Everything Has Changed

The Dead Poets Society

August 13th 2025
Kansas City, Missouri

He tried calling her, but it just rang out. He thought it was weird, but he just let it slide. He wished he hadn't. He wished he hadn't have left that house for training that morning, it wasn't even mandatory. Maybe he could have saved her from it all, but hindsight is a gift only the guilt striken process.

Travis returned home only a few hours after he had left the house, and we he returned, it was haunted. He knew as soon as he stepped over the threshold that something was wrong, but what it was exactly, he couldn't pinpoint. When he came into the house, he immediately heard the baby crying but there was a defining silence. There was no sweet song of Taylor's voice to reassure the baby that she would be ok, there were no signs of life.

"Tay?" Travis shouted, looking around the ground floor of their house. He cursed himself in that moment for being so big headed and purchasing such a huge house. He didn't exactly need it but it was nice to flaunt your wealth once in a while, if you have it that is. And they always had plenty of friends and family to fill it, with Travis finally convincing Taylor that Luna having a sibling at some point was not a bad idea. Travis knew that she was in the house somewhere: her car was in the driveway and he could see her purse and phone still laying on the sofa, as if she had plans to flee but just didn't have the time. He noticed a piece of paper with his name on it, sitting on the table but he decided he would read it later. Pocketing it quickly, he decided to follow the noise up the stairs, noticing that their bedroom door was ajar.

"Tay." There was still no response. It was icy.

"Taylor." His voice now quivered as he slowly approached the door. He wished he hadn't opened it. Because there she was, sprawled out on the floor, Luna crying out in her bassinet merrily inches away. He stood there frozen.

No, she must just be asleep.

Or maybe she had just fallen over and knocked herself out for a bit.

She would wake up.... wouldn't she.

"Oh my god, Tay. Taylor.. darling wake up. Wake up for me." He came crashing down next to her lifeless limbs, taking her cold presence into his arms. She had seemed so angelic, her golden hair sprawled out like a halo. His arms shook her with desperation, as he tried to rouse her from what he still believed to be sleep. That was until he saw it...

The little orange bottle that was so cruelly staring back at him from the nightstand. Leaving Taylor where he had found her, he snatched up into his fingertips, trying to read the words on the little white label on the side bottle, but it was no use. They were all blending into one. One thing was known to him: they were Taylor's sleeping pills, and whilst he wasn't sure how many she had taken, he knew she had taken enough.

Why had she done this?

He asked himself over and over as he tried to process what was happening in front of his eyes, and then a noise in the room brought him back to the present. his daughter. Their daughter. Their beautiful little girl with eyes as glistening as the ocean and the sweetest smile that anyone had ever seen. It hadn't been enough to revive mortality. But she was fine, and so he had to ignore her cries.

Collapsing back down in front on Taylor, he swore that his shouts could be heard from miles away.

"Taylor... TAYLOR come on this isn't funny anymore. Wake up, wake up... wake up!!!!" he shouted, but nothing changed. Her eyelids remained glued shut and her body still laid lifeless in his arms. Something instinctual came over him as he grabbed for his phone that he had discarded at the scene of the crime, roughly dealing the emergency number.

He listened as it rung out, for what felt like a lifetime until someone connected.

"911 what's your emergency." Travis chocked on his words, not believing them until they came floating out of his mouth in unstrung sentences.