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─── ❝ 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐲𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐥 ❞ ─── + interlude
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I WAS NEVER ONE TO PUT MY HEART IN FATE. It wasn't prevalent in my world — the oh-so-ruined life left of humankind. Ever since the day I'd watched those amber colored bombs rain down on the city of Atlanta like a thunderstorm, I hadn't been able to shake the image.
The way the rows of cars on the freeway stood still, dust already beginning to collect on the windshields. The people, quiet as ever. And my mom, she tried to keep me from it, to hold me tight, and tuck my head away into her firm grasp. But I saw fate as it was, my eyes lit up by the flames coming from our hometown. It was the most dreary and dreadful thing to exist.
It took those city streets. The comic store my dad would take me, after his shifts. The ice cream parlor, and the theater my family would drive down to for Friday movie nights with our neighbors. At the beginning, that was all that I saw fate take. I was a young boy, and it was all I seemed to ever care about at the time. Objects. Places, things. Then, slowly, it started taking people. The ones at our camp, just outside of Atlanta. My friend, Sophia. My mom. The people I cared most about. It took them all, and it gave my wounded soul a harrowing excuse.
'All things that come are just fate.'
That was what a blonde haired girl had told me, back at the prison. Beth. Just after my mom had died, leaving our cell grey and empty, with a crying baby who seemed to never quite be content enough to stop her tear shedding. For obvious reasons, I didn't blame my baby sister. She didn't have a mom. I didn't. And we needed her. We needed our mom. If it was still acceptable for me to cry like she did, I probably would have done the same as her right then. I still remember sitting on the edge of that stiff mattress of mine — my hands placed on my knees. I was leaning forward, blocking out the echoing cries from the room.
Fate. What a twisted, horrible thing it was. I hated it. I hated it so much. I just wanted to wrap my hands around it, and tear it apart. I wanted to hear it say sorry. To undo all it had done, and to rip its insides out, like it had done to me. Leaving its heart strings exposed, and untuned. If it were an object I could hold in my palms, I would crush it and watch it spurt burgundy. That was what I thought of fate.
