The Phoenices Volume 1 - Expired

Chapter 3 - Reilly

I climbed out of the car, practically sprinting through the door of my house, tossing my laptop onto the couch and following shortly after it. I opened a new google tab, looking up what could cause forty deaths in one building it one day. Scrolling through the pages, I read article after article about bombings, shootings, gas leaks, major accidents, and many, many other terrible things that caused hundreds of lives to be lost in a single building in one day. My heart rate slowly increased, each terror attack that lead to multiple deaths accelerating it one more beat per minute. School shootings. Bombings. Gas attacks. Plane crashes. Vehicular homicides. Terrorists taking hostages. Arson. Simple accidents. My mind was swirling with terrible images, a man clad in dark colors, greatly contrasting against the stark skin of his neck and wrists. A rifle pressed into his chest, the trigger being pulled once, twice, forty times. No. Next scene. A girl slipping in IB Chemistry. Her beaker, full of harmless chemicals, knocks another beaker, also full of harmless chemicals over. They mix together, causing an explosion big enough to decimate the classroom. Not that one either. Images of the school's skeleton flash through my mind, small chunks of brick scattered across the lot that it rests on, the faux stone tiling around the base blown out and shattered. My eyes began to fill with tears, my breathing quickened and panicked, my heart racing like a horse that just won the Kentucky Derby. I slammed the lid of the laptop shut, pushing it away from me and standing to go make myself a cup of tea. The scalding hot liquid with a hint of bitter cinnamon and milk relaxed me, and my thrashing heart slowed a miniscule amount, followed by my breath, unlatching itself from my throat. My eyes were dried. A single drop of tea sloshed over the edge, as my wrists were still shaking. There was a split second of searing pain, and then the tea cooled, leaving but a small, blistered lump on my left wrist. I gently ran my fingers over the bright pink splotch, my eyes drifting from the burn to the date merely millimeters away from it. Nineteen days. I gently brought the hot mug to my lips, letting the liquid scald my throat on its way down. Deciding not to do my homework, I was going to die in the next few days anyways, I picked up a book I hadn't gotten around to reading yet. Opening to the first page, I began to read. The story was a haunting journey, detailing the history of a friendship, which was lost to the freezing grip of time. One of the characters forgot their past life, only to rediscover it once again many many decades later, fighting a war to save humanity. A strong romance was sparked between the two friends, but they were both in denial.I felt my lips moving quickly along with the words as they travelled through my brain. The partners fought side by side, facing civil injust, their team split in two over discord on how to act. They fought for their lives, along with the lives of many others. I began to connect my life to theirs, and soon enough I felt as though I was along beside them, fighting with them for what was right. I was no longer a girl sitting in the corner under several layers of blankets, but a wordy warrior, standing atop a roof of a building and rallying for what was right, wings made of words and steel spreading from my back as I took flight, protecting the innocent. I began to drift in the wind, floating between air drifts to keep myself a flight. The clouds were soft like cotton, the wind cooled and relaxing. I was free, the world was safe, my friends were safe from any danger. My mind was lost in the words, numbing me to the outside world. There was no horrifying images of my peers dying in gruesome attacks. No anxiety from the nearing date of my death, no worry of how it would occur. There was just me, the characters, and they world they came from. Nothing else mattered to me, nothing else was important other than the words on the pages. I began to ignore them, forgetting as soon as I read. I retained enough to understand until the last page was closed between the hard covers. I don't remember what they said, I don't remember what book I was reading. I don't remember what color the cover was. I don't remember drifting off, having the first restful night of sleep in, I don't know, many, many months. I had good dreams. I was good. Life was good.

A/N: 797 words according to NaNoWriMo