TW: Self harm, suicide/suicidal initiation
Everyday felt the same to Jack, they never had to do anything in school because they could just pick it up when the homework came, they didn't have to try when talking to people cause they picked up charisma. Nothing changed, no one ever acted in a way that hadn't happened before, and they would never do anything new. Jack was going through the motions of life, they never had to try to navigate, try to feel anything, because they could just fake all of it. They would never be more then this. never be more that she was right now, she had convinced herself that nothing would ever change, that every surprising event was carefully planed and would be predicated.
When her brother killed himself because the bullying at school, everyone around her was surprised. Henry was always such a happy kid, he was just 12 he's to young to die. Jack wasn't surprised. Listening and observing the world instead of participating in life was how Jack preferred it. She heard him cry, heard him stifle screams as ruby blood welded up over the fresh cuts on his thighs, she knew what was coming. Its not like she didn't try to help him, she did. She held him as he cried, hugged him as hard as she could like she was trying to hold him here for a little bit longer, but she saw the pattern, knew what was coming. Bracing herself for the other shoe to drop, waiting till the phone call from cops, waiting for the next funeral. The people around her didn't think she cared, she didn't cry at her own brothers funeral. But the truth was that she couldn't give into the fact that he was gone. She'd been preparing for this day for months. Preparing to not have his smile in her life anymore, to not hear his laugh. Mourning him would admit to the fact that he's gone, that she lost him. She was waiting to go home, and he would be there in the kitchen, making some foul concoction with mayo and gods know what else, and he would be there to give her shit about what ever he could think of that day.
That's when she noticed how deadly everything around her. You name an object, she could tell you how you could die from it. Jack fell deep into a depressive hole. A deep, damp, nothing fell over her. She never felt like eating, nothing was ever interesting, and no amount of calls to the school counselors office seemed to lift the crushing weight of her despair for even a moment. Jack fell so hard that even her talent seemed to have left her. The last drop of her leaked out at the funeral. That wasn't Jack, she knew it, and so did everyone around her. The Jack shaped shell eventually got help. They went to an impatient facility and talked through the loop of her life, how every day was the same, and how the only thing that kept her hanging on was her brother. If she couldn't change, he would. She saw her own growth and change within him. Without him, there wasn't anything for her now.
The medication and therapy did help. But even still, she wasn't the same. something changed, whether you call it a vale of pessimism, or the death of her brother still eating away at her, she was darker. Deeper. Heavier. She carried the world on her shoulders. Her English teacher loved this, praising her work for this new depth. This sadness seemed to hang over her, and although everyone in her life tried to get her back on her feet, helping her enroll in the most prestigious school in the union, she never felt anything change. She would never be anything more then she was right now, never change or grow. Never be able reach higher, go further, be more.
She needed someone, something to change. Maybe RMIMA could be that for her, or maybe its just more of the same. Something needed to give for Jack, a surprise, an unexpected interaction, anything to show that she wasn't an observer to "life". that she was an active participant in the chaos that everyone else describes.
Jack wouldn't see it at first, so used to the monotony of it all to see that things were changing. fists clutched to a heavy iron chain no longer on her neck, so used to its weight, no longer able to see a world without the chain. Pheobe was something new, the RMIMA was new, and soon nothing will be the same.
YOU ARE READING
What Lies Behind the Door
FantasyIn a world where magic has been flourishing for centuries, we follow 5 teenagers on their path threw schooling. They need to navigate the pressures the worlds placed on them and their own prejudices to keep them all safe.
