These Last Days

8. All The Darkness Looks Alive

Shawn.

One year ago.

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He stuttered and always blushed too much.
in the mornings, when the sun would dive through his kitchen windows, he'd always eat too slow but drink too fast, stains perpetual on the collars of his shirts. Shirts he always hid under a random hooded sweatshirt with the colors faded and sleeves always worn out, but its what made him comfortable. He'd submerge himself in them when reading his books of fantasy and adventure on one of the patio chairs that sat on his backyard porch. Even when it was too hot, you'd always find him in something with heavy sleeves. This was the strangeness that had become Shawn Darkholmë.

Hidden away and always choosing to hold in the hurt.

When he spoke, it was always low and rough, sometimes he'd go days without speaking, no one to talk to in the cold country side of Ontario anyways.

He trotted around the sizable construct his Father had bought after the sale and abandonment of the house Shawn was raised in. Even he too suffered critically at the loss of Elsa, his late wife and Shawn's mother. Malcolm Darkholme was a political prodigy and a man with a limitless potential to reach higher power in the ranks of the hands that kept the world at bay.
He was always gone, but Shawn understood why. He had only wanted was best for him and his son, so he left. Making the world 'a better place.'

Shawn barely left the new estate. He locked himself away in various rooms, always with a number of books in his hands and earpods dangling from the tips of his ears. Music and words of fiction the only thing anchoring him to himself.

His windows were boarded up, any streak of light was stripped away into the dark and its many manifestations.
Still feeling numb from his mother's absence, and again feeling hopeless over the loss of another substitute for love. He'd never had much luck finding someone with the same acquired mind as his. But every boy that walked out still always hurt. It'd been like that for a while. Always one there, but never one constant.

The sun always came up, and Shawn always closed his eyes. Light could only make things visible, light shined through the cracks of his secrets and lies, burned away at his solitude and sanity.

light was the only thing that was honest. Not his father, not the strangers in his bed, not the fairytales he read of, not even the voices in his head. Honesty in the light of his own reflection was more of an ugly truth than anything he had forged in the dark.

Dark had become warmth and ignorance had become bliss.

He pulled the covers over again, locking himself in the embrace of the smells of others that used to dwell with him, with their legs tangled and hair a mess. All he could do was remember or hide in between his sheets of delight and of delirium.

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Present.

A boy lay bleeding.
A city lay in ruin.
Both burning and broken,
inside and out.

Shawn had lost consciousness once the disheveled group arrived at the base. Santa Monica Airport had become the go to evacuation/medical site for any survivors in the West Hollywood, Central LA, and Beverly Hills Area.

They didn't know what to do. They watched as planes upon planes soared off into the air, as dozens were pushed into large tents with red crosses on them, the injured and lost virtually everywhere.

It was the day the boarding process for ITA Isle was supposed to start, over 5000 students had been enrolled but how many would show up let alone be alive after the quake?
These thoughts all the same in the heads of Nick, Bex, Havana & Meadow who all were panicking, looking everywhere on the tarmac for somewhere to go.