firefly 𑁋 salvis.

XI

︶ ♫ ˚ ̟

Travis bit at his lip, anxiety eating him from the inside out as he walked. His mind was traveling a thousand miles a minute, it seemed. The cooling August air nipped at his exposed legs, insufficiently attempting to distract his brain. It worked momentarily, but he could only focus on the racing thoughts, it seemed. One stuck out significantly from the others. Was that a date?

It could be described as that, he chalked up. He and Sal went somewhere, alone, together, on purpose, and they stayed there for a long while. They got closer, they hugged. Travis taught Sal how to skip rocks. Had Sal ever learned how to do that and just forgot? Or was this a first... The thought of Sal experiencing a first with Travis, even a first of something so insignificant, made him feel all warm inside. And then a sick feeling arose in his stomach, and Travis found himself dry heaving over the grass beside the sidewalk he was just walking on, cold asphalt painting lines in his scraped knees.

He was disgusted with himself. How could he not be? He was a disgusting excuse for a human. Travis Phelps, son of the pastor of the only church in Nockfell, was in love with a boy. An abnormal boy, with bright blue hair, a fake eye, and an odd interest in ghost hunting. A boy who painted his nails and wore floral skirts to school. Surely God was disgusted with him as well. How could Kenneth be proud of him? Right now, Kenneth thought he was at the library, studying for a big math test coming up. That's what he should've been doing. Instead, he was hugging a queer and spilling his darkest secrets.

If his father doesn't find a reason to punish him tonight, he'll punish himself. The razorblades under the floor have never seemed so tempting.

The squeaks of the front steps resonated through the empty forest around the Phelps' house. His father's car was gone from the driveway, which seemed to be becoming more and more frequent. He didn't even have to dig out his front door key to get inside, the door was unlocked. Nockfell was a fairly crimeless town, aside from the missing posters hanging on every streetlight, holding a face of some poor highschooler. They were never found, though. Many chalked them up as runaways. Who wouldn't want to get away from this shitty town? Besides, you'd have to be insane to do something to the pastor's house, to the longest living family in Nockfell.

The Phelps' were the first to reside in Nockfell. They built this town from the ground up. Their family was the wealthiest, generations of capitalizing off of the poor sinners of this town making them comfortable today. Everyone knew better than to mess with them- not that anyone would want to anyways. Doing that was like an eternal prison sentence. The Phelps' were practically God to the citizens of Nockfell, harming them would surely sentence you to eternal damnation in the hottest depths of Hell itself.