Fever Dream Red

3

So I watched, powerless, as people died. People like Addy.

She was out there, somewhere. Some soldier should have killed her by then, surely. I hoped that she was already dead. She must've been so scared. And so pained. I hoped whoever had killed her had put a bullet straight through her head. I hoped they didn't go for her heart. Then she'd have just bled out. She was in enough pain as it was. She needed a quick death. She deserved a quick death.

All that hoping caused a tear to slide hopelessly down my cheek. I brushed it off with the sleeve of my nightgown and sniffed loudly. "Oh, what will we do?" I asked, looking up at the sky as if some god was going to appear and make everything right again.

"Wait until the massacre is done and escape into the city." Skye finished. I glanced at them with what I hoped was an annoyed expression. They had just creeped up on me in my own room, after all."What? You asked." They shrugged at me with as much judgement as Judy, offering up only a slightly sympathetic look as an apology.

I walked away. I felt obliged to stand there, watching over Albermis, like I was at the funeral and I needed to pay my respects. That was the most respect they would get, from anything. Those soldiers just wanted them gone before they were gone themselves. It would be their lasting legacy on the world. Death would be what they were famed for by those left surviving.

I wasn't the kind of person anyone wanted at their funeral anyway. Skye was more suited to it. They had the heart for it. They seemed to easily detach themselves from the sorrow of it all. But maybe that meant that they weren't built for death? After all, they would never be able to give each person the respect that their life deserved if they simply didn't care.

However, my mind was too clouded to debate with myself at the time. I just walked out.

I didn't know what to do after realising that the world really was ending. I went back to my room and looked in the mirror. I was still in my pyjamas. I brushed my teeth and changed. Nothing grand. Just some grey tracksuit bottoms and a tee. It didn't matter anymore.

Not much did.

Although, maybe I could have some nice clothes for the death of the world. I could have paid some respect to a society society gave me so little and so much all at the same time.

I went downstairs to the room that used to be our dining room at the orphanage.

The hotel had been renovated as some paranormal hotel after we all left. The budget must have ran out somewhere, because the orphanage had been untouched, except for the obvious bugs and dust.

The apartment block was massive, and the orphanage had only ever covered a small portion of it. This meant that we all could have had quite a bit of room, but we all wanted to stay in the rooms that had once belonged to us.

There was...eighteen of us. Just about. I think. I could've been wrong. No. There was seventeen. I was forgetting the screeching baby.

The apartment block was a bit odd, but I remember being glad to live there when I was younger. It was right next to the best beach on the island. It was what most of the tourists came for.

Then they just came to try and capture whatever had drove all the people away. I thought it was foolish to mess with those things, especially if they actually existed.

Extending out of the bottom of the block was a pier. It was long, crammed with shops and cafes and the like. It used to be bustling when I was younger.

Now it was desolate. The wooden boards on the pier were slowly rotting, decaying corpses of the island without anyone to care for them.

Our dining room had an old antique wooden table, carved elegantly. It had sat strangely there for as long as I could remember. It was comforting to walk down to it. It reminded me that this world was the same one that I had loved my whole life in. It was hard to believe at times.

There, Skye was knelt down on the dusty black carpet. They had laid out a map and were circling random things in blue ink pen. They were biting the top of the pen as they always did, subconsciously scratching the side of their head. Their eyebrows furrowed as they did so.

"What are you doing?"
"Planning the next move."
"Already? The soldiers are still shooting up the city."
"I said planning. I'm not shooting off there just yet. Calm down."

I let out a frustrated sigh. I didn't know what to do with myself.

The image of the pier that I had adored in my childhood stuck by me. I hadn't been back there yet, even though I'd been in the apartment block the best part of three weeks. Danmy and Inez had said it was a foolish idea. It was.

That's what made it so appealing.

I cautiously walked down the endless flights of steps to the pier, some concrete and some plush scarlet carpet, scared that the island would somehow punish me for being so rebellious. After all, I was still the island's child.

I came to the pier entrance, waded through the caution signs and opened the antique doors that were rusty with uselessness.

I looked up the path of rotten wood, lost childhoods and dreams that had no substance to them. One wrong step and I would have fallen through the cracks into the sea, cold and wild, unnaturally so. Perhaps the water wanted to escape the island as soon as possible in an effort to remain pure.

I took a cautious step. In my mind I was bargaining with myself. Perhaps it wouldn't be such a bad thing if I died. If I fell into the deep ink, would it have really mattered? Everyone else was dying anyway. Nothing would be left for the remaining to enjoy.

But I also knew that if I happened to fall into the deep ink, I would try my very best to live. Human instinct, at it's finest. We were programmed to live even if we really didn't want to.

I took my cautious step and waited to fall through. But nothing happened. I took a few more steps. Still nothing.

I told myself I should stop taking steps before something bad happened. I didn't listen.

I took more and more steps, until I lost count of them and the broken promises I had made to myself to stop stepping.

I found myself at some sort of cafe lying on the pier. I gripped onto it immediantly, an anchor to my wild and scarlet red kite.

I was catching my breath when I heard the sound of wooden shrapnel beneath my feet.

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