||F E A R||

||BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS||

That was the day my mother had died. Blu's father, Alecki, suspected her ribs pierced her lungs, maybe her heart. We all lost someone that day. Dread's father had gotten killed by a soldier on his way home, Blu's mother was executed for trying to help the poor and Charge's father had gotten sick and passed away in his sleep.

​ It's the first day of the last year of our schooling today. The Watching came out with a new rule, the "Blood Rule".
​"Fear, I'm begging you, I need it. Please, it hurts to breathe, the aching in my bones, I need it." Dread was leaning on me as we walked our three mile journey to meet the girls just to walk another half mile to Facility. His body is craving Soot.
​ Soot is a drug that consists of heroin, usually laced with methamphetamines, as well as something else that has been smuggled in by The Watchers, the soldiers, which is no surprise. Prone usage will dull everything, make the person that was full of love and color catatonic and greyscale. Anything and everything such as nails, teeth, blood, muscles, even the bones are affected, anything. It's said that the color comes from the ashes of departed Watchers that the higher ups ordered to... dispose of.
​"Stay here," I whisper as I help him lean against a large boulder. "I'll get it. Just don't fall asleep. You know it's dangerous if someone who's been addicted as long as you doesn't have it their system." His face twists in pain as he let out a low whine, an unusual, high pitched sound coming from someone of his stature, and nod as he relaxed as much as his body would allow and I jog off our usual path. I eventually come across someone from our year who is known to have some on them and after about five minutes or so I retrieve Dread's supply for the next month, give or take, and quickly return to him.
     "Dread, please open your eyes, we're almost to their household. You can make it. You can use then. Just get up." His eyes were almost completely shut and the bottoms of his nails were beginning to grey. He eventually nodded, slowly registering my words as his eyes occasionally rolled to the back of his skull. He's mumbling incoherent nonsense as I help him up and carried some of his dead weight the last half mile to the girl's.
​"What took so long?" Charge is picking at her nails as she asked impatiently. Then she saw how bad Dread was. "Get him over here." She helped me carry him the few houses down to Blu and I saw her with the familiar small, ratty black case in her hand as she nervously toyed with it.
     ​"Someone pull up his sleeve. We need to find an open vein." Charge said as we laid him down.
     The first time Dread had injected Soot, Blu knew. She knew everything and even though she hadn't talked since that day in the 4th year, she automatically knew what would eventually become routine. Everything and anything about the world has been engraved in that skull of hers since the second she took her first breath.
​ Once I melted the previously crystallized Soot and managed to get it into a couple of syringes, Blu had already tied the thick rubber band high around his upper forearm and kept a finger on a decent prominent vein. Once I had double checked there were no air bubbles in the syringe and the drug entered his needy body, his eyes roll to the back of his head once more as several muscles in his body twitched and jerked as I rolled him on his side while Charge collected his head on her lap, knowing he would have a small seizure due to the fact that he hadn't had it in who knows how long. He slowly managed to gain control of his body, but by the time we began walking again, he was still extremely shakey.