Death from the inside out

o n e

I stepped off the creaky old bus, dust blowing up around me as the passive faces of the brainwashed school children flashed past until I could see them no more. Walking down my dusty lane, there was possibly a touch of smoke i could smell. Very strange. Why would anyone have the fire going on a day like today? Or possibly my senses were paying games with me again. That would make sense.

As I stumbled along I noticed a plume of white smoke crawling horizontally down the neighbours long driveway. I blocked my nose with my woollen jumper. I hated breathing in foreign substances. Strange fear, but a fear all the same. A fear that seemed to disappear in some states, but intensify in others.

The lane seemed to have stretched to three times it's length since I had walked down its corrugated surface what seemed like a lifetime ago. The whole day I had walked through school in a faze, as if I had been drugged or drunk too much alcohol. But surprisingly I had attempted to do neither in the past few days. Or had I? My brain doesn't even know. My whole being is too far gone to care.

Through the hazy horizon, a house appeared. I faintly recognised it as 'home',but all I could bear myself to think of it was 'house'. The house was surrounded by the cloud looking mirage. It had to be an illusion. It had to be. White smoke surrounding an entire neighbourhood? Unheard of. Except in bush fires. Could this be a bushfire? I don't know. I hope so. Then I could just walk into the flames and burn to ashes, blowing through the rough breeze, through the hills, and off into the infinite skies. But life was not meant to be that easy, as I discovered walking closer towards the house. Because the vapour was unfortunately not smoke. It had a strange sickly sweet smell, that I was now unconsciously inhaling deeply.

My hand had long ago dropped from protecting my airways, and was now hanging limply by my side, tingling from the strange substance which I assumed had poisoned me. Whoever had caused this was surely planning to kill. My whole lower body was limp now, as my knees buckled and I sunk down onto the hard, slightly cold but slightly warm concrete. This would be a nice place to die, I thought. My whole body was numb now, laying in a crumpled position against the concrete. Straight in my line of vision was a portrait of my sister and mother, neatly placed on the dresser of my fathers bedroom. I tried to move my head, but it wouldn't budge. I tried to shut my eyes, but they were frozen open. All I could do was stare at the picture, frozen in place and time. The strange fog slowly lifted, pouring through my fathers bedroom window and into the portrait. My mother and sisters mouths opened wide; as if they were about to pronounce the word 'oranges' in an overdramatised manner. They swallowed the cause of my death whole, leaving me staring with eyes wide open straight at Gemma's perfect little O of a mouth.

My vision blurred, blotting out the haunting image of the villainous half of my family, and focusing on a realistic vision of the moral quarter. My father crouched next to me, welcoming and embracing me with loving arms. Slowly we drifted upward, the sky still a bright blue due to the long summer days. Finally, all at peace, I could be with the only person in my family who truly valued me, and didn't give me shivers every time I looked at their face. But were the rest of my family really evil? After all, they did get me here, this wonderful place some call heaven.