❝ Even the most beautiful masterpiece would have a bitter truth hidden beneath its deceptive covers. ❞
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Iris learns that her brothers have decided to take her in after she gets into a severe accident. With a dark past and twisted truths, she has...
tw: mentions of self-harm and panic attacks, please be careful while reading
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— M A R C U S' P O V —
AT THE MERE age of eleven, a part of me had been desperate to pick death over life. My mind had constantly buzzed, my thoughts molding death into something it wasn't.
Silently, my eyes had watched, and my heart had witnessed the way death had morphed into a shadow of life. Death had stopped being greedy according to the eleven-year-old boy I had been. It had stopped being dark. Somehow, death had become gentle and luminous. Somehow, my mind had assumed it to be an escape from the pain and the void—an escape from feeling like a burden and an outcast.
My thoughts had clung to the idea of death, perceiving it as a gateway. Life had turned into a barrier. One built of guilt and fear. One meant to hinder my trail whenever I had craved seeing my parents.
The mere thought of death had turned into an obsession, humming at the back of my mind and rattling the corners of my skull. I hadn't just wanted my parents. I had needed them. I hadn't only craved their presence. It had rather felt as though I couldn't breathe amidst their absence. But their presence hadn't been any better, for seeing them had left me breathless. Seeing their bloodied bodies and tear-stained faces had often left me choking for air.
I had gone back and forth, crying, begging, seeking. Life or death? Death or life? The question had played like a broken record somewhere within the exhausted crumbles of my mind. Life or death? Death or life? It had screamed in my ears, its deafening voice outweighing that of my brothers. It had hung in the atmosphere, tainting the air I had breathed whenever my brothers had asked whether I'd been getting better.
I had sought reasons to live, but I had also sought ones to die. A part of me — the one desperate to pick death over life — had been certain that I had deserved to die. Another part of me, however, had convinced me that I had to live. Not for myself but for my brothers. Not for myself but for Iris.
I couldn't die because I'd overheard Roman tell Elliott that he couldn't handle the burden of losing anyone else. I couldn't die because Nolan had never gone to sleep before telling me and Atlas that he loved us. I couldn't die because Atlas wouldn't handle another loss. I couldn't die because none of my brothers deserved to grieve a person like me. I had to live because none of my brothers deserved to bear the trauma of finding me. None of them deserved to live with the image of a dead body sutured to their memories.
Months had passed. Death had morphed into life, and the lines between both had blurred. Time had stopped passing, for every day had merged into the other, trapping me in a reality with no beginning or end. Sunsets and sunrises had blended, as did day and night. I had managed to stay alive, but at the same time, I hadn't. It had felt as though I were a captive of life and death. My chest had felt void yet heavy. My eyes had emptied, yet their edges had always stung with invisible tears. My skin had turned into a museum of all the times I had craved to feel something — anything.
