How to Kill a Kingdom || Discontinued ||

DARKSIDE

(Evelyn POV)
(Edited by Scarlet)

🎶Do you want to meet all my monsters🎶
🎶Think you're tough I know they'll drive you bonkers🎶
🎶Meet them once and they'll forever haunt you🎶 🎶There's no heroes or villains in this place🎶
🎶Just shadows that dance in my head space🎶
🎶Leaving nothing but phantoms in their wake🎶

     I breathe in the freshly cut grass, the flowers. This is possibly the most calm I've felt this entire week. Nature has a way of calming me down, it always has.
     Something about how these beautiful lives can flourish in this awful place, it keeps me going. It come here as often as I can. It is a good distraction. But I can't stay in this fantasy forever, as much as I'd like to.
     The crime rate is really bad in my city, and I always have to carry a knife with me for protection.
     Suddenly, the smell of the grass and the flowers is replaced by the scent of death and decay.
      I look around for the source of my disturbance and realize that there's a shape slumped on the ground behind the tall grasses and rose bushes. I carefully peek through the grass and discover a person sleeping there. Or, what was once a person, and they weren't sleeping;
     Speaking of crime rate, I was sitting directly behind a dead body.
I jumped up and stumbled backwards, running into the bench and tripping. It wasn't the first dead body I've seen in my time on this planet, but you never really get used to it.
I started walking towards the bus stop when I realized there were numbers written on the woman's shirt.
They read:
1/11/2022
     Whoever the murderer was, they had been kind enough to leave a death date behind for her grave stone. What a nice murderer. I start to laugh at myself, but then remember that this person is dead and that I should at least show some respect. I shake my head. Maybe living with my mom really is making me go crazy. I have to get away from here before someone else comes along, or else they might think it was me who killed her. I think for a moment.
     Is there anything I can do for this poor person? I can't call the police, or else it would attract attention to my mom and they'd take me away. I couldn't exactly tell anyone who lives here about it either. I came to the conclusion that there was nothing I could do except move the woman a little more into the open and hope that someone would find her, but then my fingerprints would be on her.
     I sigh. There's nothing I do. I say a quick prayer for the woman and place a few flowers on her back. I sigh as I get up, and then take off running to the bus stop, tears forming in my eyes.

     I'm almost there.

🎶There's parts of me I cannot hide 🎶
🎶I've tried and tried a million times🎶

    I can see Angie waving at me.

🎶Cross my heart and hope to die🎶
🎶Welcome to my darkside🎶

    Angie. Just the sight of her makes my day ten million times better. She's the closest thing to an actual mother figure to me, and that's including my own mom.

     "Hey!" She calls to me, "What are you, emo? Take off the headphones, silly!"

     I smile as I take in her lush golden brown hair, those rare eyes that reminded me of the heather at my favorite bench.

     "Okay, okay, you caught me!" I said, putting my hands up, a smile beginning to penetrate the stone that was my face.

     "Who are you talking to?"

     "Huh?" I whip around to stare at the person who had spoken. A boy and his friend, standing a few feet in front of me. I move aside to show Angie to them; the idiots clearly hadn't seen her.
     Their eyes flick to the space next to me where Angie was, but then back to me, blinking a few times and then looking back at each other with faces that suggested that they thought I was crazy.
     Do these boys not have freaking eyes?
     I turn back around to Angie, but she's not there.
     Now I notice that everybody else is staring at me.

     "Oh… n-no one," I mumble, trying to hide my face in the hood of my hoodie.

    He snickers. "Looks like you're a bit lonely."
    "Oh, back off,” I say, gritting my teeth, “Just because you have a sorry life doesn’t mean that you can take your pathetic anger and snarky comments out on everyone else.”

     He laughs at this."Looks like I'm irresistible!" He leans back on one leg, pointing his fingers at himself. The onlookers laugh. I don't understand how people this cocky have so many friends.

     I roll my eyes. You can't argue with idiots. His name is Mason, and he's the adopted son of Mr. Middleton, the principal. According to the chatter of the pick-me girls that are impossible not to hear in the hallway, he has dreamy eyes, amazing hair, and is "hilarious". I don't see it. He's just pissed that I'm the only girl in the school who's not head over heels for him. Before I could snap back at him, the bus (which was going far too fast to be in a neighborhood) came screaming down the street and stopped with an ear splitting whine. They really need to fix those buses.

     I sigh, saved by the bus. I'm one of the last few people to board the bus, looking back at my house before taking the last step. Seven hours away from that nightmare.

     Once I get to my seat, which is directly in the back, I put my headphones back on and look out the window, releasing a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding.

Why can't I just be happy?