended that it was hurting and so dad had picked me up and let me sit on his shoulders. I’d felt like a giddy little girl, seeing the world from that height, staring out around me as he plodded along, the world slipping past while I did not even move. It had fascinated me, like any five year old unable to comprehend little things like that.

I’m not even sure why I found the idea of moving without moving so interesting. It was obvious how it worked, my dad was carrying me and yet it kept me chattering away the whole way to the farm, some crazy ideas about it all springing into my mind. Dad laughed at everything I said, he found it very amusing. He put me down at the front and I’d pouted, not happy with the idea of having to rely on my own to legs to carry me. But after only a few seconds it had vanished from my face as the sight of something so remarkable and amazing had greeted me. It was one of them, one of those tall magnificent beasts that all the heroes rode. From a single glance I could match it from the words in my book. It was a horse. Most people found the idea odd that I had never seen a horse before. I lived in the biggest district and the district that was known for its horses and cattle and sheep’s and pigs and yet at the age of five I had never seen why. I can’t tell you why, all I can do is guess. I think it has something to do with dad wanting to be his usual self and protecting me. Maybe he feared the big bad horses would step on me and hurt me. I’m not sure what he saw or what reason he had for doing it, but somehow I was glad he had. I was glad that the first time I ever set my eyes on a horse I knew exactly what it was.

More so it made me so happy to see that they were just as pretty and as perfect as the books had said they were. I loved it when life lived up to the fairy tales. It meant that then dreams and wishes could come true. I’d laughed. I’d laughed with the most pure of delight at the sight and I had taken off, sprinting away from my dad’s side before he could even think, before he had even realised I was running. It wasn’t until after I’d taken ten steps did I hear my dad’s cries. They pierced that giddy joy, and it surprised me and scared me, I’d never heard such worry before embedded within his voice. I stumbled a few more steps forward before turning around and to see him running towards me. I’d waited for him to come up to me, to see him scowling a look of deep worry embedded on his face. I couldn’t fathom what I had done wrong. I’d looked into his old brown eyes in shock, the gentle breeze blowing across the fields. We both shared the same blonde brown hair, but I held my mum’s eyes, bright, blue and filled with life. He knelt down and grasped my hand. “Don’t go running off like that again, okay? Horses are dangerous, especially for someone as little as you.” I nodded, but I did not agree. I was not little. Besides I did not believe horses were not dangerous, to me they looked like some big giant soft huggable beast. But the way my dad said it brooked no argument, so I let him tug me away.

After that we headed over to a big barn. I was slightly disappointed, but that washed away as I realised where we were headed. I could hear the soft whinnying and neighing of the horses. I pulled myself forwards, dragging my dad behind me. He could sense my excitement and he chuckled lightly, before scooping me up in his arms. I giggle like any child about to have a wish come true. “Now you will stay by my side, okay? If you don’t go running off I’ll let you get on one. Promise?” He smiled at me and I held up my left hand wiggling my pinky in the air. His smile broadened and he stuck his pinky out and we interlocked them. “Pinky promise.” I said through another laugh. He placed me down on the ground again and I held onto his hand as we walked into the stalls. I stared wide eyes at the display before me. It was a massive spacious room, with a long line of stable doors running down each side. A horse here and there had its head sticking out and I stared at each of them, unable to take my eyes off of them. After a few moments my dad pulled me forwards and I stumbled after him, my mind reeling from the sight of such an amazing place. Smiling he pulled me to the second stall. I couldn’t see over the door, and so I couldn’t see inside, but when we go there he smiled and gently spoke a few words to the horse in there. I listened, trying to understand what he was saying, but I couldn’t quite catch it. A few more seconds passed and then he unlocked the hatch, drawing the stall door open and we walked inside.

It was the most beautiful horse I had ever seen. Tall, elegant and the lightest of greys. Dad looked at it was an affection that told me the two were close. Carefully we stepped inside and then suddenly I was back in his arms. The grey mare took a step forwards, it had kind eyes, kind, big, thoughtful eyes and it instantly made me feel at ease. “Esmeralda, this is Gamina.” I mumbled a hello, to awed to say much else. Then with ease dad carefully placed me on her back. She felt strong and comfortable beneath my tiny body. It was amazing.

And I felt safe there. And right now I felt oddly safe. I liked the feel of Simon’s hands on my. As he leans downwards and places my arms around his neck. I don’t even make a protest as he grabs me and carries me. I don’t know why I say nothing, but I do. I hold my tongue instead burying my face in his neck. I didn’t care that I was cold, wet and soaking, I didn’t care that doing that made it hard to breathe or that this situation was anything, but alright. Because I felt safe. I felt safer and more comfortable then I had felt for a long time. I shoved away on thoughts of the nightmare; I shoved away the blood, the weapons and the dead, haunted eyes because I couldn’t think about that while he was holding me. While I was holding him, while he was there I felt so much more protected then I had for ten years. I didn’t care that he was capable of killing, I didn’t care that his hands were stained with blood, it didn’t matter because in the end he was the same as I was. And if I could be good and if I could get through this all so could he. I cared about him so much. And being this close to him made my heart race, it made my face flush, even in this cold weather I was sure there was a pink stain to my cheeks. His arms were strong and even though he was this skinny, lanky thing he could hold me and that was all I wanted.

Then suddenly the rain is no longer hitting me and I’m inside. Simon doesn’t stop and instead I find myself in the kitchen and only then does he stop, placing me gently down on a chair. I’m reluctant to let go of him, but I do, leaning heavily backwards. I was tired, so tired, but then that was nothing new, I just felt more worn down than usual. I close my eyes for a brief moment before opening them to find Simon busy. He grabs a small basin of steaming hot water, before dashing off and into another room. A few moments pass before he returns and before I can say anything he has thrown a blanket over my shoulders. I dip my feet into the hot water, wincing at the sudden warmth and the way it burns. But after a few moments it feels almost soothing. Simon plonks down on the ground before me and I can see the pain in his eyes. It was something I was used to seeing, so used to seeing that I could read it on another without thinking. "It helps, trust me. My mom always did this for me." He sounded alright and I hoped with all my heart that he was feeling better. "But, uh, I would prepare yourself for the tweezers. They sorta kill the whole mood after the foot bath." He then reaches forward hands digging through the first aid kit, before pulling out a pair of tweezers. I watch as he begins to pull the shards of glass from his feet. It looked painful, but then I was use to pain. It wouldn’t bother me.

"You read, right? Books and poems and stuff? "I mean, I could, maybe - uh, read some to you sometime. Well if you wanted I mean." I stare at him for a moment. The idea of doing that brought back painful memories and yet the idea was something that made me happy. I bit back a few tears, remembering the times when I had read to my parents and they had read to me, when they had acted out scenes and when we had all done it together. I missed them. I missed them so much. "I used to read with my family. We had a sort of, well, 'story-time' so to speak. We would bake apple pie and then my dad would start a fire and we would all sit sprawled around the living room, eating pie and taking turns reading." I nod my head because that same stry was so much like my own and it hurt too much to think about it. "But," he begins, but nothing comes from it. And I’m too lost in painful memories to ask. Slowly I slip to the floor beside him, the chair too difficult to sit on. I sat down there, focusing my sad blue eyes onto his face. “I’d love that more than anything, Simon. I’d love that so much. I miss reading to others and I miss hearing others read to me.” I take a deep breath holding back the tears. “I always did that with my family and it is what I miss the most.”

And I was in the darkness,
So darkness I became,
The stars, the moon,
They have all been blown out,
You left me in the dark

A fallen star,
Fell from your heart,
And landed in my eyes,
I screamed aloud,
As it tore through them,

Dear Mum and Dad,

I’ve tried writing this letter a thousand times; I’ve tried starting it in a thousand different ways. But no matter how I begin and no matter what I right the words never seem to come out like they should. I once stared at this piece of paper for five hours, just watching, maybe part of me hoped the words would come out all by themselves, that he pencil in my hand would not have to touch that paper. I never did have to, of course. I told myself that I didn’t need to write this, you both were dead, and who was going to read it? Who was going to see each word of my heart on this piece of paper? No one was. I could hardly send this to the address of our house and hope you might see it. I can hardly read it all out loud so that you might hear it. So what is the point of all of this? There was no need for me to even right this letter for the two of you. I mean you both are dead and writing how bad I feel and how my heart aches with every thought of you won’t change that. But I have to try. I have to say some form of an apology.

I need to put words –words that have tainted my heart and soul for ten years- into existence, because I’m scared of what might happen if they stay there and eat and eat away at me. So the reason why I am doing this is because part of it is for me –more than you’d think, because I am just that selfish- while the rest is for you. Maybe it might make me finally see the two of you. Ten years and I might look. It would give me that excuse I have always needed to go there, to stand before the two of you and say goodbye. Maybe I could read this out to you. Could I? Would you still love me and call me your daughter? Do you still even do that? Do you hate me for never ever seeing your graves for not even coming to your funeral? Now maybe this is an excuse, a way of me trying to cover up for what I had done. Maybe all of the words written write now are nothing more than that stupid false face that I always have up. There is so much that could be said about what I’m saying.

It would be so simple to stop writing right now, throw this into the bin or the fire and watch it burn just as I have always done. And I’ve written this same story ten different times in ten different ways. Who knows maybe this letter will follow with the rest, but I doubt that (This time I want it to stay, this time I need it stay, that way it will give me a reason to visit, even though a latter should hardly be a reason to see my own parents. It is the best excuse I have). It feels different. I feel different. Would you believe me if I were to say sorry right now? Would you believe me if I told you right now that I’m going to your grave and I’m going to read this letter to you? Who knows maybe one day it will find its way there. Maybe one day the words will meet your graves and I can find that small amount of peace within in a shattered heart. I wouldn’t believe me if I said that, so if you don’t believe me I wouldn’t blame you. I bet you never thought you’d see your daughter end up like this. Messed up, dark and nothing more than a hollow shell of that girl you had once held. The one that smiled almost every moment of her life. The girl that never once had a nightmare or never once had cause to cry.

I’m laughing right now. Sometimes I can’t even remember what life was like, where I had a good night’s sleep. But I’ll stop now, because this letter isn’t about me. It is about you, mama and dad. It is about the wrong I have done and how I’m dying on the inside because I can’t think of any way to change it or fix it. I can’t tell you that I’m not going to try and make an excuse for what I did, because it is all I know. I’m not an honest girl anymore and the idea of simply saying that I was a coward and that I ran and never once went to see your dead bodies in the ground because I couldn’t look at them. No I’d rather tell you it was because I was scared; I’m not lying there (for once since I’ve been alone I’m writing the truth), I was scared, and any child would have been. But it isn’t right for me to say it was only fear. It was also because I felt at fault. I felt like the only reason the both of you were dead was because I had made some awful mistake. And believe me it took a long time before I realised I hadn’t.

No, the real reason why I never came to say goodbye was because I knew you’d be ashamed and that was not something I ever wanted to feel. You know that shame was the thing I feared most? It was the one emotion and one look I never wanted to see from the two of you, because both of you were everything to me. You were all I had, hell you two were everything I knew. I didn’t know what the world was; I didn’t know what anything was. And then you left. Then I was suddenly all alone, with blood on my hands. Because if you didn’t already know I’m going to tell you right now: I killed that man. I watched as both of you died before me, as my parents blood dripped out of them. I watched and I screamed and I killed him. Maybe you knew that. Maybe you watched me as I took that man’s life. Maybe you begged me and screamed from the place that had claimed you and you tried to stop me. Who knows, this could be the first time you hear this story. Ripred you might not even hear it. Maybe when the time comes I’ll be talking to the open air and the earth that holds your skeletons.

I guess the only thing I can do is pretend. Or not go through with it at all. I will. I think I will, at least go there. One day. Maybe soon, maybe in a few years’ time, but when I go I’ll take this letter with me –the one in my hands right now, and I’ll tell you everything. And by the and I’ll feel better, because the entire purpose of this letter is to make me feel better about everything I have done to you guys.

I just want to tell you I haven’t forgotten about you, mama and dad. I love you both so much and finding the right words to say has always been hard. And oh Ripred I miss you both so much. Everyday makes it worse, but I’ll keep fighting, you know I will. Because no matter what I say or do I’m still your daughter and beneath everything there is something good left in me.

I love you both and I always will,
Esmeralda.

A fallen star,
Fell from your heart,
And landed in my eyes,
I screamed aloud,
As it tore through them,

I’ve just screamed at him. I’ve taken all that anger and thrown it at Simon. It was cruel, rude and rather mean of me. For a moment that fire within my chest dampens, and an awful sense of guilt washes through me, to dowse it out. But it is brighter and it shines through. The anger stays there, flickering in my blue eyes, giving them a colder, more fearsome look. I know I’ll regret what I have done later, I’ll hate myself for saying what I had said, I’ll hate myself for even thinking of asking him to push me away. Because I am just that desperate that I need to keep him here, I need him to be a part of my life. I am so desperate to be cared for or even loved that the very idea of pushing someone away is killing me. Especially another living being that feels the way I do, that dreams and cries and has that cold, burning pain and agony within them that I do. It isn’t easy to find another person that shares similar interests as you do. Is that so wrong? Is that such a horrible thing? I just want to be cared for and needed and I want it all to go away, I want Simon to say stay and I want him to tell me that he needs me, I sure need him. But I have found someone and I’ve basically just asked him to through it all away because I can’t handle it. But it hurts as well. The very idea that he might say go away and leave and never come back scares me. I don’t want to be alone again. Because that hurts. Everything hurts in the real word (what, honest to Ripred, in this cold, miserable place does not make you ache? Does not make you hurt, so what is the point in trying to fight it), you can’t get anything without pain.

Pain is complementary to pleasure, one cannot exist without the other, and this is why it makes it so very much needed and yet hated so much. So why am I trying to throw away the best pain and loneliest pain I have felt for such a long, long time. One day I’m going to get tired of hurting and feeling pain. Everyone in the end does. Isn’t that why people die? Because they are sick of going through another day with some kind of pain? Isn’t it why people take their own lives? Because they no longer can face that gaping hole where their heart should be? I know it is why sometimes I have thought of ending it all. I know that pain and fear and cowardice are all the reasons why I keep running, why I can’t stop and smell the roses, or stand by the side of a boy or any girl and call people my friends. I have been running from my past as well as the truth for a very long time and it is finally catching up to me (be careful, sweet child, for what you wish for. Oh mama if you could see me and say that to me now. I’m laughing at those tales you once spoke of, they mean nothing now).

I’m so tired of running. I’ve been running all my life. I’ve slowly begun to draw the conclusion that even as a child I was running from something. I’m pretty sure it was life. No child just got the life that I once had. You didn’t just have the perfect parents, happy days and laughs upon laughs. Life was not meant to be that way. You were supposed to have trials, tests and problems. I never cried, I never sobbed and I never argued with my family. I was that perfect little girl. Everything went just as it should in a fairy-tales. My parents were kind, they were sweet and they were a hundred precent in love with each other. They’d do anything for me, just as I did everything they wanted. It was like all the fairy-tales they ever read me. The ones were the princess grew up in the perfect household, the perfect life. She had sister’s that cherished her, parents that simply adored her. The town’s people basically worshiped her. She was always smart, kind caring and had a love for animals and nature. She was that perfect girl, the one with the flowing blonde hair, bright blue eyes and beautiful body. And everyone always showered her with praise, praising her beauty, her intelligence and for a long happy life. Oh and she’d have a dozen handsome knights fighting for her hand. They’d bringer her gifts of all sorts, from horses, to necklaces, to the most delicate, rare jewellery you could ever name. They’d bend the knee and declare their undying love for the girl, which was a picture of perfection. She’d always laugh and take the flowers, or gift offered. A smile of brilliance set upon those pink little lips.

Those stories would always make me snort with disbelief, because they were always the ones I found most difficult to believe. Now looking back at it I don’t understand why. I had that kind of life, in a way. I was never in trouble, I never faced any difficulties. Mama and Dad were always praising me and telling me how beautiful, smart and perfect I was. They’d call me their little princess (I still dream of them whispering that to me, but now instead of smiling and giggling it makes me very angry) and I’d smile, my blue eyes shining with evident delight, unable to disagree with the truth, I had believed was in their words. I’d believed, like any princess, that one day a handsome knight would come for me and sweep me off my feet. Smiling at me, with his large handsome face, perfect eyes and kind, gentle nature (yeah, the very stuff of fairy-tales), whilst offering me the reddest of roses and a hand in marriage. And we’d life together forever as happy and delightful as the families in those perfect little stories. So why didn’t I believe them? I was facing a world with the some outcome. I had nothing to fear and nothing to lose. I had everything a million different people in the world would want. Yet when I was faced with the same reality within the confines of a book, spread out on ten pages, words embedded within them, I did not believe that it was possible. Maybe that was because in a story you don’t think of the world around you. Maybe I was just oblivious to the fortunate life I had lead.

Now when I think back on it, I think it was because I knew something would happen. The childish mind of mine never thought it would. It believed that there would be happiness forever. That that life I was leading was a permanent fixture and that nothing could ever and would ever go wrong. Oh the folly that I child will sinks its teeth into just to feel good, just to be able to sleep every night. It makes me laugh. It reminds me an awful lot of the other stories, the one that play a parallel to my life far more realistic and consistent that it often freaks me out. The perfect beginning to your life, where you get everything you want. In that perfect little world where your parents give you everything, but then in one moment it all changes. Something dramatic and devastating occurs and the world that was once so set in perfect cut stone is destroyed right before your eyes and you are left to fend for yourself in a world that just appears so shattered and false. Nothing looks real anymore, because that perfect picture is gone and until that returns you hide in a shell that was once you, but you aren’t you anymore. One story I read was about a little girl that grew up all happy and perfect and then one day her parents were killed and she was kidnapped. She escaped after ten years and she had to learn, after living in a room with just herself and nothing, how to survive in the world all by herself. She had to learn what the world was like. Because even though she was living in that one house, that one room, where everything was not like how it once was she knew nothing of the true world around her.

She was forced to grow up more than before and she was left to figure out a puzzle that seemed so incredibly impossible, just to survive. Yet, there are so many times when she just wants to give up, where the going just seems impossible and it would be so, so, so simple to let it all go. To go to those parents that haunt her in her dreams and die. It would be oh so easy. No more struggling, no more pain and no more having to wake up every morning with that aching feeling of loneliness. When I was riding that story it made me cry. Because every word within those pages was like the life I had. I was trapped in this orphanage. I was stuck believing the same things she had. And I had yet to go into the big bad world and face that kind of life. Where I’ll have to truly live and feel and act without them all. Where there will be no one to guide me, no one to protect me and shelter me. I’ll fight, I know I will, because I might be a lot of things, but I am a fighter. But in the end I don’t think it will be enough. It never is. I don’t want to be lost; I don’t want to have to fight every single day for survival. Why can’t it all just be easy? Why can’t, for just a single day it can all go back to how it once was and I can see them and I can smile just like I once had. Where there is no sadness within the confines of my dead eyes, where a smile isn’t strained, where nights are peaceful and hold the kinds of dreams that involve flying, adventure and love. Not murder.

I sigh, my shoulders sagging. It was a rather defeated kind of look. The anger vanishes from my eyes to be replaced by something a bit more guilty and regretful. However, I bit back any form of apology that I wanted to say. Because no matter how much my words may have hurt I did not want to take them back. I wasn’t sure if I fully believed it or not, but I felt a bit better. Some part of me had wanted to just get those words out into the air, let him here it and find out if it is true. I bit my lip, looking up and into Simon’s blue eyes. Last time I had looked at him in this way we had been sitting on the ground in the orchard, his eyes were rimmed with red, puffy, but still beautiful. And we’d kissed. He’d leaned forwards and I hadn’t even hesitated with kissing him back. I’d wanted it, just as much as he had and I’d loved it. Maybe a lot more than he had. Maybe he didn’t want it and he would answer my question with those exact words. And then I’d leave and I would, I’d say not one little thing, I’d simply walk out and try, try with all the will-power that I held to forget about him. Oh what an impossible task that would be. I can already imagine it. I’d never be able to survive that. That would be totally unfair for me, I’d just hurt more and become even more broken then I already was. As impossible as that was. Would it be hard for Simon? Or was me standing here before him talking to him and trying to help him too hard already? Was I just that pathetic and bad that I was clinging onto something that didn’t even actually exist? Maybe this was all me, just my wanting, just my need to have someone in this world to share my pain. I was, perhaps, being the unfair one here.

But who knew maybe beneath all that he wanted me as much as I wanted him. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and hold him and feel his lips against mine. It made me feel so safe. And as crazy as that sounds when you are talking to a guy that had just openly said that he killed you in his dreams I wanted it more than anything. It was one of the reasons why I was still standing there and waiting for him to answer me. I always feel safe, secure and relaxed when I walk in the orchard. Amongst those trees my mind can wonder like there is no tomorrow, I can breathe, feel and imagine. I’m free there. For the few hours of the day that I spend wandering amongst those tall trees I feel happy. It washes away those horrible images and I drink in the taste of the earth, the smells of the living, breathing beings around me. And no matter how cold, wet or hot it is I always feel safe, protected and comforted when I’m around the trees. It is a strange thing when the same feelings flood me when I look at Simon. Hell, I had hardly known him, only a few glimpses and looks, only a few muttered words before I found out basically everything about him. He opened to me, I opened to him, I cried in front of him – I cry in front of no one. I feel apart. Those carefully formed walls that had stayed so strong and unbreakable in my mind shattered in an instance and he saw everything and that was all because I felt safe. I didn’t care that he had killed, I didn’t care that right now he was telling me he could and would kill me. I don’t know why and I don’t know how, but some instinct drove me onwards. Because I knew he couldn’t do it, I knew that Simon would not kill me.

"What are we supposed to do about it?" I stare at him, my eyes widening in a mixture of disbelief and annoyance. What were we supposed to do? Why was he asking me this? I did not have all the answers. I didn’t know how to save me or to save him. I could hardly help myself let alone help someone else. But after a few seconds I realise something. I couldn’t help me and even though I believed that that meant I could help no one else, that was not true. I could help Simon, I had once. And even after that first meeting where I had helped in some small way it had ended up with fixing me –just a tiny little bit, but a little bit all the same. "I don't know how I am supposed to help you if I can't even help myself. I don't know what to do." He shakes his head. I watch him my own hair hanging limply around my face. He moves the hair from his eyes and I can once more see those blue eyes. I think if I was any other person watching this I would have laughed. To soaking wet, miserable figures standing in a room. Paper everywhere, books, glass and even tiny smears of blood all over the floor. My clothes cling to my frail frame. The momentary anger vanishes and with it a sudden awareness fills me. I clench my hands, forcing my body to not shake, it was cold and that cool breeze on my wet body was not very helpful. Simon looks downwards and that is when I’m struck by the throbbing pain in my feet. But, to my relief they have grown so cold that I can’t feel the pain I knew that would come if they warmed up. I grimace and let out a small startled yelp as suddenly Simon’s there grabbing me and tugging me forwards towards his bed.

"Damn it, Esmeralda." he curses. I hold back a scowl as I find myself being pushed to sit on his bed. He kneels down, shaking his head. "What's wrong with you? How does this not hurt?" I shrug, his fingers tapping my foot sends an odd feeling racing through me. I was use to walking around bare foot and besides the cold was helping amazingly at numbing the pain. I grip one of my feet tugging it upwards before looking at the bloody smears. Frowning slightly I tug at the few bits of glass that I can grab with my hands. The rest was in too deep. Shrugging I let my foot drop. I’d get them later. I turn my attention back to Simon and I just sit there, my eyes wondering over the boy in front of me. At the way his blonde hair sits and his strong, lean arms. I liked him. Simon looks up again and our eyes meet. Almost simultaneously a smile creeps onto both of our faces. Simon looks away and quickly reaches forward before grabbing a book that lay beside him. Tattered, ripped pages falling from it he opens it to the beginning. Getting to his feet he sits down on the bed beside me. Slowly at first he starts reading from the book. I listen; completely engrossed in the way he speaks. It was, to me, perfect. It held that slight hesitancy at the start as if catching the words before they fell from the page, before they slipped away and then as the seconds past it settled into a rhythm. It reminded me an awful lot of home, back when mama would read. She’d always start off the same way, as though trying to figure out how to go about it, then the words would just come and it would sound perfect and magical and I’d sit there listening to each of them as though my life depended on it.

By the end of the story, I’m staring at him, both of my eyes focused on his face. “That was beautiful. Thank you so much.” The words slip past my lips as no more than a whisper. I reach forward and grab the book in his hands, I hesitate. I look at him again with a serious facial expression. “Simon come with me.” I bit my lip, my expression turning slightly anxious. I jump off of the bed, my hand finding his. I tug him to his feet. ”I-I want you to meet them.” I laugh slightly, trying to hid my own pain behind the movement. “I’ve not even gone to see them yet, but I want you to come, right now. I have to go and see them.” I tug him further towards the door. “We need to go to the graveyard.”

And I was in the darkness,
So darkness I became,
The stars, the moon,
They have all been blown out,
You left me in the dark

A fallen star,
Fell from your heart,
And landed in my eyes,
I screamed aloud,
As it tore through them,

The first time I laid eyes upon this building I had been so scared. I had willed myself to walk away, to head back into the streets of the district and helter down and into an alley. That was what I had been doing for the past week. I’d been sneaking around, taking shelter and finding protection I the darkness of an alley way. I’d ran from people, I’d hit some person as they had tried to grab me and I’d slunk into the darkness like some monster, letting that thin veil of shadows protect me from the monsters of reality. The darkness had become some sort of gloomy protection where I could fade out of the harshness of the world around me. I could pretend I was that monster that I had become when I had killed that man. I stayed in the darkness for an entire week, fending for myself and protecting myself using the cover of the inky night as a friend. I played this little game, it was naughty of me, but it kept me live, if I had of got caught it would have meant my life, but I played it all the same. I’d dash into a shop, fingers quickly snagging a packet of food, a can or a water bottle before I dash away and back into the night before anyone saw me. Sure I got some calls and a few people were fast enough that they always grasped me, but I was little and slippery and I was smart. If you had of asked me if I could ever steal two weeks ago I would have turned deathly white at the very idea. I was a good little girl, the little angel and the very notion of breaking the law made me feel sick.

I guess I let that monster take over, I let it control me and shove away that guilt and regret. It was on one such night that I seemed to realise what I was doing and I fled empty handed back into the blackness. It all suddenly felt awful and wrong and instead of that surge of warmth I normally felt when I touched stone to foot I only felt coldness. I don’t like to think about it anymore, but it is the reason why I never wear shoes. I’d never tell Simon, but when he speaks of this monster and how he could kill and would kill me it scares me, but I mask it behind a face of annoyance, sticking to my own stupid false feelings rather then letting the true ones take over. I was like him once, I was this little monster that did things she would never do in her right mind, hell I’d never do them know. Some part of me realised what I was doing and thinking was wrong and I snapped out of it and the darkness that clouded my mind receded and the coldness that had once been so welcoming was distant and terrifying. I trotted amongst the stony walls, feet bare, hair down, a wild glint lighting up my bright eyes. This was why I walked around with no shoes, with no socks, nothing, because I was wild and untameable, a monster in all reality. Yeah it has now evolved into something more like freedom, but once upon a time it was because I was scared, it was because I was scared that one day the coldness of the world would become as bright and warm as the fires of hell and I’d know that the monster was back. And as long as my feet were bare and could feel the ground I would know that it was back, maybe before it took me.

Right now the world is as cold as death itself. That is how I like it, that is what keeps me believing and knowing that the monster that had once taken over is still hiding.

Sometimes I feel stupid for thinking that it hadn’t been me driving my actions, but some beast that had possessed me, instead. It had been a foolish delirious thought, of course. The actions of myself had been made by no one apart from me. I was me and I was responsible for what I did. So I shut the idea down and I shove it away. Some part of me still must have clung to the thought as I kept walking without shoes and I kept up a constant façade of nothingness. It had been difficult and a trillion, billion cracks litter it, all of them ready to shatter in a moment’s notice, but for now they hold, and hopefully they will continue to do so. I don’t want to burst, again, I don’t want to break and be that monster, I don’t want to kill. It was horrible and it hurt me as well as the person that fell beneath my hands. It was a terrible mistake and it eats away at me every day. Murder is wrong, killing is wrong and I know that. It took me an awful long time to admit to myself that I had done wrong; that I hadn’t done it to protect others, I had done it because I could and there is a difference there, between because you can and because you have to. I did not have to, I could have let him kill me and I would be with my parents right now instead of grasping Simon and dragging him along with me. Taking him to the grave where two of the most important people in the entire world to me are buried. Two people I have not visited or seen in ten years because I’m a coward.

Why was my life any more important than his? He could have had a wife, a child or a family and I could have taken that all away from him. Why should two wrongs make a right? Why had I done it? Seven years old, there could not have possibly been the idea of revenge sitting on that placid little brain of mine. I did it because I was a monster and because I wanted to kill him. I’ve run out of excuses.

It had been awhile since I had last stepped out of the gates that surrounded the gloomy orphanage. The last time I had left it had been the first time I had stepped foot out and into the real world in ten years. That had taken a lot of courage and that had taken a lot of my will power, considering it was also that first time I had visited my old house since my parents died there. It had been horrible; it had given my solid, headstrong nightmares for days, where I had felt unable to even move because the pain behind those images was so overwhelming. And now as Simon agrees to coming I’m scared. I’m nervous and frightened and worried. I grab his hand, refusing to let go of it and taking strength in that small touch. His skin was warm against mine, and despite the soaking wet condition that we both were in I was ready. I had to do this, I really had to, and I could no longer hide behind that pathetic screen of blissful ignorance. It was time to face the music. I could do this. I grab his hand and ignoring the irritating fact that I was walking on glass filled feet I head down the empty hallways. The rain is still pounding and every now and then a crack of lighting splits the sky. The sound drowns out my beating heart. I’m sure that if this was all silence the world would be able to hear its banging. I run a hand through my hair as we continue through the isolated halls. Then the doors are in front of me. Those two giant oak doors that lead to the real world, not the orchard or anywhere else. The real world.

When I was little to stop myself from getting scared I use to pretend that each yellow slash across the sky was like some small site of another world. And I’d pretend that in that millisecond of time I was the only when getting to see another world hidden behind our own, and that it was only revealed during a lightning storm. It kept me entertained, one time I even drew what I imagined the world to look like, there was no war or carnage and most importantly there were no Hunger Games. Peace reigned and no evil plagued the world. Everyone was free and kids weren’t sent to fight to the death in an Arena. Mama said she would love to visit that place one day. About four years ago I came up with the assumption that maybe she had finally gone there. Maybe when she died she finally got to go to the other world and she is sitting there laughing and happy. Or maybe she is calling for me to come to her, begging me to go and find her and fall into the safety of a new world where she can protect me. One day I’ll get there and if she is out there waiting for me with Pa beside her I’ll find them both and I’ll tell them I love them. Only time will tell when that happens, though.

I push them open, just a crack before sliding out with Simon, the rain is louder and the roar of the wind reaches my ears. My hair whips around my face and without hesitating I set off, my bare feet splashing on the cold ground, the rain hitting me and the lighting and thunder dancing among the grey stormy clouds. It is still very dark and I’m not even sure when sunrise is. I lead the way, my footsteps light and fast, as though some new kind of urgency had suddenly entered me, as though I was desperate to do this, but in reality I was afraid that if I didn’t get there fast enough I’d back out of doing this. I’d turn back and head to the orphanage and spend another night crying and wishing that I wasn’t such a coward. I’m not sure how long it takes but soon the spiked gates of the cemetery enter my view. I’m still clinging desperately to Simon’s hand, holding it as though it is all I have to stop me from collapsing and I suppose it is. My legs are already starting to protest, trying to send me the other way, trying to force me to turn around and go back. Go back to where it is safe, where you can feel all that pain, but can do nothing about it. But I don’t, instead I go into the cemetery, a rugged row of trees lining the entrance. I push past them, unable to look anywhere, but in front of me at the long, long rows of tombstones.

I knew where they were buried. After the second year at living at Julia’s the warden found out who I was and she told me that it was all alright, that lots of kids had lost their parents. I’d heard the story a dozen times; she said the same thing to each new orphan. I think she was trying to comfort them, but it was really no help at all. She tried to persuade me to go see their graves, but after half an hour of pestering and prodding and demanding she left. She came back the next day with a map, hand drawn, of course. She left it by my bed as though she believed that if I had a map I would go there. As if that was some sort of persuasion technique to make me want to go to a graveyard and see the graves of my parents. God the nerves of some people She was an idiot.

I look back at Simon, my eyes hollow. “This way.” I murmur, I’m not sure if he even hears me, but I push on, my hand slipping from his. The mud clings to my legs and I’m desperately trying not to look at the other graves, to see all the other names and no who has died and who hasn’t. I don’t want to read signs that say ‘beloved mother’ or ‘in loving memory’. Those were petty stupid little things that made no sense, but at least they told a story and everyone should leave with a story on their lips. I push forwards, my arms rising upwards and I cross them across my chest. Within seconds I’m shivering and each step I take closer to their graves is making my heart beat faster and my nerves feel as though they are going to give away any moment now. I can see them. I can see them and I want to look away. I halt. In front of me are two gravestones, and at the top of each is only two words “Aurora Ayres” and “Caleb Ayres”. That breaks my heart more than anything ever could, just their names, nothing else; it is as though they barely existed. I slip to my names in the dirt, mud sloshing up to touch my thighs, but I don’t care.

”I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry. I should have come before now, I should have been there, I should have stayed, but I ran and I ran and I left you two lying in your own blood, I shouldn’t have run away. I’m so sorry for what happened to you both, you didn’t deserve it. I-I-… I-” The next words are lost in a sob that rocks through my body. Tears fall down my cheeks and I don’t even bother to try and wipe them away. And the rain continues to fall, washing into my tears and I sob, my hands hanging limply by my sides as I stare lifelessly at the remains of my family that sits before me. And I’m lost, I’m lost in this downward spiral of misery and pain.

ooc – [ I am so sorry about this reply, oh gods idek what happened D: ]

And I was in the darkness,
So darkness I became,
The stars, the moon,
They have all been blown out,
You left me in the dark