Watching The World Burn by Abby Jean Sprouse

Chapter 3: Move!

"Why do you just sit there in that corner, you've been in that position since I put you there when we got down here? You have got to be in pain, are you sleeping like that too? Why don't you move around a bit, and eat something? It's been forever since I've even seen you eating anything. I've given you your portions of the food supply and yet you don't even move to touch them, are you eating when I'm asleep or something?" She was nagging him, and she knew that it would lead him to anger but she would rather hear him cussing her than listen to the silence that he seemed so content on keeping most of the time. What felt like a few days had passed since they had had their last argument after Addison's nightmares. Deep down she just wanted her brother back, the kind selfless brother she once knew. 

Zachariah had always been the stronger one of the two of them. Even though he was younger he had always kept pushing through. Always kept looking at the bright side, encouraging everyone around him. It was just so unusual for her to see him like this, so negative and mean. She wondered to herself if this would finally break him for good, after everything they had been through. 

'Will this be the end of him, being stuck down here like this? It's certainly the end of the world everywhere else.'

His aggravated voice broke Addison from her thoughts, "Do you ever stop talking, you're like one of those annoying broken records or cassette players Dad used to try to revive in the garage. It is essential to never forget the beauty of the past," he mocked in a deep voice trying to mimic their dead father. 

"Dad was right, you know? We shouldn't forget the past; I'll never forget how you helped grandpa drag me out of my apartment after I lost Carter. You kept telling me 'everything is going to be ok, I've got you and I'll never let you go sis' or when you were younger and you used to tell me that you wouldn't want any other sister in the world because I was the best," She smiled reminiscing back to a younger round faced boy that used to follow her everywhere she went. The little boy that always refused to leave her to herself, no matter how it annoyed his older sister.

"Yeh well dad was a dreaming idiot, and so was I back then. We should have died with him. It would have been better than this."

"Damn It! Get up!" She yelled at him standing up quickly from the desk chair she had been sitting in.

"What?"

"Get up, you heard me. It's not doing you any good staying like that. You need to move and feel alive again. You used to take morning runs and be constantly active, now all you do is sit slumped over in that same corner in that same position. Do something, a jumping jack, a push up anything! I don't care, get out of your depressing head and get up! You are not allowed to just give up, not when there is still breathe in your lungs and food in your belly!" They were almost the same words echoed through her that Zachariah had once told Addison when she was grieving her dead daughter and now, she was repeating the words back to him. Addison made a move about to walk over to his creepy corner of the room when he yelled fiercely at her shocking her into pause.

"STOP!"

"W.. why sh.. should.. I," she had never heard his voice sound so desperate and commanding so the loudness of it shook fear into her own words as she stuttered almost losing her gall from before. 

"I won't say anything else about dying just don't come any closer to me. I want to stay here and be alone, and you were right earlier when you speculated that I was eating when you were asleep. I move around when you're asleep and I eat and I read your stupid journal but I can't have you near! Do you understand? I need space, I need to be alone but I can only get so much aloneness with us stuck in here together so just stay away. Please sis, just do me this kindness and leave me be. Please?"