Wonderland | H.S.

Chapter Five

I've written many chapters in my day.

But this one?

Oh, this one's the winner.

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Red, Part Two

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No Perspective | Not Wonderland

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Levi had a way with words, didn't he?

The author drew his tongue like an artist sketched molten lines—collected in his disposition, blasé to the surrounding world. Always knew what words to say, that one. When to voice the words aloud. When to bite his tongue.

Though, he struggled with the last one very much.

The street was empty, void of the five people standing as the sentence morphed into an elephant. Stepping on Presley's erratic breathing, shattering Cade's inhaler, and sending Harry down a rabbit-hole of confusion, Levi Smith stood with his hands in his pockets.

Careless to the world. Indifferent to the sheer power in one sentence. Oh, but Leviticus Smith knew how powerful one sentence could be.

He was an author.

"Keep with this snail pace, though, and you'll make it about six blocks," Levi noted the stagnant humans. "Five, if you're lucky."

Dangling off his lip was a rolled cigarette, rustic smoke dragging from the end and up into the world overhead. In her ears, Presley could hear the pounding putters of her heart. Boom, boom-boom, further into her brain, where the confusion rest peacefully.

Cade's legs moved against him as he stepped back, studying his strolling friend. "You know where she lives?"

Levi held the redhead's vacant stare. Nothing behind the crystal blue except fear. "That's a loaded question, Caden," he purred. "Care to specify?"

Never understood how to assess serious situations, did he?

Cade looked back at Presley. Her unfamiliar yet comfortable eyes were more circular than the sun he worshiped. "Lev," he repeated, turning back to his friend. "How do you know where she lives?"

Levi shrugged, flicking the metallic switch of the lighter. "Don't know where she lives at all, but nothing's in that direction," he nodded down the road. "Nothin' but open road, a bland-ass forest, and that fucked lake." He cringed at the body of water, wincing slightly from the fond memories. "Boy, do I fuckin' hate that goddamn lake."

Haunted by the ghosts of love, the Cozen Lake held stories few could share.

For the water glistened in alluring magic, stars of adoration pleasing through the hollowed creek. A rumored, speculated, and avoided lake. Spoken to be mere folklore, an entertaining bed-time story used to manufacture children's imaginations.

Ryder scoffed under his breath, readjusting the phone in his hand. "You hate everything, Leviticus."

Noted. Nobody other than Ryder called Levi by his full name. Harry, occasionally, but the curly-headed forgetful fool still feared him. "There's genuinely not one thing I could name that you actually like."

He liked his friends. He feared the lake.

Again, Levi would do anything. Anything. Anything and more to rework his shitty world, mold the people in his life to love him. He feared being hated almost as much as Harry feared losing love.