Vegetable Soup

Chapter One: Hesper Hears the Rain

Hello beautiful person. So you've decided to read my book? Let me just say this book is merely my distraction from "We Are Ameline" because if I don't distract myself I'll probably just update every single last part of the story and not give myself a chance to think about what I'm typing. So, this is born. Enjoy!

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A black void. I'm running out of things to think about. I'm going to crazy in here, in this hell. Dad once said everyone has their own version of hell. His would be the Prohibition Era, he told me. Mom's would be her father's attic. Todd never told me what his was, when I asked him. He never told me anything.

I told Daddy, "I don't need a Hell, because I'll be here with you so long that when I die I will be a saint because I never left your side. I will never have a chance to do anything wrong." Boy, was I wrong there. My hell is with me know, devouring every inch of my sanity, if there is any left to devour. I swim through a neverending darkness, with a silence that eats away at my detached soul. I try to cry out, but I feel no throat. No sound escapes me, because there is nothing to produce it.

I have run over every detail of that last day. Dad and I snuck out when Mom was watching TV. Todd saw us, but he ignored us as we giggled and picked up the keys to Dad's truck. We stopped by the package store first and then went to the movies so we could see what everyone at my school was talking about. When we left, Dad asked if I wanted icecream. He'd already finished the bottle.

We hadn't been on the highway for more than a minute when dad looked at me and smiled. I smiled at him, but something was wrong. He let go of the wheel. Terror engulfed me then, as he crawled into the backseat and I watched us swerve into the middle of the lanes. I woke up in Hell.

 Sometimes my mind goes blank. I float through the hollow dark world as a vegetable. I let myself turn into a taxidermy girl and pretend I live in some little girl's closet. Later, I'll pretend I feel a soft cushion of a fuzzy animal much like my own stuffed animals from when I was alive. Maybe its the madness, but occasionally, I would swear I feel it.

THWOOM! THWOOM!

I try to scream, but as usual nothing comes out. I feel panic arising in my chest. Wait, when did I have a chest?

Pit. Pat. Pitpat. Pitpatpitpatpitpatpitpat

I listen. What was the sound? A butterfly flutters into my throat and I listen carefully for another new sound. Had I been in here a thousand years? Was I being delivered to peace, finally? I wish for a moment I could feel a smile, but instead another

THWOOM!

greets me. I compare the sound to that of a thunderstorm, and after listening for what feels like another thousand years, I decide. Yes. I hear a thunderstorm. A thunderstorm in some other layer of Hell.