Fear •Zack Merrick•

Just A House ^02^

(Just a quick note, I'm switching from using atl song titles as the chapter title, to my own. Not super important, but I thought I'd let you guys know anyway.)

Elliott's POV;

I'm pretty sure my heart stopped beating, as the footsteps grew closer.

They stopped, and then the creaking of a door replaced them.

They were coming down here.

It finally connected in my head that I couldn't just stand in the middle of the room, as they decended down the flight of noisy stairs.

I looked for something to protect myself with, but there was nothing but the bolted chair.

I quickly, but quietly sprinted to the door, and pressed myself against the wall next to it.

I'd run for it, the second they're in here, and their back is to me.

The footsteps stopped right in front of the door, and I can hear them breath in sharply.

"Elliott?" A soft, familiar voice called out.

I stepped away from my spot immediately. "Rian? What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing." He crossed his arms, and looked at me like a mother would look at a child she was about to scold.

"I.. I don't know. But how did you know where to find me?" I avoided his gaze, part of me feeling ashamed.

"I saw you leave the house looking scared, and followed you." He replied, and shifted his gaze to the blood stain. He tensed up, but stayed where he was.

"You were there?" How could I not have noticed him, or his car in the driveway?

"In the kitchen, getting some water. I was hanging out with Jack and Zack, until Zack went to bed. Me and Jack had stayed up later drinking, until he passed out."

"Oh." That was the only thing that would leave my mouth.

It was silent for a few moments, before he shuffled his feet.

"Lets get out of here, okay?"

I nodded, and followed behind him as he led me up the stairs, and out of the house.

We made it back to my car, with his parked just a few feet away from mine.

He leaned against it. "Why did you come here?"

I pulled myself up onto the hood, and took a deep breath.

"I've been having a lot of nightmares lately, and I'm so tired of it. I feel like such a bother to Zack. I thought that maybe if I came here, I'd stop thinking about everything that happened. Does that make sense? Like, if I saw this place, one more time, I wouldn't think about it so much."

He stared at me intently, before shifting his gaze to the rising sun. Zack would no doubt be up by now, and probably freaking out.

"It does, in a way." He said. "When I got shot, it took me a long time to look at the wound. I would avoid it as hard as I could, for almost two weeks. Cass would take care of it for me, and I'd close my eyes. I spent so much time thinking about it, that it took up my life, my thoughts.

One day, I just couldn't do it anymore, and went to the mirror, and lifted up my shirt, and took off the bandage, and it hit me then. It was exactly that. It was just a wound.

I guess I felt that, if I didn't look at it, it never happened. That I never got shot. But I did. And I lived. I was obsessing over trying to avoid it, when I should have been rejoicing the fact that I could have died, but didn't. Accepting this, has made me even stronger.