What if your favorite characters needed your help?
Sunset has always been in love with books, although after the death of her mother, she has stopped believing in happy endings. When she starts working in a library located at the basement of Stard...
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Time, Twins, and Trash Bins on Fire
- One Month Later -
Screw whoever claimed that time has the capacity to heal. There are some scars that not even time can erase. I close my copy of After and I let my forehead rest against the cold front cover.
I take a deep breath, sniffing the book scent from it. Then, I sit up.
I open the book with my eyes pinched shut.
I wait.
Nothing happens. No one materializes.
A loud grumble escapes my lips, and I impatiently scan through the pages until my fingers stumble upon the selfie that Tessa took of us at Harry Styles' concert.
See? Time doesn't do shit. It just hurts so much to look at this. It's just that, I'll never see them again, and that breaks me a little every second that passes. I think I lost my heart that day, and I will never get it back. Looking at this picture hurts so much. Still, I will treasure it forever. It reminds me that everything that happened was real.
Going to university helps. And since fiction feels like a prision to me, I started dwelling in books filled with facts and theories. Cold, real facts don't hurt. Literary theory has helped me understand the twisted nature embedded in human nature. We don't write, we vomit feelings in the shape of words and commas, and the poor characters just juggle with the things we give them.
I let the picture on my bed. Then, I grab the copy of Pride and Prejudice that belonged to my mom, and I sit criss-cross on the carpeted floor of my bedroom. My black Vans overlap one over the other. I look at all the tape and staples this poor copy has; they are reminders of Jason's doings and me trying to fix them up. It's like from the very beginning I have been trying to fix books-literally. Fix Hardin. Fix Tessa. Fix Katniss. Fix Darcy. Change their stories. Make them better. Help them escape. Who was I kidding?
And they are still trapped in there. There is no way of changing the story now.
I burn the edges of the book and I watch as the corners of the thin pages recoil and fade into nothingness.
I guess this is what death feels like. You slowly desintengrate and just stop existing-and you just stop feeling so much.
Once I see the flames taking control of the book, I throw it into the can where the ashes of The Hunger Games and After lie.
It just hurts too much to read them. It's like I am forcing them to re-live their stories by reading them. So I promised myself not to read them again. They don't deserve that. No one deserves to be stuck in chapter one for eternity. I am certain that these copies bear no charm, so I know I am not hurting them at all.
