Paper Trails 2 | Draft

intro

Four Months Later

I stared at her.

And she stared back.

We were looking at each other, but not really. When I first glanced at her, I noted how pretty she was. Sharp, narrowed face, short hair, pouty lips. Pretty. She raised a hand, brushed a strand of hair out her face, and smiled. It wasn't real or honest. It was just a smile—just to see if she still could.

And she could, of course.

Anyone could smile.

Anyone could pretend.

She must be good at it. I tilted my head to the side, watched as she did the same while applying dark red lipstick. It looked good on her. Sultry. Seductive. She looked fierce. Dangerous.

But she wasn't.

She was scared.

Just a scared little girl. A sheep in wolf's clothing.

Suddenly I felt disappointed.

Sheep.

She's just a sheep.

The dog that barks but doesn't bite. Can't bite. She had no bite.

Why? Where had her lethal bite gone? Her poisonous tongue?

What stripped her of her strength?

There were a list of things. I understood her. There's always a list of things.

Never just the one.

We're a built up ball of energy. And pain. And madness.

There's always more. Strip away one layer, and another, and another...and what's underneath?

More. More pain. Never ending...just sitting there. Settling on her chest like a weight. Crushing, crushing, crushing her. Making her smaller, and weaker.

At first, she fought it. At first, she was a wolf.

But even wolves can be outsmarted. There's always something stronger, more powerful.

A snake can eat the mouse, but a hawk can kill a snake. A lion can kill many animals—weather as small as a bird or as large as an elephant, but we can kill a lion.

We're not at the top of the food chain, either.

We're killed by nature, by disease, by weapon, by our own bodies, once we get old enough.

There's no such thing as indestructible. There's no top in the food chain.

We all die.

Is that sad? Scary? Maybe.

But maybe it's just the way of the world. Maybe we were never meant to last. We weren't meant to see it all. We weren't meant for bigger, and better.

We were here for a moment. One, single moment. And then we're lost in time. Dead. Forgotten. We're a name on a grave, or ashes in the wind.

One minute we're here, and in the next second we're not. And people will remember us. People we loved, or people who loved us. And when they die, there's nothing but photographs and diaries and trophies to remember us. Nothing but items to keep our memory alive.

She didn't want to be a kept memory.

Memories are sacred.

She...

She was nothing.

She looked back at me one last time. Our eyes met.

And even as the blade sliced through our skin, and the blood seeped out, and the darkness we tried so hard to shut out settles over us like a blanket, melding into our skin, we didn't look away from each other.

I smiled, and so did she. A tear rolled down both our cheeks. We were meant to be, her and I.

Meant to be sad. Meant to be alone. Meant to be here.

And when the blade no longer offered her what she needed, she put it down.

There were other ways to feel.