All to Escape

Prologue

I guess not every story is a nice one...

It had been a week since it was announced. Ever since we all found out the air is changing. Everyone is uneasy. The power dynamic is shifting and everyone is floating around the question of who is now at the bottom?

I saw her that day. It was brief and it was in passing but she walked straight past me. I remember her eyes so vividly. They were sunken and hollow and exaggerated by a large purple spot that covered half her face. She never wore any makeup. When it happened I remember the teachers at school told the authorities they never could have seen it coming. It was all alien to them. They acted like she didn't have marks of what was happening directly on her face.

She spoke to me that day too. We shared a lot of our classes together. From one social loner to another there was an unspoken common ground bond between us two. It was in PE, we were paired together mindlessly kicking a ball from one to the other.

"You're Carmen, right?" There was a long moment of silence. "Uh, did you know we live on the same street?"

I looked up at her, my face unmoving. It was rare to hear anyone call me by my real name. I could see she was twitchy as she was picking away at a scab on her wrist with her fingernails. She noticed me staring and laughed nervously.

"Not that I follow you or anything." Another nervous laugh. "Um, I see you on the way to school sometimes. You're the one with the big white headphones, right?"

"Uh, yeah. I guess." I got out. I noticed out the corner of my eyes people were starting to look. I tensed up. I knew I shouldn't be talking to her.

"Um..." She paused. I think she too noticed certain people were beginning to whisper and glance at her as she spoke to me. "If you want, we could um, walk together?"

This comment made the few subtle eavesdroppers expose themselves as their heads snapped directly to us. I didn't reply. All I did was look at the ground intently and kick the ball back to her.

We didn't walk home together that day. Or, for that matter, any day after. We never spoke after that day either. Or for that matter, she didn't speak to anyone after that day.

On Friday 23rd of August 2016, Martha Konstance rode her bike in front of a 16 wheeler dying on impact. She was just shy of turning 17. She wanted to study philosophy. She had decent grades. She wasn't well liked, but in literally any other place, she probably would've been.

But not in Slince because Slince is a shithole. Full of shithole people and shithole places. Nothing good has ever come of this place and anyone, like Martha, with any chance to be good were never allowed to leave. Those were the rules.

It was as I stood in the pews, in my black trousers and black shirt that I realised all I could think about was her. It has been almost two years since that PE class, yet I often hear her saying those words. They play with fragility, like a scratched vinyl skips and jumps through songs. I know it's probably disrespectful to be thinking of someone else at another person's funeral, especially this funeral, but I couldn't help it. It was just what I was thinking of.