Till we break

The Moment The World Stood Still

“What is this?” My mom yelled at me. She held my phone in her hands and checked my browser history. “Overdose?!” she was mad. “Rachel, answer me!”
I couldn’t say anything and tears were streaming down my face. I wanted to disappear, I couldn’t stand my mom yelling me. She slapped me in the face.
“Stop crying and answer! Now!”
I took a deep breath and told her with a cracked voice “You don’t understand! I’m suffering. I can’t handle this, it’s all too much.”
She shook her head. “Stop these excuses. You’re not suffering from a deadly disease, so there’s no reason to do research for such things! Pull yourself together!” She threw my phone on my bed. “Start thinking about the people around you.” Then she left me alone.

I was still crying. It was a beautiful day. The February sun slowly melted the snow. How much heat would it need to melt a human being?
In this moment I felt nothing. There was nothing inside me, not even sadness, guilt or despair. My head was silent. The world seemed to be standing still.
I looked outside the window. I saw my dad walking to his car. But he wasn’t moving.
I shook my head and looked into another direction. Kids on the playground on the other side of the street. They were not moving too. I stood up and looked down to the place in front of the mirror, where I had been kneeling and stepped back. I could still see myself there.
“What is happening here?” I whispered to myself.
I ran out of my room and down the stairs. My mom was standing in the kitchen, standing still.
My head ached horribly. I ran out of the house and stopped a few steps later.
It wasn’t cold, or warm. There was no temperature and that felt so strange.
I stepped on the street and heard a crackling and looked down. The ground fissured.
“What the…?”
Then suddenly the ground broke into pieces, fell into the deep. I ran away, along the street, not knowing where I should go.
The destruction was fast and followed me without any problems.
I tried to run faster, but I barely had enough energy and power.
All I could think about was this surreal thing. This couldn’t be real, but I didn’t understand.
I was dizzy and almost stumbled.
The ground beneath my feet fell down and I leaped forward, but I fell down too. For a moment I didn’t realize what just happened, but as I saw the sky being further away I started to scream. I screamed the hell out of my lungs.
The hole seemed endless and was darker than the darkest nights.

I stopped screaming and closed my eyes, spread my arms and thought about what my grannie said to me once.
When you fall, be the Phoenix that rises up again.
“How?” I whispered softly.
I opened my eyes again and couldn’t see the sky anymore, there was nothing more than darkness around me.

“What is this?” I asked the darkness. Of course I got no answer.
I just wanted to know what was going on.
Suddenly I stopped falling. I was floating in the darkness.
“This doesn’t make any sense!” I screamed.
“This does not make any sense.” I whispered.
“It does.” Said a voice in my head.

I found myself looking out of my window again, watching my dad walking to his car and kids playing on the playground.
“It does.” I said slowly. “It does make sense.”
I stood up. “Everything’s back to normal.” There was nobody where I just had  kneeled. I sighed and looked at my desk.
There was laying the picture of a Phoenix Janice had drawn for me.
“It does.” I repeated.