Chapter 1- Slow Motion
Ryley-
I'd walked through this very same door a hundred times. This house, at times, was more my house than the owners'. It wasn't my second home in any way. It WAS my home. I came here in all my times of happiness, sorrow, angst, and anger. I'd walked through it almost everyday of my life for the past three years but it never felt this way before. It was like as I walked through the door it felt like no one was there. Not in the obvious ways I usually knew, like the car wasn't parked in the driveway, or the lights weren't on in the living room. It was different. I just knew. Do you know the feeling I'm talking about? The impossible feeling where every inch of your being just knows.
I felt uneasy walking through the house. I quickly shook the feeling off and walked into the living room where Cara's laptop lay open on the couch. Sitting next to it was a bowl of her favorite off brand cereal, Fruit-O's. I smiled to myself as I thought of all the countless times I'd try to convince her to eat anything else for breakfast.
"Cara?" I called. I was still casually walking around the house, waiting on her to come downstairs and meet me. I made my way into the brightly colored kitchen. It smelt of apples and pine sol. I walked over to the cabinet and grabbed a mug.
"Cara, we're going to be late! Hurry up," I yelled as I poured my cup of coffee.
I poured in some cream and sugar and waited. I sifted through some of the mail on the counter; there were a couple of letters addresses to her mom from QVC. Her mom must have started back up on her continuous QVC shopping. After about ten minutes of waiting for her, I started walking up the stairs. That's when I noticed the water running in her bathroom. The door was cracked slightly. I stood there for a second then called her name again,
"Cara, come on we're going to be late. The movie starts in an hour, and we have to get there early to check out the eye candy. I can already smell Caleb Whitman being all over you… Cara?" I stopped talking and listened to hear her say something, anything.
At any normal pace, I peeped through the crack in the door. Cara was there, she was on the floor, sitting next to the toilet, her head leaning against the tub. Her legs were sprawled out in an uncomfortable looking way. Then I saw the blood.
That's when things stated moving in slow motion. It was like I couldn't quite move fast enough. I threw open the door and ran to her. There was blood everywhere. Tears streamed down my cheeks and soon enough I couldn't make out the difference between the blood covering the floors and burgundy tile on the wall. My head was spinning. Everything was starting to blur together and I tried so hard to hold my self together long enough to check her pulse.
There was no pulse. I was covered in blood and I knew I needed to call someone but I couldn't get myself up off the floor. I pulled Cara over towards me and held her face in my hands against my chest. I started rocking back and forth and yelling at her.
"This isn't funny Cara, stop it! Cara, please get up, get up. Cara, baby, please! You are all I have! What did you think I would do without you!? It's not too late to fix this, please just wake up," I was screaming now, "You told me you wouldn't leave me, Cara! Why… we always swore to each other we wouldn't go this far, why don't you want to be here with me anymore?!"
I bit my lip to try and make myself shut up. I looked at the dozens of fresh cuts on her arm. We promised each other we'd stop. We were going to help each other stop… I started screaming at her all over again.
Ian-
I walked down the stairs of our new "home." At first, I hated moving from city to city. I hated not being able to settle, but I soon realized that it didn't really didn't bother me so much. I soon realized that I never really had to say good bye to anything or anyone. The houses grew old and well it was very apparent that I'll never have anyone to say goodbye to anymore. One thing that I never stopped hating over the many many years was what I had become.
As I neared the end of the stair well, I heard Avery & Lauren whispering in the hallway.
"I can't watch it any more; I can't bear to look at him."
"It's gotten much worse. What are we going to do?"
"There isn't much to do, Avery. We can try and make him as happy as possible. But I don't think family is what he longs for."
"So in the mean time we're just supposed to sit here and watch him like this?"
I'd heard enough, I quietly walked back up the stairs and went back into my room. I looked around for a minute, not certain of what I wanted to do. I lay down on the floor and stared up at the ceiling, or the sun roof. Living here in Seattle, it was hard to call it a sun roof, it was more of a cloud roof. I hated hiding from the sun, I used to love the sun once upon a time. It killed me how weak it made me, how completely vulnerable I felt when I was in it. But, the sun wasn't shining today so I could stare up peacefully at the gray, cloudy sky above me.
I'm actually very content with keeping to myself all the time. But then sometimes I just feel the need to be not so alone. That's all I ever am, alone. I mean yes, I have my family. I love my family to death. But my sisters don't need me anymore. Avery has Lauren and Lauren has Elliot. I wonder how much better things would be if I could just go live with Lawrence, but he insisted I stay here with my siblings.
I tried to forget about it all, but I just couldn't shake off the thought. I opened my window and leaped outside. I needed to clear my head. I left the driveway and aimlessly walked around town. I felt the cool breeze brush my hair from my face. I closed my eyes and breathed it all in. Then I stopped.
That was the very first time I heard her voice. I would have liked for the first words I'd ever heard come from her mouth had been different, very different. It was usually really easy to block off the sounds around me; I may have impeccable hearing but I've never not been able to make the world around me shut up. I could sense that she was a good mile away but even the distance couldn't fade the sounds of her horrid screams. Without thinking, I took off towards where her screams were coming from.
It took me a whole 3 seconds to run the mile and a half to the house I heard the girl's screams coming from. But in those three seconds I did a lot of thinking. I thought about what exactly I was going to do when I go to wherever I was going. I thought about all the things I was always told never to let anyone see me do. I thought about what I would be limited to do when I got there. I thought about how much will power I really had gained the past twenty something years. I thought about if any of that would even matter to me once I found her. But mostly, I thought about her voice. I had stopped listening to exactly what she was saying and was more focused on just hearing her. Her voice, though screaming words of dread and fear was the sweetest thing I'd ever heard. I wondered to myself if this was the thing that drew me to her in the first place. Why couldn't I shake off her screams like I'd shook off so many other sounds before?
I stopped just outside the door of the small shabby house. The screaming had stopped, for now. All I heard were breathless sobs. I ran at a "normal" speed through the door and up the stairs. I stopped outside the door I heard the crying coming from. Without even opening the door, I almost turned around and ran home. I could smell the strong smell of blood. It burned my insides trying to hold myself back. I grabbed onto the door frame and tried to piece myself together. After about a second of this, a chunk of the door frame crumbled in my hand.
Then something that hurt worse than resisting turning into the very thing I was born to be, was the sound of the girl's cries. It hurt me to hear those cries. It was like someone had grabbed my heart and was slowly squeezing the life out of it. I couldn't live with myself if I let those cries carry on. I'd always been the best out of my family with my self control and the smell of blood barely ever phased me anymore, but I wasn't ready to put my self control to the ultimate test. But those screams...
I took a deep, unneeded breath, and flung open the door. What I saw when I opened the door was far from what I expected. There were two girls there on the bathroom floor. I could tell right away one of them was dead. The other girl was cradling the dead girl in her arms, rocking her back and forth. She looked up at me with a face that, without all the tears and smeared eye liner, probably would have been very shocked. She only glanced at me a second before returning her eyes to the girl she was holding. I wasn't sure what to do. I wasn't breathing anymore, and I tried to keep my head focused with all the blood on the floor. It made it easier that the blood was dead and wasn't pumping through a vein.
"She's dead." The girl said lifelessly, she wasn't crying now. It wasn't a question. It wasn't a statement. I'm not sure what it was. But, it was nothing I knew how to reply to.
She slowly stood from the floor, holding on to the bath tub for support. She tried walking past me, and as she reached me, she turned around to look back at the girl on the floor again. As she stared at her for a minute, she starting mumbling things under her breath and started crying again. She lost her balance and began to fall to the floor. I grabbed her arm before she could hit the ground. I eased her to the ground and I sat there with her. I wasn't sure what to do. So I did what every part of me was screaming to do, and I held her. I didn't even know her, but I held her. But there was one thing I knew for sure: I didn't want to ever let go.
Okay, so that was the first Chapter. I know it's short, but the other chapters are longer.
So tell me what you think.
Thank You!