Asterisk*

Dismay and Distress*

*With no clue as how to be anywhere but pain in the depths of darkness

Sometimes I dream of falling into a pit.

What it's filled of,

I do not yet know.

But outside it, I flutter away from my soul,

Trying to convince myself to wake up from this horrible dream.

Right then, it seemed like a dream,

Now it seems like I'm falling.

Marcus 

Everybody around me was in shambles. I couldn't imagine what was going on in everyone's mind, or even my own, to be honest. It's a thought I think I avoid, but instead spend the entire day thinking about how I wouldn't think about it. So naturally, I've worked out fourteen different band-aid like solutions that would neither help or fix the gaping bullet hole of a wound I've made for myself. All of it was my fault. Maybe I deserved it, maybe I didn't. I couldn't decide that for myself. I only know one thing; in a world full of flowers, I had come as lighting. In a short span, I destroyed it all.

After an hour of just sitting soaked in the forest, I went home, much to my parent's surprise. I had told them I was going to be sleeping over at Aiden's. They didn't ask about all the leaves and why I had mud on my clothes, which I was grateful for. I took a shower and went to sleep without saying anything. I ate breakfast the next day while trying to say the least amount of words that I could. I did it again for another day. Then, I left.

I stared at Apollo's number on the screen for a good twenty minutes. Not because I didn't know it, or I was thinking of what to say. I knew I wasn't going to call him. I just wanted to look at it to know that if I really wanted to, I could call him. To convince myself that he was still there. But in my mind, I could already envision him slipping away. I see this life that he would live, the one he could live, and I can't see it with me there with him. The thing was though, is that I couldn't see mine without him. At the end of it all, the growth I had done to grow to stop thinking about the future all went out the door as I did what I knew how to do best. Disappear.

It was a common occurrence. I felt so invisible all the time at home. Whenever large family gatherings or anything of the sort would happen, I would simply pretend I wasn't there. For the most part, it would work. Now, it wasn't working and I didn't have the slightest inkling on what to do. It was destroying me. All of it.

Kadance's parents had basically gone insane, which was expected of them. It's like who wouldn't, right? His mom had gone through so many cigarettes that she drove an hour to go to a twenty four hour store in the middle of the night when she ran out. His father spent the day reading the paper copy of the newspaper that he hadn't touched in years, looking for any clues to the whereabouts of Kadance. His grandma had gone through his room looking for some clues, but it had now been so messed up that you couldn't even tell that it had been someone's room once upon a time. I don't really know what Aiden's doing. My first thought was that he was getting drunk somewhere, but I don't think he would do that again. I know his parents are on his throat to stay at home with them for a while so he doesn't go insane like the rest of us have. I think he's more scared of them than he is of pain. My parents were acting like any concerned neighbor would. But through it all, I don't really think they understood. They called me the other day. They tried. But they believed me when I said I was fine, which I'm not even sure I could believe. And I- well, I was in a state of some of the most horrendous feelings I had ever felt in my life. Because really, it was my fucking fault.