Sky falls to the ground.
The horror is slow: it takes its time ripping through my nerves, starting at my heart, tearing towards my brain: that's when I understand.
When it finally reaches my soul: that's when I break.
"Sky!" I scream, and fall to my knees next to his body.
He is a thing. He is a shell, because the light behind his eyes—
"Sky!" I scream, I scream it again. Again, until I can no longer hear my voice ripping for him, deaf with shock. I can't hear the people shouting around me, either. I can't see them gather, see them gasp. All I can see is his face, his empty face, gone completely cold this time, completely hidden.
Didn't he say it? Didn't he say he would never hide from me?
I scream. I scream.
Now he's gone from his body, and I can only see him: I can only the lips that once told me he loves me, the unseeing eyes that once cried, the cheeks I kissed.
Gone. They are gone; they are dead, they are—
I scream. I scream.
I can only see him, the chest I laid my head on, now still: an empty box. The forehead I kissed.
Now it has a bullet hole in it.
I scream. I scream. My hands claw at his chest, fly to his face, his arms, trying to search for him under my fingertips, to find him, to pull him out of his hiding place so I can see him. Because I've always seen him. I've always, always seen him.
But he isn't there. And he isn't hiding.
"Sky!" I scream. I scream. I scream at the blood pooling under his head, staining the petals underneath; the body beneath me that doesn't contain him, where is he, where is he?
He's gone.
"Sky!" I cry, staining his plain white shirt with blood. Screaming at the traces of red on his skin. It shouldn't be there. It shouldn't be outside of him; he shouldn't be bleeding, this is wrong, so wrong—
"Sky, please!"
Who am I begging for? What am I praying for? His heart is still, his body is here but his life is gone, he is gone—
"Sky." Now I whisper, because maybe then he'll come back to me. "Sky." Back to life. "Sky." Maybe then he'll pull me in and tell me he loves me again.
But no.
My head falls onto his cold chest. I try to will his heart to begin anew, to start beating for me again.
"Stay," I pray, beginning to shake. And in my chest, beyond it, a severing leaves me choking on air: a part of me is ripped away, a violent snap of the red string that leaves my chest and connects inside his.
"Stay..." I whisper, crying, smiling tenderly at him, then crumbling once more when his eyes don't answer, when they don't sparkle. "Stay, stay."
I cling onto him still.
"Stay..."
The storm inside me rages and I cling onto him.
"Stay—"
But he's dead; and I'm holding onto nothing—
"Stay!"
And in the back of my mind, a broken promise:
"Stay."
YOU ARE READING
Asunder
Teen Fiction"Promise me. Promise me you'll never beg someone to stay when they're already gone." Tangled up a million knots, Kingsley has lost faith in happiness. Her heavy heart struggles to continue to beat, and she is slowing down. It seems to her that the w...
