Broadwire

17: All My Friends Are Dead: Trenton & Jasmine

Trenton

Dakota appeared out of thin air and replaced where Emeril had been standing. He noticed the multiple dead bodies and Brie and a face of sadness and confusion swept over him.

"Dakota?" I asked, knowing it was him. I just didn't want it to be. He and Jasmine wouldn't be here for very long. I had worked it out in my head when I spoke the poem. I hadn't really been there in the board, my soul was there, not my body. Dakota and Jasmine's body were in the ground somewhere, buried. This wasn't them, it was there souls. I could tell by the way the grass wasn't moving under Dakota's feet. He was just a borderline ghost, not able to alter the physical world.

"Yea, it's me," he said cheerfully, and I couldn't handle it anymore. I started bawling. I fell to my knees. I had already lost Carli, Cayden, and Sarah. Now I would lose Dakota and Jasmine also. Jasmine materialized behind Dakota and a smile formed in her lips. I started crying even harder. They were both already starting to disappear. They realized it, but it was happening too fast for them to fight.

"What's happening?" they both asked in terror. They were gone. No more fear. No more anything. So I sat. I cried. And I turned to be sad with Brie. My last living child-hood friend. I walked over to her and hugged her.

"It's not gonna be okay, and I won't lie and say it will. Before we have our mental breaks though, we still are going to be blamed for the deaths of many. You have to lie and say I didn't kill Dakota and Jasmine. Since you're the only witness, you can say you were just confused. Sarah and I are escaped patients, but I'll say she forced me to follow her against my will. We came here, she killed them and attracted wolves with their scent. The wolves feasted on Sarah and Cayden, but we were protected Carli's body. It's easy to convince the authorities if you have a bad guy to blame it on, who is Sarah," I explained to her. She stopped crying and pulled her phone out.'

"You ready?" she asked me, and I nodded. She called the police and used the emotion she already had to cry. After a while, they showed up. Brie changed her statement about me, we told our lies, and we were free. Brie drove me to her place, and we just sat and cried. Everything we ever knew had been stolen from us. We had no control over the situation, everyone was dead. We couldn't stop that. Our tears were quiet, not screaming, just shaking. Unable to change the world.

Brie

I wake up from a dream. Nightmare more like. Cayden's body being twisted and distorted and broken.

"Ahhh!" I screamed and broke into crying for the second time that night. Trenton rushed in since he was staying here now.

"Nightmare again?" he asked. He had been having them too, just he didn't wake up screaming.

"Yea, Cayden this time. It's so real," I said, and he just nodded in agreement.

"I saw Sarah. Her- Never mind. It's alright, just go back to sleep. We can talk in the morning," he said, and looked at me, "It'll be okay," and he walked back into Carli's old room. I shut my eyes and the scene kept replaying over and over in my head. All of it. My daughter, who had never done anything wrong, was killed. She was so innocent, never had done anything bad. I broke into tears again. I thought about Cayden. He wasn't just killed, he was mangled. The law might have thought it was a wild animal, but I knew the truth. It was that beast. Emeril. I shuddered at even the thought of the name. The tears burned my eyes, but I tried not to think about it. I couldn't keep it out of my head though. Trenton had told me about where they were at now. Just stagnant in a small room. I won't lie. Every night, I thought about playing with the board. I hadn't told Trenton, but I had kept it in my bedside table. I wasn't going to, I knew the consequences, but I wanted to talk to them both. I pushed that thought to the back of my head, not able to think about it without the crave of the board at the front of my head. After crying for another few minutes, I was asleep, back into the nightmares.

Trenton

Brie screaming in the middle of the night became something I had to get used to. I understood it, I would be screaming to if my child and loved one were viciously murdered. I just had become so numb to everything. My friends were so close to coming back, but they were just ghosts. Sarah was now the bad guy even though she was just trying to help. Brie and I knew the truth didn't matter compared to us being freed, but I still felt bad for making her go down in history as a murderer. I would have. I heard the scream again and I jumped up, but I laid back down. I couldn't help her nightmares, like she couldn't help mine. So I just started playing my music from Brie's old phone. The one she used to find us. The tears burned my eyes from both nostalgia from listening to old 2000's emo rock and the past day's events. With Paramore's "crushcrushcrush" playing into my earbuds, I fell asleep, shaking, not knowing what would happen with my life now.