Finding Home | Finders Keepers #1✔️

Twenty-Five - The Worst Way to Die

The sight of a huge casket, closed, was in front of us and all I could see were their bodies, bloated from the water, pale because there wasn't any life in them anymore. They didn't die from old age or bullet to the head, anything that wouldn't let them suffer. They suffered the worst kind of deaths—drowning and yet, somebody was able to save me that night.

I asked myself, that day, as they lowered them to the ground.

What exactly did they save me from? Did they save me so I would be able to watch this brutality? Did they save me so I could feel this emptiness in my soul and nothing but pain in my heart as it broke?

Because if it did, then, I'd rather be nothing than have nothing.

My eyes gazed at the translucent figures of my parents by their grave, watching me intently.

"You weren't supposed to be alive, honey," my mom says, shaking her head disapprovingly.

Dad walks closer, kneeling down in front of me. "You should have died. Instead of us. It was your fault."

My fault. It was all my fault.

Everything was my fault.

I should have died. Me. Not them.

Me.

There was water around my feet, I kick it away but it won't go away. It was rising and rising. I'm no longer at the funeral. I'm back at the car but mom and dad were nowhere to be found. I'm all lone, stuck in the car, the water rising now to my chest, the heavy weight of it pulling me down.

Using my elbow on the glass, I hit it hard, feeling pain resonating all over my body.

The water rises up to my lips. I lift myself up, taking a huge deep breath as I try to hit it again.

The air was going out of me. My lungs burns, aching to take a breath of fresh air but I'm met with swallowing water.

I'm drowning, I'm suffocating.

"You should have died."

Gasping for air, I sat up, my hands around my hair pulling on the strands, and pulling hard. My knees in front of me, arms hugging them close to my chest, my face hiding in between them while I continued to pull on my hair, trying to bring me back in reality.

I'm okay. I'm alive. I'm alive.

My eyes close, trying to take in the pain I was feeling.

Pain is good. Pain tells you you're alive.

"Rose?" A male's voice.

I feel a hand on my shoulder and red flags raises in my head. Immediately, I grab the person's wrist, pulling them away from me and kicking them hard in the stomach. He fells on the bed in front of me, his free hand on his stomach, face etched in pain.

"Fuck," he says, his blue eyes opening wide form the shock. "Will you stop fucking hitting me?"

Blue eyes. Luke.

Shadows. Warehouse.

I look around—metal walls, a single bed with bad mattress, a door for a window, and a window that has bars outside that looked like it took an inspiration from the jail cells in prison.