Decipher | Watty's 2017

XLIX. Ruination

Ruination

/ˌro͞oəˈnāSHən/

noun

the state of being ruined

Fire ran through my veins as the entire group split up down the halls of the lower level of the Central Office. It no longer looked like a clean and organised facility, but a dungeon of the middle ages that I had read about in books. The smell alone made me want to throw up, and if it hadn't been for the fact that Melissa was most likely down here, I would have turned on my heel the moment I stepped foot on the ground.

The walls were moist, adding to the natural humidity of the underground bunker. Pain was the only idea that came to my head as I continued to take in my surroundings. This whole area looked like a torture chamber and Melissa may have been subjected to being down here for months on end while I was helplessly going place to place, searching bomb shelters and warehouses for her.

Soft patters of feet echoed throughout the small hallway that we walked in, each man taking extreme caution as he placed one foot after another. Beside me, the only person that seemed to echo my pain through and through walked slowly and hesitantly, scared that this may be another dead end. His hair was now a blonde color and his facial hair, that always appeared clean shaven before trauma struck us, was now scruffy and grown slightly on his face.

"You need to relax," his voice sounded from beside me, coming off to be strained as if holding all of his emotions at bay. He had put on such a tough exterior in the first week when we searched and combed through every area that we could think of before we finally fell silent and dropped off the earth, waiting for their next move. I, on the other hand, had been a wreck, unable to hold in the emotional turmoil I was feeling.

"What if I'm too late Michael?" my voice gave out at the end of the sentence, too scared of what could be and what I could lose. "What if they are trying to break me like they did with Cynthia?"

His neck craned to look at me, assessing my facial features before he released a deep sigh, knowing that all that I was saying could be the case. Despite being her best friend and treating her like the sister he never had, Michael was the second closest to Melissa out of all of us, right behind myself. Her disappearance had hit him hard and changed him. The carefree Michael that once existed was no longer with us as he became calculated and detached from reality, hiding his pain as well as he could.

"I've wondered that too," he mumbled under his breath, knowing that I would catch his words once they passed his lips.

Ashton had chosen to stay with the technology squad, feeling responsible for Melissa's disappearance since he let her in the building in the first place. Since that first message that had occurred six months ago, we had received a video chat every month, each holding more and more gruesome content than the last. One simply showed Melissa's face, badly beaten to the point that the woman I loved was almost unrecognizable.

At first it was a simple black eye, but it slowly escalated. The next she had bruises scattering her porcelain skin that normally never had a blemish accept a bit of acne every once and awhile. The most recent included her healing black eyes, covered by more recent marks of abuse, a bruise covering the expanse of the left side of her forehead, her cheekbones protruded more than usual, showing her lack of nourishment, and cuts were tearing open her beautiful skin around her eyebrows and her lips. Dark circles were bagging under her eyes from exhaustion and her body was slumped forward, only held up by the use of other people's muscles arranging her correctly.

Calum had opted to stay in the van, ready to drive at a moment's notice to the colony with Melissa in the back. He had been a mess in the past few weeks, clinging to every hope as to her whereabouts. The ideas that had been running through my mind since the first day, were finally infiltrating the minds of all the people on these search parties. They had started thinking and talking as the searches grew smaller and less frequent. Even though we had received a picture only a week ago, showing her alive, everyone seemed to be doubting how much more she could take before her body gave out.