WHEN YOU LOOSE SOMEONE, it tended to leave a hole.
It's was that day of drowning for her, it kept on coming, it was here again. That cold wash only She felt. Alison defiantly didn't want to get up. The idea of her thinking about moving increased her frustration, far too laziness to simply budge. And in that moment it took all the strength she had to make a good choice, to reach out for an oxygen tank and take a breath – that's her good mood music playlist. Standing on the brink of something she couldn't describe, the weight of everything seemed to press down on her slender shoulders, struggling to take even a single step forward. It was too much. All of it. And somehow, she kept moving. But every step cost her. The darkness grew darker; the pain grew sharper; all of it seemed to only grow in the strength and she pondered wondering if things could ever get better. To change even.
But she never uttered a word. Sometimes only left wondering if that smile- the horribly fake smile- is never seen through. If someone ever notices that sad, broken look in her eyes stared her everyday in the mirror. If they see beauty where she'd see ugliness. And then she'd laugh, a bitter, sarcastic laugh, at herself. Nobody cares. No one notices. They never seem too, do they? She'd fought for years. Just marching on-
"Alison!-" Her mother's voice boomed through the opposite side of the door, banging on it's wooden frame with her fist, "Hurry up, get up! You're gonna be late darlin." With that, her mother retreated, only the echos of fading steps could be heard.
She'd woke to the gentle pitter, patter of rain on her roof and thunder rumbling from far away. Pushing the blankets off, immediately feeling she'd lost much more than the warmth of sleep that began to slip away. Swing her feet over the side of her bed, sitting up, rubbing the crust from her eyes. She stood up, walking towards the window.
The glass was splattered with rain drops, as even more came down. Clouds swirled lightly above her house, their pale grey colour suggesting a long, mild storm. A stream of water came pouring from her neighbour's gutters, towards the stacked grass below. Before even getting dressed, She decided that she needed to take her umbrella to school with her today. School, even just thinking about it brought dread to her.
Sighing to herself, another day. It hasn't been twenty-four hours since his passing, the mourning had not run its course for her, but it seemed for her mom, she was past mourning, she was done, the coldness in her mothers eyes was too hard to ignore. Emily didn't quite understand when a person lost its mate, they'd said the pain would be unbearable to even be explain, she felt sorry for her mother.
Her mother and father were madly in love, but even knowing that the heaviness was in her limbs as much as her mothers mind. Things her mother found funny now only caused a deepening of pain. He should have been there to laugh with her, or at her, or just near her. He should be making his espressos in that damn expensive machine and complaint about the price of eggs. He should be gawping at pictures of fast cars and planning what to spend his future lottery winnings on. He should be gossiping about the people he worked with worse than an old women. But most of all he should have been there for her, hugging her till she felt alright. But he wasn't, she missed him. They both missed him.
This wasn't fair, yet since when was life ever fair? She thought, If it was fair, she wouldn't have to endure this... this pain that seemed to keep on sizzling, the things in her life that seemed to continue to go wrong. She just couldn't make it stop, it never ended she wanted it to stop, yet she didn't know how to make it stop. Was there a button she could press? A switch she could flick off? Dragging Herself to get ready for school, a place that seemed like hell to her, for people like her barely survived high school, in terms of what category she fitted in too, she was simply a nobody. Invisible.
Some feared clowns, some of heights or falling. But she wasn't scared of any of that- not spiders, not snakes, or the dark. What scared her the most was having to face everyone each day, who seem to make life heller then it already was. It's was suffocating.
Ever now and then once she focus on my breathing. She died. If she could be a different person, she promised you she would. Till every second of everyday She found herself trying to outrun her anxiety. Just so fucking exhausting, she didn't build this system? She can't fuck something up if she never built it? She once felt that home actually felt like home now it felt so foreign, uncomfortable. It's wasn't the same.
People say, "New chapter, new life". Though this new chapter in her life, is not what she'd wanted or wished for, or even asked for but it'd seem fate was so generous lately...
She'd picked up her bag, heading towards the stairs. Leaving her room the way it always look, messy and unorganised. The exhaustion never seem to falter. She felt numb and too jaded to care what it looked like.
The stairs were slapped against the clipboard wallpaper as if they were an afterthought. They fell too close to the entrance and were uncommonly narrow, the rail was simply a plank of wood supported by three mean spindles.
It looked for all the world that it would come crashing down with even the weight of a child, yet it must have been there thirty years or more. It was hard to tell the original colour of the carpet, likely it was once beige but now it was closer to a muddy slate.
Breathing deeply as she placed even a slight bit of her weight on the highest step, keeping her hands clear away from the the rail. The squeak did not surprise her in the slightest but it was immediate and loud, if there was anyone downstairs they now knew where she was. After freezing to listen for a few minutes, beginning to ascend again the advice of her anxiety.
"Allison? Honey what are you doing just standing there?" She sounded concerned, confusion contorted her facial features. Worried about her daughters health now more than ever, she knew Alison was close to her father, and this has definitely cause a heartache in her.
"Nothing mom"She whispered, walking down the rest of the steps in a hurried movement.
"Okey then? You ready to head out?" She questioned, Her mother was punctual when it came to getting this done on time, schedules were her things. Some might call her controlling but Alison didn't mind her mother's controlling tendencies, it was how she copped with everything. Her descending body walking out the front door, leaving no room for a response. With a heavy sigh Alison followed.
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GRAYSON DRIFTED INTO CONSCIOUSNESS, and then back out. The world was a blur, and random images seemed to float aimlessly around in the pool of his thoughts, as though they were being blown about viciously by a hurricane. A hand on his shoulder momentarily bring him back to reality, but after a second he was once again lost. He could feel somebody trying to look at him, staring dead in the eye, but he couldn't keep focus. The whole world simply felt low resolution, a bad quality movie. Confusion blossomed in his heart and he knew that sooner or later he would need to wake up. To stare reality in the face. But for now he sat in his uncomfortable chair, hands tied behind him, his heavy head retreating into a wallowing blackness.
This feeling felted too familiar, he'd been in this state before. Marcel had created this liquid just for him, for sedation and to invoke punishment for his miss behaviour. That rising feeling of nausea from his stomach all too familiar, weakened by a crushing pain that kept on prodding him from within. It was always the same, a crushing pain just in one side of his head that came and went in a pattern. Pounding, throbbing, like toothache in your brain, right between his eyes. A migraine, a visual disturbances, deliberately soaring each passing second.
Throbbing pierced his mind, never ending. The pain felt like someone had taken a knife to his skull. Like one of knifes that made a satisfying squish as the tip if the blade sank deep enough to make any victim scream in agony. But this feeling Grayson felt was far too familiar to forget, he never scream but just tried to accept it. Squeezing his eyes shut, willing the pain to go away, begging his body to heal faster, but that knife stayed, twisting at the tip as it went deeper and deeper into the skin as it tore apart the muscles and nerves, gauging them out. Then without warning, Grayson jerked unable to bare the pain any longer, he could see it in his mind, feel it too strongly just like a knife would go in pushing against his broken skin. His cry was brilliant sound , guttural chokes mixed with agonising roars. He gave in, couldn't help but react to the pain he felt.
The rest of the world became detached, all he could concentrate on was the pain that was rooted deep inside his head. He became undone, truly at the poison's mercy. That great desire to drown it out burned, ached his soul, but he failed miserably. Barely could even grasp the chattering of people around him. All he felt, all he knew was the pain. Pain. Pain. Pain. Just pain, only pain, a pain that kept pulsating, vandalising his body and he could feel the cold, it was getting cold. Painfully cold.
The poison that raced through his veins, that poison he was so strongly trying to fight off, from consuming his insides into becoming nothing but gush. He knew this poison was made to mimic an efficient viruses, to spread illness rather than kill the host fast. It made the host aggressively ill, just until it broke them completely, stripping the host of its strength. It felt like you were decay, rotting. A few drops here and there and the decay set in, a sort of race to the bottom, survival of the nastiest. Every single surge of pain pulsated in his veins, spreading and consuming and killing off every living cell in his body. Breaking them. It was created that way, it lasted hours. Days even, depending on how strong its host was.
But Grayson had come to his limit, he had gone through this far too many times and the strength he thought he had, no longer existed. He was weak, too weak to even do anything. He remembered the last time he'd been given this, He almost died from it. His fittest punishment, a cruel and sickening punishment for someone who was most hated in this world, your own body attacking itself. It's the greatest punishment for a person like him.
The poison had three stages it went through before its release of its host. He had just gonna through stage one, he was about the etch into stage two. The hours ticked away, passing him by slowly and painfully. He awaited it do be done, for it to finally be over, finish. Blood seeped out of his pores, oozing just like sweat. An unpleasant sight to see, but it was more unpleasant to endure. His skin felt hot and sore, like it'd been scratched over and over again, for only to feel the rawness left on his skin as if it had peeled off. Pain came in like a hurricane, breaking him piece by piece slowly. Breaking something that was already in pieces. How can you break something that was already broken? He thought, another surge of pain flow through him.
He kept on drifting in and out of consciousness, grasping only glimpses of her. Emily stared, she stood still in horror, unable to move. How was this possible? This was far too insane... She was too focused on him, blood gushing out from his pores until there was nothing left. She was unable to tear her eyes away, nobody around her was, they never saw something like the before. The blood kept flowing out never once stopping. Not until there was nothing left to oozing out, just like squeezing a lemon dry. He was the lemon. The lemon that kept loosing its juice.
"What the hell have you created Emily?" Someone whispered, but Grayson was too consumed in the pain to even register their faces. How the past has a way of repeating, something he wished he never had to experience again, Oh how wrong he was, his laughter within his own mind snickered out of pure irony. Pure hate.
"I don't even know..." Horror was visible in her tone, he was trying to stay awake, just to grasp he they were? But he was dragged back into darkness once again, No! he shout within his mind but his body never listened, his body was no longer his.
"At this rate he will bleed out..." He heard another speaking. He'd heard that voice once before, Who were they? How many were they? He searched frantically when he got the chance but his vision was far too blurry to even register their faces, they were simply blurry blobs to him.
But he kept endlessly researching, to simply focus his vision. But for what? To just see their faces? Why? He failed every time, every single time he tired he'd kept failing, the lack of control felt infuriating, why was he always at the wrong receiving end of a situation? Constantly being poked and prodded, his head hung low out of exhaustion, dangling. His strength slowly evaporating with passing seconds, minutes until he couldn't feel anymore. He didn't feel strong. He never felt strong enough. Why aren't you strong?! He screamed within his own mind, too weak to speak.
As he awaited for the pain to simmer down, times like this made him wonder if there was anything left for Fate to throw at him? If there was anything more to life than this? Probably there was, most likely he thought but it killed him inside to know that fate was never on his side. For Fate had pushed him to his limit. He couldn't take anymore, he had nothing left to live for. Ashamed.
Death felt like a dream to him...it seemed that no matter what he did, how fast he ran, it never ended. For he had feared death before, was too scared to die but he now saw that it was a way out, way to freedom. The freedom he so desperately wanted, needed and craved for so long. He had long for this freedom since the first time he had taken his first breath in this world.
It kept calling him. Death, a sweet sweet escape. His sweet escape. Fate was shattering him like glass, breaking him piece by piece. He'd done this all before, it always ended in pain and suffering. It truly was a curse. Consciousness bring him back to reality, a reality he no longer wanted, he longer wanted to live. To breath one more breathe of life. Awaiting, letting go of everything.
"Make it end..." A ghost of a whisper escaped his lips, begging for it to end.
"No." He thought no one had heard him but turned out she heard him. She'd caused this, Emily's guilt seethed through her but he had murdered her brother, how could he ask such a thing? To end his suffering? He had no right! For he had caused her pain and mourning. For her niece to be fatherless and her sister in law to be left in anguish, to feel the loss of her own mate for the rest boy her life. Her cries echoed within Emily's mind, premaritally living there, never leaving. Her screeching cries stained the borders of her brain. They defiantly didn't deserve this. They were innocent. She had taken upon herself to make him suffer just a little bit longer, punishing him for his sins, for what he had done to her family. But the guilt she felt didn't die down, it only became more evident, too prominent to ignore. But she kept telling herself that he deserved this! Lair... She couldn't think about that now, she had more pressing matters to concentrate right now than worrying about whether or not it felt wrong or was wrong.
Glancing at Grayson, he actually looked terrible, no one should have to go through this, and yet she was the cause of his state. Stop it! she screamed at he self, scolding at her own weakness. He deserved it. His pores oozed blood. His once perfected features now looks too disturbing to even look at, a sense pf nausea surged within the pit of her stomach. She gone too far this time, but so had he. The guilt never withered but only consumed her further. She'd felt his pain before, practically lived it when she'd been within his mind. Grasping glimpses but still even those were far too painful, a pain she'd never felt before-
"Emily his not breathing anymore- Stop this!" King Gabriel commanded, Couldn't he see it, the similarities they obtained. Her kings command drew her out of her dazed stated. Questions still unanswered, so this was what it was like for Grayson she thought, to be left wondering. Diverting her attention back at Grayson that had suddenly gone far too still, too still be accounted as alive. No! This wasn't supposed to happen, she didn't see this before, the poison wasn't supposed to be deadly, it was used as a form of punishment. She couldn't let him die. She knew if King Gabriel knew the truth, he would have her head. Even though she had tried several times, to tell him but he never seemed to want to listen.
Death is permanent. Death is forever. Death was when the spark in the eyes was extinguished, yet unlike fire was utterly without smoke. He couldn't die from this? He had gone through this before, surely he can't die from it? Emily franticly ran to his side, he hunched over in his chair, where his arms were bound, unmoving. Silent, before he had made sound and even had spoken but now he wasn't even moving, his chest wasn't moving up and down. To see him dead was to die herself.
"Grayson!" Grasping his face in her hands, blood staining the softness of her hands. His eyes remained closed. He was dead.
"No don't you dare!" She shouting as if he could hear her, but his distant soul had suddenly given up on fighting. Emily crouched right in front of him, taking one off her hands away from his face, laying it over his still chest, He was gone. As she held his face in her hand, cold and pale, her mind struggled to stay in that moment, struggled to believe she had killed him. No... echoing in her mind, not believing what she was seeing. He...can't be?... What had... she done? This wasn't supposed to happen? None of this should have, her brothers death, Grayson's. How did this go so horribly wrong so quickly?