oblivion(#wattys2015)

Chapter 9: Death.

The ear splitting bang was enough to shatter the windows and photos out of their frames. Skylar's face was horrified as her bed shook under her and hurled her to the ground. Me and Alex quickly helped her stand up and we ventured out of the room on our heels.

The door crashed behind us as I tripped on a glass shard and scraped my knee. Biting my lip to avoid screaming, I stood up.

We then scampered to another room to look for Ayberk and Delilah.

"Ayberk!" "Delilah" "Dilly" we kept on screaming but there was no answer. With horrified expressions we began to decent the stairs that were now railingless and were showered with glass. We kept shouting their names as another loud bang hollered the house and did all but uproot the house from the ground.

"Go away! Get out!" Delilah screamed from somewhere. We turned around, trying to figure out the source of her voice. The staircase had come down, layered across the floor in a rubble pile of wood.

"Delly, where are you?" Alex asked her. Rather he yelled at her.

"You can't save me... Ayberk's gone! JUST GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE..!!" Her voice was strong, but weak. Turning a corner in the huge mansion, we saw her lying across the floor amongst rubble. A scream escaped my mouth.

Her shirt was drowned in blood. Tears streamed her eyes. A very mutilated body lay beside her. Ayberk. He had nursed me back to health.

"They got here. Simon's men." She spoke in a small voice. All her strength seemed to have vanished when we reached her. A glass shard, a big, sharp one had priced her fatally. I felt tears stream down my face.

She focused her weak gaze on Skylar now and looked her in the eye.

"Go to Jackson. Then go back to your parents. Take your sister. Tell them Simon's men had come. Tell them. Take this. Be safe. Go." Her face fell as she spoke the last word. She put a small pouch in Skylar's hands with difficulty as her fingers shook. The colour from her face was draining. Her eyes stared out into nothingness and her heart remained silent as she dozed off into a deathly sleep, into death itself.

A stronghold tightened around my arm to bring me to the present and I was pulled away form there. The house was eerily silent. The difference in the air could be felt. It was smoky and ashy and uncomfortable. It was sad, I could smell death in the air, I could feel it as it lingered behind, clinging to the walls of my lungs, as it weighed down on me, as it killed me silently like cancer. The silence rang in my ears as I tried to focus and failed.

Tears had clouded my vision, and thoughts had flooded my mind. I couldn't look straight, think straight or focus at anything in particular at all. I was in oblivion.

I had witnessed death for the first time in my life. The lingering unhappiness and sadness in the environment after death was unbelievably scary and frightening.

I don't know what way we had moved but we were out of the house. The air was greying and smelled of soot. The whole street had been burned and the houses were broken down to rubble.

We walked through the street as thoughts clouded my vision and questions almost made my mind spin till it couldn't possibly spin any more.

I was made to settle in the passenger seat of a car. Alex took the wheels and my sister got herself into the backseat. I felt her hand slither along the length of my arm and then hold my hand in hers. She tugged at it, trying to comfort me. I thought I should comfort her back. That was all I could do about it, think. I hope she heard.

Alex drove fast, the proof of what had just happened got lost before I could even gather my thoughts around the fact that we had begun to move. Nevertheless, there was still the unnerving razor sharp memory of everything striking my mind like sharp needles.