Prologue

Sometimes we can't accept the truth, even if it's staring us in the face. We try and we try, but we can't bring ourselves to recognize it. For some, it is that they refuse to bring themselves to believe. For others, they simply are not capable. It's cruel, really. That is life. And we just have to learn to identify the truth, accept it and move on. Otherwise, we'll slowly destroy our minds and crush our souls, wracked by a grief we cannot purge.

I don't know what was going through my mind that day as I stood there, a lone person on a hill, staring at a rock. I can't remember much from that day. I think back on it, and it's just a blank hole in my mind. But I do know one thing: as I stood there, I could not — would not — acknowledge the fact that Emily was dead. My brain could not grasp that fact; it refused to embrace it. I was only left to numbly look at what was her tombstone.

Dead.

She couldn't be. I must've fallen asleep on the truck ride home, after hours spent awake on the train. It had to be that I would wake up at any moment, the truck coming to a halt in front of my house, a big white manor. Emily would be standing out front, the biggest smile on her radiant face. And I would leap out of the truck, run up, and hug her like there was no tomorrow.

That was a lie.

I'd buried her mangled body myself. I had seen it in the hole I'd dug. I could still vividly see her blank face looking up at the sky as the dirt piled on her. I just couldn't force myself to realize she was gone from my life, a life that had been filled with pain and bloodshed for the past four years. Thinking about Emily was the only thing that'd kept me sane. Emily and my home, which was now a pile of ashes. Why did this happen? I would later think. Who could have done this? Why Emily? But for now, all I could do was stand, and look, unable to cry, unable to move, only able to submerse myself in the fantasy I'd constructed in my mind in order to lock out the pain. I just couldn't believe that the one thing I cared about, the center of my universe…

…was gone.

Author's Note: So, I was sitting on the bus one day thinking, "Gee, I wanna write something deep." This is what I came up with. The storyline is still under development, but so far I think what I've got is good. Please tell me what you think of it so far!

~Jane