Rewind (Completed)

Chapter 49: Hitting an End

Chapter 49: Hitting an End

The room starts to spin and I can't help but feel disorientated in the earsplitting silence of it all. My head is pounding and my chest is aching.

A coldness, like pure ice, takes over from within. It spreads throughout my body until I'm left reeling in an empty yet agonizing numbness. It only takes three words for it to feel as if my soul, my entire being, has left me. The pull, the zest for life, dies like a burning flame put under cool water. I don't see purpose anymore. That vision, the hope, for something more fades in a passing second.

Then, of course, the uncontrollable and inevitable shaking starts. Goosebumps prickle my skin as the color quickly drains from my face. Dismantled emotionally, my muscles give in. Feeling faint, I have to hold the wall just to keep from collapsing. And everything I'm hearing is going straight into my head and straight back out again. I cannot process any of it.

I blink back a waterfall of tears, my mind unable to register anything. I strain just to get my breath back, to breathe normally. It feels as if my lungs are slowly filling up with water and I'm losing air. Someone is holding me by the throat and I can't breathe, and every time I try to, they tighten their grip. It's suffocating, it's terrifying. And everything is suddenly meaningless. Nothing, absolutely nothing, matters.

When the heat floods over like a hot wave of anxiety, I realize that I'm in actual shock and not just going through the motions. My blood is boiling and I feel sick to my stomach. Darkness is entering my world, surrounding me. I feel completely hollow and directionless.

I snap out of it when I feel a hand placed on my shoulder. I glance up at Bells and then around the room and take in all the broken expressions.

How can one person impact so many lives? That is the question.

I think of all that he's done for me, of all that he's done for everybody else in this room. I think of the little he did for himself. I think of fate and his reoccurring dream of death. I think of the drunk pilot. I think of him leaving Slobber behind with me. I think of everything he said before he got on that plane.

'Especially with me gone and everything.'

'I'm not gonna be around for a while.'

'Yes, 'Queela, this is it.'

'I gotta go.'

'Don't make decisions based on me.'

'Live the life you've always dreamed of.'

Did he know? Did he have an inkling?

When Landon continues to speak, I stop listening. His lips are moving but I can't hear a single thing. Everything is a blur. The melancholy inside of me is sweeping my stability away. I can't keep track. The Earth isn't stable anymore. Nothing is.

"I'm sorry." Bell hugs me for the millionth time since hearing it, not giving me the space that I desperately need.

I stare past her, unable to find words. I feel like I've been wrung and turned inside out.

"You can cry, Aqueela. It's okay to cry," Bell murmurs quietly, having noticed. "Think of it as just me and you, the way it all began," she whispers in a futile attempt to comfort me.

It began with him. I was never whole until I met him.

"It's not healthy to bottle up your emotions," she adds, her own eyes filling up with tears, her anguished expression matching that of everyone else here.