#expara

Emptiness. That's what she felt. Everything was going so wrong. This soon into her return, she was already wishing she had stayed back home. The guns, the deaths, the satanic stuff; how could all this be happening. She had come back to escape one of her fears just to be faced with another one. Loneliness and death; these two things were always so prominent all through her life. From a young age, everybody around her pretty much died or disappeared from her life. There was not one constant person, and the closest to that was probably Kieron, and even then, they had stopped living close to each other right after that summer in camp. The only person who remained with her for 18 years of her life had been her dad, but he was gone for almost a year and he had been distant even before then. Now Damien was dead, she had lost people she loved and she seemed to always be alone. She had friends here, she had more than just one or just her dogs but even now she felt like she had no one. On top of that, people she cared about were going through a tough time with the recent event, and she didn't know how to handle that or how to help them. Useless and alone.

Victoria had played the events in her head for the entire day. She remembered everything so vividly, and she hadn't slept at all since they happened. How could she, after all? She didn't want even worse nightmares than she already had. Besides, staying awake had always been easier for her than sleeping. And so she did. She stayed up, staring at wall, not doing much or moving at all. It wasn't until she began to get so hungry that her body couldn't take it. She built up the courage and got up from her bed to walk out of that room, that figurative prison where tons of nightmares had already been dreamt and waking-ups in the middle of the night had taken place. This would just worsen them. 

All day, Ashlyn had debated not even attending the wake. Maybe she would be better off if she stayed in her room all day. People probably thought she was crazy for admitting to loving Aaron after he killed someone in front of all of them. Even she thought she was a bit crazy for it. If she could control her feelings, she would've chosen to never have them. Maybe things would've worked out differently for her if she hadn't.

Ashlyn sat in the sand, water racing up to touch her feet every few seconds. Each time it did, a chill shot down her spine. Even once she thought she was used to it, the cool water still shocked her once it touched her skin.

She attempted to remind herself that she was safe now. That everyone else on the exchange would be okay. They were no longer bound in ropes and being forced to see things that they never imagined they'd have to see. The echoes of gunshots weren't bouncing off the walls. The sickening smell of blood didn't cause her stomach to twist and turn. But she knew that even though those things were gone, the effects were there. Every time she heard a loud noise she'd flinch, and every time she cut herself with a knife on accident she'd swear that she could still smell the blood.

There was no longer ropes bound to her wrists, no knife pressed to her throat. There was no coffins with the ones she loved trapped inside, no more screams as lifeless bodies fell to the ground. They wasn't locked away, there wasn't any more signs of danger. Yet there was no safety, either. They had all made it out of the church, a place that was built for sanctuary, for worship and for safety, scarred and bruised, but alive and free all the same. But that did not mean their hell was over. The sun had rose bringing with it the promise of a new day, a better day. At least, thats what people had always said. But Alaska felt no lighter than she had done the night before. And she stayed sitting, feet dangling off the edge the pathway that rose above the sea, leading to their cabins, when the sun rose, unmoving until it wen't down again. Watching the world go by, watching the darkness that resided within her come out and cover the rest of the island too. And throughout the hours she had sat there, she had seen bottles with their messages be thrown into the sea. And now that the stars blanketed the sky, the lanterns began to rise up and join them. From a distance she looked on as her fellow roomates and friends lit the lanterns on the beach and let them go, letting the people they had lost go with them too

There was one for the the blonde who had warned them all to                 l e a v e.

              One for the the blonde's sister who had watched her family                                                                                                            b u r n.

One for the Wright that had done too much  w r o n g.                                        One for the little girl of her best friend that they'd never get to                                                                                                           m e e t. 

One for the brother that she didn't get to k e e p.

                 And one for the devil whose problems they never tried to                                                                                          r e a c h.

There are some things people just shouldn't see, the events of last night are one of those things. Unknowingly Duncan hadn't been the only one to experience those happenings more then once. But somehow last night had brought back too much for him. The similarity of the two events was almost killing him inside. All of his friends, sitting there helpless to the torment that the poor kid was putting on them.  "Why me" he thought "why am I the one who keeps having to go through this? I change, I did I've become a better person." But if that was true then why was he still being punished for actions that happened so long ago? Maybe he hadn't changed      maybe no matter what you do, some people are just born to be bad people. Maybe Duncan was just one of those people born a terrible person.         No. That couldn't be true. He had changed so much, and done so much good, he had to be a good person now.

                  Elliot stared unseeingly at the world out ahead of him, his blue eyes dull as the joint in his hand kept burning away, not fully smoked yet. The ends of joints laid around him where he was sat on the cold ground outside. An oversized sweater encased his tiny body as he shook there, his mind flickering back to images of last night, the horrors he had seen. 

                  He was stoned, that was no secret, red rimmed his eyes from the copious amounts of weed and tobacco he had been smoking since they'd been returned to the house. He was still scared, he had known Damien but obviously he actually hadn't. His mind questioned what could drive someone to the edge like that, make them do such horrid things. He shivered at the thought, taking a drag of the point, wishing to dismiss the thoughts. 

Painted nails, embedded with blood. Beauty, tainted with ugliness. A life of privilege, tainted by a greater evil. Her thoughts were fleeting as she stepped into the clear water, the cardigan around her shoulders drenched in dried blood, she slid it silently off, dropping it into the water and watching it drift away into the waves. Maybe one day it would even return to the beach, perhaps by then it would be clean. Her eyes remained on the clear water, knee deep, she remained still, her jeans hitched up slightly. She dipped her hand in, fingers sliding through water, it felt so clean. It looked so beautiful. It almost made her forget about the spillage of blood from the night before, the scenes she had all but missed in her drug induced daze. All she remembered was awakening to find people dead, organs strewn around the place, and a terrible feeling that she was rising from beyond the grave. Her last memory, after all, was of clattering to the ground in front of a congregation of students she knew well. After that, it was only darkness.

His fingers tightened around the gun, cigarette in his free hand, his grasp firm. Nobody had spoken to him, nobody had dared. The silence had consumed him like it always did. He had drove that helicopter, he had got out and he had told himself one thing and one thing alone; Never look back. At the edge of the beach he stood, gun pointed forwards and shot. His gun must have ran out of bullets three times but he didn't stop. The tree dented with each bullet, every single one hitting his target, every single one precise and poised. His hand didn't even tremble upon the weapon in his hand, his face expressionless as he watched each one sink into the bark, the spot he had stood three days earlier, the truth that he had heard-- He was not alone in this, he was not alone in his double life. Yet, now it seemed he was more alone than ever. Marks detailed his wrists, burns that sizzled still, awakening some kind of deep yearning in his body, for something he had thought he did not have: A family. It was only now that he saw that was all he had been given to begin with, all he had been blessed with. His Father's death had set off a vicious cycle of events, events that left Jace highly disturbed. Events that now, all these years later, had absolved his hate for the world, his Mother was dead, by his sisters hand, and his sister was dead, by Damien's hand. He remembered the boys eyes, his strange deluded smile and he pulled the trigger again, cigarette dropping from his fingertips to the ground beneath his feet, burning his palm on it's way down.

William stood at the edge of the water, just far enough away so that the water wasn't touching him. He simply stared at it and the waves that moved in and out from the shore. After a few moments, he leaned down to pick up a seashell that lied at his feet. It was pure white, the edges cracked and jagged most likely from its trip onto the shore. His focus remained on it for quite some time before he suddenly tossed it into the ocean. 

The wake seemed strange to him. Everyone was still on edge, and the explanation that they got almost seemed incomplete. There were those that might not mind the incomplete feeling of it, but in a way, William did. He was asking questions that he'd never get answers to.