HOLLOW » Zarry ✔⚠

64

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"Why has it been so long since I've seen you here, Zayn?" The figure asks as it looks down at him.

Zayn is lying out in the field again with the wind blowing through his hair. This day is close to perfect.

"Because too much has been going on. Too many things that's made it impossible to sleep, let alone dream of this."

The figure nods sadly. "Yes, I know."

Zayn plucks some of the grass and throws it off somewhere. "You were right though."

"Right about what?"

"About Harry. I should have never trusted him. I kept thinking things were gonna change but every time, he would keep hurting me. I still can't believe I let him do that."

The figure sits down and pats his leg. "Don't be angry at yourself. You can't be angry at yourself."

"Yes I can." He states quietly.

"How?"

"Because... The only reason I ever let Harry do those things, is because it has to stay a secret. No one can know. Enough people say all kinds of things about me at school. Just imagine if along side that, everyone knew there was a homosexual on the school's soccer team that has been closeted for so long. I'll never hear the end of it." Zayn sighs and his lips begin to tremble. "Then look at my mother. She hates me."

"That's not true."

"Yes it is. I see it in her face whenever she looks at me. She regrets me being born. And I think she only regrets it because she knows about me. But she doesn't want me to confirm that it's true."

"You think she knows you're a homosexual?"

He nods. "She's ashamed of me. But it's not much of a shock because I'm ashamed of myself too."

"Don't be. You cannot help who you fall in love with. You know that."

"But I'm not in love. Don't you understand that? I might not know what's really going on but I know I'm not in love with anyone. I honestly think I'm just confused."

"But you literally just identified yourself as a homosexual. Why are you suddenly changing your mind? Plus, you can't be confused. You figured out you liked boys a long time ago."

"What if I was fooling myself though? What if I never liked boys? What if I just made myself think I did, so that I could possibly justify why I let what Harry is doing to me go on for so long. That's highly possible right?" But when Zayn repeats that to himself in his mind and hears how dumb it sounds, he buries his face in his hands. "Who am I kidding? I am a homo. And Harry was right. No one is ever going to want me."

The figure knows this kind of thinking can't be good. Zayn needs comforting. So it reaches out for him. It's in the middle of rubbing his hair when without forewarning, the blue sky turns ominously gray.

Because Zayn has his face in his hands, he can't see that the sky has changed. What actually grabs his attention is the sudden gust of wind. "What's going on?" He asks.

"I don't know. I was just about to ask you the same thing." As the clouds cover the sky in full, he hears voices rumbling to the left of him. When he turns around to see who they belong to, he sees there are six men coming his way. Like the figure, their faces are unknown and blurry. But as for their voices, they are clear as daylight. Zayn feels scared right away because he has heard them before. He knows who these men are. He knows what they want.

He looks around for a safe place to hide. But there is none. He's out in the open. So before he knows it, those men have reached them, surrounding them both. Two of them grab Zayn's arms and right when they touch him, he starts kicking and screaming.

"Let me go! Let me go now!" He turns to the figure. "Come help me! Don't let them take me away from here!"

As soon as he says that, a man looks down at him with an evil but dry laugh. "He's not going to help you Zayn. He's the one who told us you were here in the first place."

Zayn looks toward the white figure who's standing up. He's so angry. "How could you?! How could you do that to me?! How can you live with yourself?!"

But it doesn't take him long to figure out how or why it betrayed him because the figure is gradually transforming into something that isn't so foggy and unrecognizable. It's transforming into Harry and he can see Harry staring back at him with a sneaky smirk on his face.

"Take him away." Harry orders as he pulls a matchbox from his pocket. "I'll burn his precious little field to ashes."

"Burn? No! Don't! It's all I have. Please-"

But one of them covers his mouth very tightly and so compressed, that he can't even yell anymore. They don't waste time dragging him in the direction of which they came.

Zayn can't believe this. How have they gotten here, the only place in his life where he's ever felt secure? How did he allow them to enter his dreams? There is literally no other place he can go for comfort anymore, is there?

No.

Life hates him so much that it wants him to suffer in every aspect of it, doesn't it?

Yes. He's sure of it. There can be no other explanation.

This is when Zayn finally gives up. This is when he stops fighting them and trying to get them to stop.

He just settles in their touch. And he helplessly watches as Harry scrapes the match against the side of the box and light those beautiful grass blades on fire.

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