strobe ☆ ( luke hemmings )

☆ preface ☆

Dark, glossy eyes. They very much resembled tiny marbles, like the ones grandma and I used to play with when the power went out. They looked out of place under the small bundle of still skin.

Kids stood around me in horror, the brightly decorated room contrasting harshly against the ever-so colorless sky seen through the plexiglass of Miss C's Day School.

"She killed it! Miss Caroline, Beatrice killed Perseus!"

The small girl who spoke was named...Rebecca, I think? She was my best friend, at the time being.

I remember feeling terrified for the small hamster that lay at my feet, it's little exterior crumbled by my violin.

Except, I wasn't the one who killed the creature.

The little red-headed girl next to Rebecca, I couldn't remember her name now if my life depended on it, had the blood of the small creature smudged on her hands. They sat folded behind her back, of course, and on the edge of my rustic violin laid small smears of reddish liquid: no doubt in the shape of little red-headed-girl fingers.

Every child in the room backed away, forming an odd semicircle of punishment. It was cultish, now that I think back on it.

"I saw it myself! Percy came scurrying over her table, and she smushed him! She did it on purpose!"

My little 3rd-grader hands were trembling as I stared at my friends, the betrayal not quite penetrating the layer of cortisone surrounding my brain. I used to love that hamster.

"But...I didn't do it!-"

"Beatrice Castain, do not lie." The teacher spoke calmly. I always could tell she really wanted to believe me right then.

Standing there, surrounded by malicious looks and false accusations, all the bridges connecting me from everyone crumbled slowly. My vision was black and white. My hands stopped shaking.

Loneliness consumed me in that moment.

"You're all fakes."

The class stood silent again as I glanced up, my composure regained.

"Just like my Dad. Just like my Grandma. Just like the doctors..."

I picked up the small hamster in my cold hands, stuffing my small violin in the crook of my arm as I spoke more names. With every person that slid off my tongue, tears did too. And after that, tears never came again.

I don't know how many days after that I stood outside, staring at the small box I had yet to bury in my grandmother's backyard. I could see her, watching me from the corner patio window.

Nothing was the same after those days.