Beautiful Disaster

Chapter 20: Revelation

Revelation

Driving home from the police, I clutched the steering wheel tightly as the day’s events finally sank in: I dumped the love of my life and I was pretty sure my best friend was kidnapped because of me.

I closed the door to my room, limp with depression. Everything seemed to change the instant I turned my back on Cap, well, besides the whole Bonnie being captured after allegedly finding out some pretty incriminating info about Cap (which, by the way, wasn't helping my current Cap mentality). Colors seemed less bright, life seemed less worth living, happiness felt like a privilege I didn't deserve, things that usually keep me content were useless, even comfort food felt like a waste of time. All I wanted to do was lay in a fetal position and cry until the hollow ached in my chest filled like a dam.

I clutched my pillow and sighed heavily before tears began to fall. Mercilessly, startlingly clear images of the good times flashed through my mind: the first day we met, the first time our skins touched, the pre-date study date, the first time he held me in his arms, the first time he protected me, the first time we kissed, the first time I stepped foot in his house and perhaps the most beautiful was the first time he said that he loved me. The last one hurt the most, sending virtual poison-laced daggers at me that sank deep to inner core, almost sending me slithering out of consciousness. And they said a Brocken heart never killed anyone. Yeah right.

Fall asleep, the voice - that I've been hearing in an increasingly alarming amount of times - whispered silently to me.

The thought of slumber was a tempting thought, but because I didn't trust strange voices - I've watched way too many horror movies - or because of my blatant stubbornness, I tried my damnedest not to.

I kept myself awake by watching the Vampire Diaries reruns on the CW, painting my toes several times, rearranging my closet for the summer, reading a chapter from Duma Key (ever since reading It in the fourth grade, I'd been unable to sleep after reading any Stephan King novel), and I even read a scene from Macbeth in desperation. The good news was that through all of this I'd managed to stay up till around nine o'clock in the morning, the bad news was that summer holidays had started and I hadn't signed up for summer school. Ugh, and I really could use the extra chemistry lessons now that Cap, for obvious reasons, could no longer be my tutor. Sigh, it was times like these I wished I had insomnia.

Go to sleep, the voice whispered to me, assaulting me like a caress, ending my battle against my exhaustion.

Chloe, wake up,

 The voice told me soothingly as my eyes slowly parted.

I was lying on a beach, in the funeral clothes I hadn't changed from since the, well, funeral. I brushed beach sand off of my Lanvin skirt as I stood up, staring into the blank horizon.

Where am I? I asked the voice inside my head, feeling just as crazy as that must've sounded. I don't think my psychologist would be happy to know I was literally talking to voices I heard in my head. The word schizophrenia ran alarmingly loud through my mind.

You're at the beach you were on the night you went on that 'study date', it told me, even though I couldn't see it, I could feel the silent quotation marks around 'study date'. I mentally rolled my eyes. It's about time you know the truth.

And just like that a vision of me materialized from the blue. It was the me just moments after Cap had left me stranded alone. I saw me starting to search desperately for a man who left me, I saw myself as I walked through the deserted road, I saw the man who stalked me, macabre bloodlust emanating from his eyes, I saw myself walking into the alley and just like that, what I thought had happened fell through me like water from a sieve.