NECHRO

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by didntask

by didntask

I SPEND MY first day home holed up in my room for 24 hours straight, eating Pringles and sipping that sweet cranberry juice while binge watching Netflix series'. My back aches from staying in one obtuse position for too long but i really cant care less.

It has been a total of four dreadful months since I've been back at my hometown. Too busy with assignments at college to visit home during the weekends is what I convince myself, i actually just really hate this place.

Mom knows but doesn't seem to mind though, neither does dad. I bet they were glad that i wasn't around to mess shit up for them during those few months. But here i am again, Greenwood, the petite town located in Arizona, famous for it's chocolate factories which provide an array of different flavoured sweets from around the world and it's clear blue rivers and streams that appear as sapphires glistening against the sun that starts from the top of a mountain and connects to the ocean; the place where I'm treated like a criminal, an outcast, an outsider. If I'm lucky, i wont have to make any human interactions throughout the whole semester break.

Unfortunately, luck was never on my side.

Everything was exactly the same as i left it, the bright red rug now fading into an orange similar to the disaster of 2016 when i dyed my hair, the stripped blue and white wallpaper still peeling off at the edges and my bedroom light still flickering every 15 seconds.

On the bulletin board above my desk still had my mathematic formulas scribbled down on multicoloured post-it-notes with glitter pens. A collection of photos reamined pinned on the cork board including a polaroid of me, Joohyun and Sungwan.

Its a photo that i always catch my self taking guilty glances at, as if I'm not supposed to be looking at it. Sighing, i get myself up, bones cracking, and take a closer look at it. It was taken two years ago, we had planned to go to Disneyland for months and were ecstatic when we finally arrived. Joohyun was wearing a neon pink polka dot Minnie the Mouse bow on top of her head with her hand on Sungwans waist. My mouth was wide open mid laugh as Sungwan snapped the picture.

Us three, together and happy.

Even my cropped section of a ORCHID LAKE article stayed put underneath my cheap 2 dollar eyeshadow palette. It was the one i left behind after making a dash out of Greenwood to the big city, Manhattan. Each time I remember why i bolted out of this town, I feel a strike of lightning go down my spine.

Guilt washing over me like lemon juice on paper cuts, I start to feel my wounds reopening as my flesh pales. Crimson blood begins to spill all over my pyjamas and onto the rug, the colour of blood mixing with the rug as my tears fall relentlessly, still, thats nothing compared to how i made Sungwan's family feel.

It's all your fault!

Fucking bitch! Dont you feel sorry?

I'd pity her but there's no reason to

I shake myself out of a daze and go back to flop on my bed so i can resume watching Sherlock. The voices of Mycroft arguing with his brother were muffled and the more i try to listen to what they're saying, the more i feel drowned out, as if I'm at the bottom of the ocean, desperately trying to grasp sea foam as my breath begins hitching. One voice rings in my head works like an anchor, keeping me still, unable to move and paralysed at the very bottom:

Its all your fault! MURDERER!

The voice belongs to Joohyun.