BLACKOUT

Chapter 9- reminding her

Sometimes I wonder if it's really me behind this. If I actually am controlling it. No. It can't be? I don't feel it. I can't feel my legs and arms moving;my face. I still feel guilty and ashamed of myself. Maybe I do deserve what's happening? How? I can't control it. I'm stuck still, imprisoned in this moment. Like I'm paralysed. I can't see and I can only hear my own screams for help. I feel as if I'm my own victim. I wake up, and I'm suddenly the guilty one. People around me, screaming and crying and yelling for help. "You're a monster!" "Call the police!" "We'll have you dead in no time!" The panicking voices surround me. Is it going to be this way forever? Will there be a... cure? I start to drown in my own thoughts, it's like a sea of questions but no land of answers is to be seen. I ask myself, what's wrong with me?
"Panic, what's it like being in highschool?" Ghost asks me as we walk through to the gates of the school.
"Oh? Highschool? Well let me tell you, there's so much to do everyday! You can never get bored. You have so many opportunities on what to study. The only downgrade is exams and studying. It can be very tiring as a year twelve student but I guess I'm doing pretty well with my studies. I mean, I'm getting good grades! If a teacher picks on you, don't let them get to you okay?"
"Okay! High school sounds exciting!" Ghost yelps.
Sometimes I worry how the teachers will treat my brothers and sisters when they grow up considering I have such a bad reputation. Most of them have teachers I have never had before so that's good. Karma, the second oldest, is studying year 10, Kaos is studying year 7, Ghost is studying year 4 and Spirit is finishing kindergarten this year.
As I was getting my books out of my locker, a brown and yellow cat with blue eyes slammed right next me into another person's locker. Her friends and boyfriend were also there.
"Panic! Long time no see!" She said,
I turn around, rolling my eyes.
"What do you want now, Citrus."
"I heard about what happened yesterday." She said, curling her fluffs.
"Magenta fai-"
"Yeah yeah okay whatever."
"Well, excuse me!"
"What? awww, did I cut you off? Silly me... what are you gonna do now? Cry? Aww go cry somewhere else little pussy cat!" I say.
"I'll beat yo ass!" Trent says.
"Hahaha birdies like you think you can defeat us candiae? Go back to history class mate." Chrissie says coming behind me.
"Whatever nerd. You keep studying and kissing the teacher's ass." Citrus laughs, walking away with her friends.
Me and Chrissie both fist bump.
"Got 'em'" We say at the same time.
After a few classes it's recess time.
I decided to walk through the school with my friends as we ate our lunch.
The school was very close to a rainforest, the Karglia great rainforest so there were lots of fern trees and other beautiful green plants around. The school was built very modern so most of the buildings were dark grey with bright coloured architecture on them consisting of reds and blues. There were quite a few bridges in the school. About two that went over ponds and three that went across to other buildings. The visual arts and performing arts areas had a bridge connecting. One from the office to the homerooms and one connecting to Scarlett university. The schools are near the centre of the city of Scarlett meaning it's quite close to Karglia castle. Looking outside of the school you can always see the bustling streets full of people shopping, going to work. The school was right next to Scarlett central shopping centre so usually after school we would go shopping with friends.
Although I live in a small house right next to the city, we take the train over the Karglia bridge, which goes over the beach. It's a beautiful view but when it's almost sunset the sun goes right in your eyes.
"I love the buildings of this school, wow." I say.
"You do?" Magenta says.
"Yeah!?"
"Did you know I made that little bench and table over there?
He pointed to a round table with a black ledge and a marble stone top with marble chairs.
"Wait, really?" Callie says.
"Yeah! It was an assignment for our technology class. For the year 12 students wanting to have a technology career."
"What do you want to be Magenta?" Sunset asks.
"I would LOVE to work for the technology group in the SKF though, I don't think that would happen since the king hates me so, an alternative would be a programmer or a good hacker. Even a robotics designer! I'm pretty good at hacking already." He says.
"Remember that one time you wanted to show me your hacking skills so you downloaded a VIRUS on my computer and I totally freaked out but then you fixed it? That was not funny!" Quill says.
"That was so funny." Magenta laughed.
"No it wasn't!" Quill says as everyone laughs.
"But anyways, yeah if this problem wears off maybe I could have a chance?" Magenta says.
"Oh Boy, that won't be happening any time soon!" Miss Trie laughs behind us.
"Boy, you must be out of your mind! With a reputation like that, it'll get you nowhere."
'Miss Trie? What are your talents? What can YOU do?" I ask.
"Oh well I can um... I can teach? I'm working with young people, like you." She says.
"Would you name your talent... successful?"
"Well...it wasn't what I really wanted and wasn't my first choice but I am doing quite well? What's it to you? You think I am not successful? I haven't seen one part of you being successful Panic!" She laughs.
"Oh yeah? Well, this says different."
I show her a video of me dancing, having over 500,000 views and likes on it.
"Oh well I-"
"Although most of the comments are hate comments, the king commented too!"
"Wow?!" He commented.
"Yeah!" Miss Trie laughs. "Wow?! This is the worst dance I've ever seen Panic. Is what he meant."
"Uh... No." I say.
She then snatches my phone off me.
"Why do you even have your phone on you? You know you're not supposed to have it!"
She then proceeds to go through my messages between me and the others.
I rarely text my friends because the teachers actually have to go through me and Magenta's texts because they claimed that me and Magenta's killings four years ago were 'Planned by texts' when they weren't planned at all. That's why I stick with the more 'social' techniques of talking with friends. At school,meeting up,video/audio calling or using the special ability to communicate through mind with Magenta.
"Miss Trie was being a total-" Miss Trie says, reading the comment Magenta made. All of us liked the comment.
She was furious.
"I was being a total what?!" She screams, turning to face our way.
"Uh... I'm sorry Miss Tr-" Magenta says.
"No! Oh boy is the principal gonna hear about this!"
I then turn around to see Chrissie and the others behind me with shocked looks on their faces.
"Welp, we're fucked."
We sped to our secret hiding spot as fast as we could. It was right at the bottom of the school.
"Well great. In trouble again." Callie says.
"Yeah... I think they're not gonna go for y'all cats and deers but us Canidae and Magenta..." Chrissie says.
"Time to be treated like a savage, predatory animal again. Great. We love to be chained to the damn table." I say.
"Hey losers, there's an announcement for you. The teachers are looking for you guys. Better hurry! Don't wanna be doing y'know what again?" Citrus says, coming past us.
"What does she mean by 'y'know what?'" Chrissie asks.
"Milk and egg duty." Magenta says.
"The fuck is that?" Callie says.
"It's really bad. Just saying. You sure you wanna know?" I say.
"Yeah?"
"We gotta collect the eggs and the milks from the cow and chicken ladies who produce it. It's really gross because it's always so messy."
"Ew."
"You guys might wanna get up now, Dad's Coming." Citrus said.
Citrus is Lemon's twin sister which makes Mr Crowelle their father. They also have a sister a year older than them named Sherbert. Although they're cats and he's a pig, they're still his biological children. Their mother is also a cat. They just didn't get any pig or male kids, instead, they got a set of twins and a girl.
We all get up.
"And no Mr Crowelle, it wasn't just Magenta. It says here that Chrissie,Panic,Drake,Sunset and Callie also liked the message." Miss Trie says coming around the corner.
"Well of course. We knew we'd find you in this spot again. Did you really think you could hide from this?" Mr Rickley says.
"Quill, Telescope, Coorey,Claw and Ramen were not in the chats, Mr Crowelle." Miss Trie says
"Could you five please leave? We need to talk to your other friends, especially Magenta."
The others leave and the teachers look very frustrated.
I could hear Magenta pray through his head. He was frightened. Sunset was shaking intensely. Callie looked completely fine, so did Drake. Chrissie looked guilty and me? I was horrified.
"Sunset,Chrissie,Callie and Drake. You know better than this." Mr Crowelle says.
"And as for you two, just as what I expect from people like you. Who knows what else you could be saying about your teachers. We teach you, and this is how you treat us?"
Mr Rickley is going through my phone, looking at voice recordings. Luckily, I have a very useful voice recording for them all to listen to.
All the text really said was "Miss Trie was being a total meanie." Like what a child says.
Suddenly, the voice recording goes off.
"You know Panic and Magenta? Yeah those little shits are complete bastards! They are so bitchy in class. When they misbehave, I chain Panic's little paw or Magenta's little hoof to their desk and the way they struggle to write is so funny. The way to do it is make it extra tight and short so they can't reach the paper! Oh oh make sure to know what hand they write with! Well Magenta obviously cannot write properly but the way is to take away his computer so he writes with his hoof oh it's so so funny but they deserve it! Oh those little animals I just want to smack them in the face so hard ah- oh I think someone- oh no I think a student heard us let's stop for now."
There was just a moment of silence.
"Uh, Ma'am I'm sorry for calling you a meanie, I promise it won't happen again." Magenta says in an awkward look.
"Uh. Thanks, Magenta, I think we'll just need to have a talk with Miss Trie... you go on with your day, kids." Mr Crowelle says walking off.
"Oh and take the phone I guess." Mr Rickley says, handing it to me.
Fast forward to lunch and it's time for detention again. Though, it was a rather strange detention.
"Hello Mr Crowelle. Where's Magenta?" I say.
"Oh he's with another teacher doing some yard cleaning. Just, come sit next me here." He says.
"Okay..."
I felt some weird vibes going. There was only Mr Crowelle, me and the priest.
"Is nobody else here?"
"Nope. Just sit down and don't speak."
Miss Trie then comes into the room. She's holding something. She's smiling like an alligator, ready to gobble up its prey. She sits in a seat in front of me. Everyone is staring me down. I'm uncomfortable.
"Sir?"
"Shush."
They just kept staring and staring and staring. The silence.
"Panic."
"Yes?"
"Tell me, what is Miss Trie holding?" He asks.
She was holding a muzzle.
"A snout muzzle."
He then proceeds to hold me down as Miss Trie puts the muzzle on me aggressively. She then turns me around to tie the back. This was one of the muzzles which stopped you from opening your snout. She then pushes me on the ground, hitting my head on the bench that the priest was sitting on.
Miss Trie then rolls her neck around, pulling her fingers back and then swings to throw in a punch but I quickly dodge. The priest held me back so I couldn't move. Before her fist could hit me, I caught her hand. The priest then handcuffed me so I couldn't catch it. She then repeatedly punched me in the face, pulling my ears and my tail. After about two minutes of the beatings, she stops and starts panting. I tried to not show any fear.
"Hah-hah... see hah... Panic... that's what... poor Lemon felt... like when you beat her and choked her to death. That's hah... exactly what you did." Miss Trie says.
"You pulled her ears, you broke the bone in her snout, you punched her and pulled her tail. After all that, those little feet held onto her neck and suffocated her. Dead. YOU killed her Panic. Don't say you didn't. We saw those messages. You're a liar. You fled away when the police saw you. They caught you at the end and you surrendered on your little wolfy knees because they found you."
She then put her foot on my neck.
"How does that feel huh? You can't breathe?"
Was she gonna kill me?
"Uh-"
"Alright I'll stop now."
If only. If only we knew what was going on. If only they knew that I was really trapped in my own self, couldn't feel a single thing. The only thing I saw was the corpse of a young cat, who happened to be known as Lemon Crowelle.
I just knew there was going to be a bruise on my neck by tomorrow morning.
"That's right. That's exactly how Lemon felt. Wouldn't want that to happen to you? Huh?"
The priest sat me back up. He then pulled me under my under-arms, next to him on the bench.
"We only did this to show you how it felt so you wouldn't do it again. Okay?" He says.
"Okay. I'm sorry. I wish there was a way to get her back, Mr Crowelle." I said.
"Oh so you want her back now? You feel bad now,yeah?" He says as he gets up.
I turn my head away, putting my paws up.
"Please, don't hurt me." I said.
"Oh I wont. Don't worry. But Panic. The only way to get her back is if you die or if you pray. If you die, you'll use your first life. Only two lives left. Use them both and you can't come back. I would love to have my daughter back from the one who stole her from me."
"But you have to show Zoren you're worthy of being brought back. You have to show Lemon you're worthy of her forgiveness. It's not gonna be easy. Just letting you know. You're lucky I'm telling you this because if I hated you that much I wouldn't have told you this. Anyways, don't tell your friends what happened and get to class. Lunch is almost over."
"Yes sir."
After taking my siblings home after school, I plop myself on the couch and turn on my phone.
"Hi year 12 students. Tomorrow the hall will be closed as there has been an incident and we need to manage it during when we were supposed to have our special meeting at that time. Instead we'll be using the Scarlett University hall instead. See you all there!"
That was a message I got on our special school board. I didn't know there was an assembly. We only usually have assemblies for very important things so this must be important. I decided to text Mum about what it was.
"Mum? Did you get a message about a year 12 assembly? What's it about? I didn't know what it was."
For some reason, she completely changed the subject.
"Did Mr Crowelle and Miss Trie beat you up today?" She asks.
"Not exactly beat up but... yeah? How did you know about that?'
"They called me. They're going to be talking to you about life and death and things like that."
"Oh okay. Cool..."
It's the next school day and everyone is walking across to the University through the high bridge way. You could see the football fields and people running tracks on them. The otherside, however, you could see the city streets leading up the middle of Scarlett where the Karglia castle lies. It was quite a cold day today so I wore a black turtleneck with a red vest and pants. Although most gods we Xanixians worship are out of the gender binary, people at our school still are sexist and transphobic to one another. Our school isn't fond of guys wearing skirts or girls wearing pants to school but we all still do it.
"Alright everyone take a seat please." Miss Lora says.
It was very quiet and the room was very dark. The teachers were setting up a presentation for us. The first screen was an ivory coloured diamond and a sombre coloured circle with the title saying Life,death and the afterlife. I suddenly remembered we were studying this in history class.
A peacock stood in front of the presentation. She was a history researcher looking at her lanyard that hung around her neck.
"Hello everyone! My name is Cecil and I'm from the ancient Xanixian history research lab and today I will be showing you all some special studies and facts that we research about in the lab. Now, you all know what happened over fifty years ago, yes?"
Everyone nodded.
"Good. Now can anyone tell me what the name of our four very special gods are? It was recently one of their days the other day!" She said,
Valerie then puts their claw up.
The peacock gives them a very unusual smirk and then picks on her.
"Valerie? Yes?"
How did this lady know who Valerie is? Just a random dragon.
"Zoren, leader of the Ivory. Kaave, leader of the Saumbre. Dawn, guardian of the Ivory. Dusk, Guardian of the Saumbre and V-"
"Ok thanks! You're totally right!" Cecil says anxiously.
Everyone in the room was slightly confused.
"Anyways. Now, we all know that we die some day when we get very old and sick and that's when we know that we have finished our lives, yes? And you all know that people can die in other ways too like diseases, accidents,being murdered etcetera, yes?"
Everyone nodded.
"So, when humans are killed by accidents or random situations, they've lost their chance at life and there is no way back. Most may know that yes? Well, for us Xanixian animals, it isn't the same. You have three chances. First time you get killed, there is a way to come back. Second time, there is a way to come back. Last time? That's your final time and you cannot come back. But that doesn't apply to dying of age though, that's when Zoren has chosen to take you from the world because if you live for much longer you'll be in too much pain. Sometimes that also may apply when you're younger and you have gotten too sick. Anyways, that's the basics. I'll hand over to our Ivory member here who yes, is infact a dead soul." 

I knew this was infact wrong, because everybody dies and you don't get another chance. There was something awfully different about these official Ivory. They did work for the gods but there was no way they died again.

I felt some kind of aura from these people, it felt familiar to something else. I saw something in their eyes. A purple, nebula looking colour. It wasn't normal. I didn't want to mention it. Maybe I was reaching. 

Everyone gasped. It was the first time we ever saw an actual person who was from the Ivory. Someone in here must also be immortal here for them to be here.
Someone then put their hand up to ask a question.
"For them to be here, Mrs Cecil, doesn't there have to be an immortal that brought them here? Like a forever living being or like a god?" They asked.
"It doesn't look like there are any immortals here. Unless... one of us or you guys are!"
"Oh... well... you're right! They have left us for now though...heh.." Cecil says.
"Anyways, this is Marshal, our Ivory member. We are so lucky to have you here Marshal!" Miss Lora says.
Miss Lora was also there because we are doing art based on Ivory and Saumbre in our class.
"Hello everyone! As you heard my name is Marshall. I am a suricata,also known as a meerkat."
"So we have a powerpoint here for you to watch as we explain everything. So here's a small slide about me. Dawn allowed me to visit the world again for a special presentation here and I just wanted to explain my story."
Xey went into the next slide.
"The way I had died was from a very unfortunate murder spree. Many of you may have heard the Bonnie street murders where three people were murdered in their homes which unfortunately included me. I was just watching TV when two coyote's barged in and shot me. Now those two are in the pound and as I watch over them, they are definitely suffering."
Mr Crowelle then looks at me. He's mouthing some weird words.
"Okay, back to the slides! So I'm going to explain to you all how people get their lives back from being killed. Each slide is going to explain what process people go through depending on the situation! Are you all ready?"
Everyone nodded.
"Okay! So the first slide is dying from illness. When you die from illness, you don't have to go through too much of a process. You must stay in Ivory for around two weeks until you can leave. After the two weeks there is a meeting with Zoren in which you are now healed and are given a blessing by Zoren and taken back home."
"Dying from an accident. The same process because you're still in an injury. Dying from suicide. You stay at Ivory until a therapist has said you are ready to go home. Depending on the person, they are treated and then can go home when ready."
"Alright next one, murdered. This one is slightly different from the other ones. In order for you to go home, you have to have some sort of forgiveness to the other person and they have to give you a genuine apology. It's also the same the other way around if the murderer was killed. It doesn't just apply to murderers but also other criminals."
Mr Crowelle looked at me and then put his hoof up.
"What if you don't want to forgive the person?" He asks.
"They just have to apologise and only you get to leave. They don't get to. They will only be able to leave if they're forgiven." Marshal says.
"Oh okay."
He then points to me.
"So if my daughter doesn't forgive Panic when she wants to apologise for killing her then she still cannot leave but my daughter does?"
"Uh... correct..." Marshal says.
"Good because when that wolf-dog dies, I don't want to see her again."
Valerie then decides to say something.
"Mayor! You wouldn't get the choice on what your daughter chooses and Panic isn't dead so I'm not sure if you're saying you WANT her dead?"
"Oh no no I'm not saying that at all Va-." He says.
Valerie squints their eyes in suspicion.
"Never mind."
Things were getting a little weird between the Mayor, Valerie,Marshal and Cecil. Was the mayor about to call Valerie...Master Valerie?
"Anyways! I hope you all understood just a small insight to how death works in Ivory and Saumbre so, thank you all and good luck with your studies."
As everyone walks out I could see Valerie stayed there, talking to Marshal.
"Come on Black, don't look through there. Valerie is just quite busy, don't worry about it." Mr Crowelle says.
"Oh and one more thing."
"I'm always watching, girl. You and that other boy, you two are on thin ice. Just remember that! I'm always watching."