Before I Leave You

courting madness

It began like it always did.

With the morning sun overhead, a blue, cloudless sky overlooking the countryside, and the fresh scent of spring in the air.

You're out picking bellflowers from your family garden's estate while Levi reads a book against a tree nearby. Both of you eight years old and with eyes warm and bright and brimming with untainted innocence.

Levi wears a dark grey suit with a matching vest underneath and a white button up shirt. He's taken off his jacket and newsboy cap and placed it beside him to enjoy the gentle breeze under the tree's shade. You, on the other hand, wish to bask under the sun's morning rays so you wear an ivory laced dress and off-white sun hat with a white ribbon tied up in a bow at the back.

Nearby, armed men patrol the outskirts of your home as they make their usual rounds securing the area, yet their presence does not trouble you. You are used to your father's men always being close by, along with your own specially assigned guards who follow you around everywhere you go — many of whom you've grown up seeing all your life and have become overly fond of. One of which is now stationed and on the lookout not too far away from where you and Levi are located — Onyankopon, a tall, dark-skinned man with a short crew cut, broad shoulders, and infectious smile.

Nevertheless, Levi will still glance up from his reading every once in a while to make sure you remain close enough for him to keep an eye on you.

It's become second nature to him now — to be on the lookout for you. It can't be helped.

You know this because you feel it too. Not seeing him, not knowing where he is, makes you anxious. Restless. It isn't until you are together in each other's company again can you truly feel at ease.

This close bond and affection you and Levi formed with each other could not have been due to the frequent visits that came from your father's business relationship with Mr. Ackerman or your mother's friendship with Mrs. Ackerman. It is your greatest belief that even if you and Levi had never grown up as childhood friends, you would have found your way to each other sooner or later. And the more time you both spent together, the more assured of it you became.

You and Levi were drawn to each other like magnets, tied together by an invisible red string of fate. A string that no matter how far you strayed from each other, would always bring you back together again.

Everyone could see it. If he pulled slightly from his end, you came running; if you tugged from your end, he came answering. It was the natural order of things. Like the moon calling the ocean waves, nothing could keep the two of you apart.

Behind you, in the center of the garden not too far from where you are, is a white bench facing a pond and overseeing the garden. There sits your mother, Rose Ymir, and Kuchel Ackerman, Levi's mother, chatting over tea while their own guards remain positioned nearby. Rose and Kuschel wear wide brim bowler hats that compliment their floral dresses, both strikingly beautiful against your evergreen garden and radiating an elegance that you can only strive to one day emulate.

You have collected just enough bellflowers to make up a small bouquet to gift Mrs. Ackerman, and you are just about to commence with your mother's own bouquet, when you hear the first series of gunshots go off behind you. You had heard them enough times growing up to know what they sounded like, but never had you heard them so close before and so loud.

You freeze at attention, looking up from the bed of flowers at your feet, confused, as men wearing police badges and bulletproof vests appear from out of your home and come raiding into your backyard, firing their guns at all of your father's men without mercy.

The shooting and yelling is deafening as your father's men attempt to stop them from advancing, but there's too many of them. Horrified and overwhelmed, you drop your flowers and cover your ears with your hands to block out the noise before instinctively shutting your eyes and falling to your knees. You have no understanding of the events currently unfolding before you or why they're happening. All you want is for the screaming and shooting to be over.