Ticket to Another World (Luke Hemmings AU)

They were grey

[Word count: 2,524]

"So, René," my mother began in the front seat. "Has your vision gotten any better?"

Clearly the way she was saying it, she was referring to the lack of color in my world aka my soulmate. "No, mom. I have not found my soulmate yet. And yes I can tell between colors more and more now," I answer with a light roll of my eyes.

"You know, Danté found his soulmate last week," she gossiped cheekily.

"What!" "Mom!" the both of us exclaimed.

"What the heck, you're only fifteen! What?!" I asked confused at my little brother. Sure enough, I saw his puzzle tattoo on his inner wrist and I may not know about colors but I do know that his was a shade darker than before, meaning that his puzzle piece had found his match. I sighed, "So, who is she?"

He blushed and both of my parents laughed at his shyness, "She's a grade older."

"Oh wow, a cougar. Didn't know you had it in you, little man," I state leaning over to him and ruffled his hair to which he just swatted my hand away and one thing led to another so we just started bickering back and forth now.

"Hey, you two, knock it off!" our father told us sternly.

And in that split second of looking back at us in the rearview mirror, he didn't see the truck trying to make an abrupt halt making us collide against each other with another truck from behind us who pushed the brake a bit too late.

---

I startled awake and tried to steady my breathing. My heart was bumping against my ribcage rapidly. My head was killing me and I couldn't help the stray tear escape my eyes. I gave a sigh and climbed out of bed. I went down into the kitchen and reached into the fridge for a frozen shot-glass and poured myself a shot of Jack Daniels and gulped it down.

I looked at the time and noticed it was 4am. I poured myself another and gulped it down again. I grabbed the bottle and glass and walked over to the sofa. I let out a sigh and slowly began to pace around the room looking back at the knick knacks on the shelves.

My attention came to the picture of me, Bethany, and the couple we took two weeks ago at the beach and the seashells the girls had collected that was laid out beside the picture. The girls had gushed about how the lighting and coloring was perfect in the picture when all I could see was grey and black and shades of red and pink in it. Another shot gulped down.

Nothing changed between the two weeks; I was doing my daily routine and was now preparing for midterms. Though Annalyn was pretty upset for me and was even more determined to find my soulmate. This resulted in an argument between the two of us and eventually led to her screaming last night, "You never appreciate anything I do for you! You're always feeling sorry for yourself that you never look forward to anything in life anymore!"

It was kind of the reason I woke up with a headache because I was still hungover a bit. Yet, here I was drinking again without the whole twelve hours of reset. I have a problem. I know. Don't try to argue with me and lecture me. I know.

Thinking back on what she said, it was all true. Even though I had my moments before, ever since the accident I distanced myself from people. Only the people I'm close to were let back into my life with the constant fear that anything could happen to them at any moment.

I was put into therapy and medication, however medication didn't help me and neither did consultations so I gave those up. Nothing comforted me more than pain; any form of pain. But seeing as how doing myself physical damage slowly killed Annalyn, I resorted to alcohol and sometimes cigarettes. She didn't like how I was dealing myself with internal pain but she abided by it since she knew it was either that or self-inflictions. Now you understand why I resort to drinking a lot.