✓ DYING MOURNINGS, original

six : buried

┌─────━┿──┿━─────┐

𝐒𝐈𝐗 : 𝐁𝐔𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐃

└─────━┿──┿━─────┘

The trees swayed, back and forth, fighting with stubbornness against the force of wind. Their trunks moved and bended, slanting against the weather bubbling in the air. The leaves were flipped, showing their pale underbellies, indicating that it would rain and soon. Their forest green complexion vibrating against pallor, the darkness, the unnerving lack of blue.

The sky was a darkening gray, clouds billowing and moving through the air like the world was tilting. I imagined myself moving with it, as if someone had a hand on a globe and was spinning and spinning it until they couldn't see anything but colors.

The air was thick and heavy, a silent chill brushing over cheeks and hands and exposed limbs. Weather here never seemed to differ, we always got the same. Time and time again, the rain and clouds would come in like a husband returning from work after a long day. Predictable and loving and at times, distant.

I listened to the soft rustle and rumble of the wind that grew from the distance, inching closer and closer until the sound was right on top of me and whipping my hair around my head like a brown haze.

On my way out the door this morning, Amy had called out after me with an unfamiliar, "Make sure to drive carefully."

The morning had been fine, nothing to worry about. But her comment sent me into a frenzy of curiosity. She had returned home way past midnight and I awoke the front door closing harshly and laid there in my bed, still and listening. I'd heard her stumbling, as if drunk, and even swore to hear her speaking to someone on the phone.

Hushed whispers of complaints and plans and secrets.

"No, she doesn't know-"

"How am I supposed to know?"

"Only food here is pizza and milk, you could've given me more money."

"I'll do it."

"He wasn't there, talked to everyone-yes, yes, I know-okay, I'll send him her way."

It had left me with an unsettled feeling in my gut, warning me to get her out of my house. To keep myself far from her for as long as I could, until I found out what she was planning. Or if she even worked for John at all. And her comment this morning, her persistence in making me hear what she was saying, left me nervous.

I went about my day as usual once arriving at school. Classes, break, class, lunch, more classes. I focused as much as I could but Amy's comment and her conversation last night made my body tense, my skin prickling. Something was wrong and I could feel it like a vibration.

When I was younger, I would get this same pit in my stomach like when I knew Cage's favorite sports team was going to lose, or when the clouds would get all dark and heavy before a big storm. It was the same feeling now, that something awful was going to happen and it was going to happen to me.

As I left school with the final bell ringing, I ran into an eager Blondie. I tried not to be confused by her enormous grin as she approached, but it was hard to do so when she mostly ever gave me scowls and glares. Sure, we'd been getting closer but I wasn't used to this side of her.