Order From Chaos

Chapter One: Chance Meetings

The morning everything would change was clear and bright. It was mid-summer, and everyone was glad of the nice weather. Most people were out making plans, but one person remained closed in the small guest house he lived in. Jayden Wilcox woke this day with a bit of a headache and feeling inexplicably sad. Of course, that sadness was an old companion, and he was used to it; today was different, though.

Immediately upon waking, he was struck by how fake the world around him felt. It was almost like he was outside the world watching. The sensation was surreal in the extreme, and scary. He struggled daily with the monster that slept beneath his skin, but today, it felt like that monster would consume him from the inside out. For years, this had been a part of his life. He had never been without this inextricable sadness that sat in his chest every day. He had gotten used to it and even counted on it being there. Still, this morning was different than every other morning, and he was struggling to deal with that.

His eyes settled on a DVD as he left his room. His mind, unbidden, decided that if he broke that DVD in half, he could use it to cut open his wrists. He furiously shook that thought away. Where did that come from? He didn't usually think of killing himself, well, not all the time.

It was true, on occasion, thoughts of death, or really, just the idea of not existing anymore, came to mind. It wasn't really a desire to kill himself so much as a desire to not be. He couldn't even say he wished he was never born; it wasn't like that. He'd never made a plan before, though the thought of harming himself had come up many times. Sometimes he wondered what it would be like to do things that would hurt, just so he could stop feeling numb. Those days were hard, but this strange sensation of actually seeing ways to end his life was even harder.

He found himself in the kitchen, holding one of the knives from the butcher's block and staring at it. His mind again wandered into that place where he didn't want it to go. How easy it would be just to cut... No, he thought as he sheathed the knife back in the block. This wasn't good; he couldn't stop these thoughts today. He shook it away again and sat down on the sofa, his brain shutting down for a little while and spacing out. Today was terrible; he hadn't had a day where he disassociated so severely in a very long time. That, combined with his mind finding ways to kill himself, made him worry.

He skipped breakfast altogether, not wanting to go back in the kitchen out of fear of the easy access to the knives that were in there. He glanced at his phone lying on the table and wondered if he should call his adopted mother. He would be seeing her soon, so he rejected the idea. He could handle this. He was sure he could because he'd always handled these moments before.

He found himself in the garden and felt like he was watching his body move independently with no thought. He was holding the small rake and staring at the points on the prongs. It would be so easy to fall... He put it down and swallowed against the building ball in his throat. It wasn't stopping, and he would do something to make his adopted parents sad; he couldn't do that. He went back inside and changed into something comfortable. He had an idea of how this day was going to go now, and he figured that he should take steps to ensure his safety.

He went to the main house to find Ella and Bradley, his adopted parents, in the kitchen.

"Sweetie, what's wrong?" Ella asked immediately, seeing the distraught look on Jayden's face.

"I think I need to check myself into the hospital. I'm having a hard day and I don't think I can handle it on my own anymore," he answered and smiled sadly at her.

She looked at him curiously. "What do you mean by a 'hard day?'" she asked, frowning.

Jayden knew she meant well, but he didn't know how to answer that. "The sadness is eating me alive, Ella," he decided to say finally. "I've been seeing ways to stop living, and it's scaring me."