C'est la vie!

Chapter 12🥀

"Keep walking, Raine," a familiar voice behind me. I turned immediately.

It was my younger brother!

He was not lying in a wooden receptacle with eyes shut. He was right in front of me, with wide opened eyes that had life in them.

"Y-y-you are here?" I stuttered.

"I've always been here, Raine."

I knew this was a dream. I've had one too many to discern the state of unreality.

"Are you okay?" I cried, exploring his body for the lacerations, yet I could not descry any. He was the image of the person he had been before the mishappening. His shirt unsoiled; not one odd stain of blood defiling it.

This was the first time I was dreaming of my brother in the state he had been before the incident.

I stood in awe as he began to walk past me.

"Where are we going?"

"It doesn't matter. As long as we're going." He responded. "It's okay to look back, Raine. But when you keep looking at the past, you wouldn't be able to see what's ahead of you and face it."

Jolts spike through me, realising my brother was now a metaphor of the past.

I desired for his image to sink into my memory one last time. For his smile and glorious image to replace the ghastful one's I saw at night.

He turned again, probably to check up on me, and I was spontaneously hit with another one of the horrendous images.

His face suddenly out of its perfection; darkening with blood that trickled slowly down his face and filled him.

He groaned and dropped lifelessly to the ground.

Maybe if this one time I could help him... maybe, I would wake up and my whole life since the past months would be a lie.

I hurried to him, cupping his face. The cruel smell of blood filling my nostrils. Quaking and feeing utterly helpless, I endeavoured to moping out the gore.

But with each wipe, the scars drew themselves back on his skin. One could not recognise him under the mask of his demise; a completely marred guise.

The grounds of life began to expand, separating me from my brother. And no matter how hard I clung unto his shirt, life did not care about me or the plans I had.

This was my new world of dystopia.

I woke up, dreading this day with all my heart. But still getting dressed in the black jeans and top. I met Max in the car, not bothering to give him or Sharon as much as a dart.

The drive was silent as I focused on what was ahead, and not the dream.

Today was the day we visited our former home, making sure to pack everything out for whatever plan Max had in mind. Whatever stupid plan that had us waking up as early as four A.M with loading trucks behind us.

The house came into view. I felt nothing but the emptiness inside me.

We got out of the car, and in a blurry moment, we were ambling into the residence that no longer felt like a home.

The living room- A room extensively furnished, yet as baren as a desert. Like a black hole that sucked the life out of this place.

The portrait on the wall, serving its purpose by being the first thing that would catch a guest's eyes. I was a guest today. Because I didn't walk pass the familiar image.

It looked new to me today. New faces; one that I had seen a very long time ago.

I held the frame, wishing this photograph was a mirror that was reflecting the people standing by me. But in the state of things that actually exists, I was standing alone with only the reduction of reality in hand.