LOVE BONE [H.S. AU]

P R O L O G U E

tw: death:)

They meant well. Really, they did.

They had good intentions when they set out to find who did this to me and the others.

They were angry and scared, and television told them that a group of teenagers could solve crime, so why couldn't a group of twenty-somethings?

Sure, they didn't have the talking dog and they weren't slaying vampires, but they were meddling "kids" and they were determined to defeat the monster nonetheless.

It's a shame how that turned out.

Part of me has to wonder, was it outrage at the murders that sparked this desire for justice, or was it just the fear for their own lives.

Did my life actually matter to them?

Do they even know my name?

Were they in the woods that night searching for me, shouting for me while I laid there? Or were they too busy fucking each other in someone's basement?

Did they go to my candlelight vigil at gas works park and weep for me beside my mother and my siblings? Or were they getting high downtown before a night out?

Will they keep looking? Will life move on for them now that the monster has been revealed?

Will they find my body where it lies in pieces, buried beneath the leaves and dirt?

Will the infamous Seattle rain wash me clean enough to catch their eye?

Will they even be looking?

Or will they pick up the pieces of their lives, mangled and broken like my body, and leave me behind?

Will they mend themselves enough to chase their dreams?

They used to be so vibrant, so full of noise and chaos and love. I wanted to be just like them.

They were root beer sucker kisses, cherry slushies at 2 am, motorcycle rides to the troll, Nirvana through a megaphone, scratched records on repeat, gas station piercings, the spice girls but better, 400 packs of cigarettes, used condoms in the dressing rooms, bottles of bleach, sandy cheeks, nights spent in the back of the van, duck rides, and air guitar solos blaring from the back of a Toyota.

They were the group that you envied when you walked into a room. They were the couple that made you want to be in love. They were neon bright and just as hot, and God, I wish they were invincible.

Will they return to their smokey rooms full of screaming people, begging for an escape from reality?

The crowds so desperate to feel something other than their anxieties that they thrash their bodies around in pits and lose themselves in the sweat and screams of the strangers around them.

I used to be in those crowds.

That's the last place I ever felt alive.

Will they write songs about us? The forgotten ones? The bodies they didn't find, the families that don't have answers?

The missing.

Will the living relate to the feeling? Will the living take their words and make them their own anthem for the underdog, forgotten by a cruel world?

Maybe they'll live out their dreams and travel the world and some part of them will forget this time, this year from hell where they fought and found the devil in the flesh.

Maybe they'll drift apart, only call each other every couple of years to catch up.

It's more than I can do.

I won't be living out any dreams or making any more memories because someone took that from me. Someone took me from that smokey room with blinding lights and dripping sweat and they took away my life.

In a split second, I no longer existed. 22 years was all I got.

Me and 16 others. All gone before our 25th birthday.

No more cigarettes on the curb, no more visits to the space needle, no more sex in public bathrooms, no more dancing in the rain, no more hugs from my sister or worried looks from my father when my shorts were too short.

Hate to break it to you Daddy, but the devil didn't care how short my shorts were.

They really meant well, but I can't help but think that they maybe should have minded their own fucking business.

Maybe there would be a few less bodies buried beside me had they not made the devil angry.

All this talk about the future is really bumming me out, and to be honest I'm kind of jumping the gun a bit aren't I?

Oops. Gun. Too soon? Oh well.

I'll leave you with my final thoughts and let you learn the story for yourself.

Do you think it'll have a happy ending? I suppose that's hard to say.

They meant well, they really did, and in the end I suppose they got a form of justice. The brash, impatient kind that doesn't get many questions answered, but justice nonetheless.

I'd like to greet the devil in hell someday. Smile at that face that lured me from my own personal nirvana, my own heaven on earth, and slice open the body that killed me.

I don't know if I believe in heaven or hell, maybe I'll come back as something new. You don't care what the hell I believe in, you're not even here for me.

You don't even know my name.

But, maybe I'm already something new.

Maybe I'm the wind or a fat house cat in a window in New York City, or a butterfly that's going to die all over again in two weeks.

Maybe none of it fucking matters cause I'm already dead.

"Total peace after death, becoming someone else, is the best chance I've got."

-Kurt Cobain.