Fever Dream Red

12

We walked down the stone stairs of the gardens together, and began our journey down the winding path to the beach.

When I was sure nobody was in earshot, I spoke.

"What are we going to do?" I looked at her. I'm sure she saw the scared glint in my eyes.

I stared consistently at hers, hoping she would take it as a plea for help.
"I don't know." She said quietly, looking at the gravel path.

I sighed haughtily.

"We've got to do something. We can't stay here!"
I declared with a splash of anger.
"I'm not sure we have much choice!" Her voice cracked. She held out her arms as if she was trying to swim in the water of helplessness.
"There's always a way!"
"How do you know that?" Sunny was getting angry at me now. I was only trying to help her. She was throwing it back in my face like a used napkin.

"I... I just do. We have to at least try to get out of here!" I implored Sunny, despair wondering down my face.

Her gaze softened, like she was speaking to a small child who's imagination had run amock.
"Oh Finny," she said to me,"I think we could be stuck here. We can ask, but... The guy has his own henchmen. And we are just teenagers. He could take us down easy if we went against him." Sunny sighed and smiled at me, her eyes glistening in the sunlight.

If I was in another place, in another time, in another circumstance, I would've loved that smile. But now the curve carved heartbreak into my soul.

"You're giving up that easily? Just like that? How could you?" I asked her angrily.

"I don't want to die, Finny. I've pushed my luck this far, I might as well push it a little further. This place provides security. We'd never have that out in the real world. We don't know how many people survived. They could be thousands who have already scavenged Albermis piece to piece. We have to give it a shot."

I looked at her darkly and then flounced off. Sunny looked after me with slumped shoulders and balled up fists. I could feel her eyes burning embarrassment into my back. I was always making a fool of myself.

I wondered down a sloping hill to the beach. I walked through the wood. I kept looking through the forest curve, looking for eyes. Maybe I really was going mad. But if I was mad before, this place would really make me go insane.

I got down to the beach. It was a sick beautiful. The soft sand glazed into the sea, who's waves rolled in like breathing. There was no land to cloud its judgement, only the sea, the sky and the sand.

I noticed then that melancholy tears were dripping down my face. I didn't wipe them away. Nobody cared. I was all alone in a world of gentle views and soft feels. I could happily stay there forever. I took off my shoes and let my tired feet breathe on the pillow of sand. I treaded lightly down to the sea. The swirling waves lingered me there, enticing me in. Perhaps that's how Sunny felt towards The Base, like I did towards the sea.

I wondered what it would be like to die there. To just slip into the ocean and sink down, down, down, down to the bottom with the skeletons and transcending fish. Sure, it wouldn't be nice, but it would be one last sense of living. It would be freedom until the very last; one last act of defiance against a pretty prison that had enticed all of my friends like a wonderful rose.

This would kill me before I got a chance to kill myself, I decided, and laid my disturbing thoughts to rest, burying them in the cloudy sand.

I decided I would refuse to go to The Base. They couldn't take me. I would kick or scream. I would thrash around or bite. I no longer cared if they killed me. They could, for all I cared. Everybody else was dead anyway. What difference would one more make?

It was there I realised that I was on my own, for better or for worse.

I had always had to entertain myself as a child. I would go up to Danmy or Inez, wanting to play. They would tell me to go 'entertain myself', much to my dismay.

But this was different. This time it was real.

I figured I would just stay there until someone came for me. Perhaps no one would ever come for me. Oh well.

The beach would be a nice place to rot.

I was a classic melodramatic teenager caught in an unbelievable situation. The whole thing moved quickly. I had no time to digest or think or plan some magic escape. I just about had time to pull someone aside and express extreme concern.

The memories from The Base are blurred into stupid mistakes and the curse of hindsight mimics them.

The saddest thing about memories is that, while making them, you realise that they will be revisited by you in your mind countless times, much like a favourite page out of an old book that is weathered and beaten and yellow with the passing of time.

I realised that the night with Sunny on the roof would be one of those times. We didn't know what was going to happen to us, but boy did we make that night count. We laughed under the rising stars, recounting memories together like looking through old pictures.

The world seemed so open then, spilling out of Gloomy Cay like a million wishful opportunities that would never go out.

Now it had all closed down like a neon sign that had stopped glowing. Forever and ever.

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Thanks to dojacant for doing so. It is appreciated :)