Attention everyone! As of today, I'm going on a writing hiatus to help me recharge. During this hiatus there will be no updates. I don't know how long this will last, but I'll be back before winter!
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Flashing Light
Rain
Thunder
Wind
Tears.
My body is weighed down by soaking clothes.
By a heavy heart.
A broken mind.
My thoughts come back to me. I start to possess my own body, my own soul. This Max from this point is gone, and I have replaced her. Speaking of, when is this point in time?
Another crash of thunder shakes my body, and rain continues to pelt my face, my body. The thick clouds above block most light, and I'm shrouded in darkness.
We. We are shrouded in darkness.
There's someone beside me. Blue hair, arm tattoo, white tank top, eyes of horror. It's Chloe. She's 19. And that means I'm 18 again. I'm back in Arcadia Bay. Suddenly I see everything, the lighthouse stands tall yet broken to my right. The ground ahead of me gives way to a cliff. The devastating storm right in front of my eyes.
I know exactly where I am.
Why? Why back here? I try to scream at the thing that controls all of this, but it doesn't listen to me. My stomach swirls, my skin shits uncomfortably as time crawls across it. Rain covers my face. (Or is it tears?)
"Max! Max Jesus stop staring off into space like that!" Chloe shouts, grabbing my shoulders and trying to shake me into attention. I jolts alive, my body shaking and freeing itself from Chloe's grasp.
"Sorry. Sorry I..." I can't find words, I can't find sanity. This is the day my whole life was ruined. Today is the day I've spent the past several years trying to escape. The last thing I want is to be back.
"Max, you look so familiar with this. What did you do?" Chloe says, stern faced. I gulp and look at the lighthouse that has a chunk of it missing. Everything here is spot on, every detail matching from the day it really happened. Well, there goes my fantasy of this being some sort of illusion. The only thing that's changed is the intensity of my headache going from painful, to splitting.
"I, ugh. I don't know." I grab my head, trying to make it stop spinning.
"Max. Did you fuck with time again?" Chloe asks.
I nod.
There's a rough sigh from Chloe's throat. "Where are you from?" She puts her hand over her eyes.
"I, 2017. Um, I need to get out of here." My mind is spinning, I can barely speak, I can barely think. Why here? Why here? Chloe grabs my shoulders to keep me centered.
"Four years from now? How the hell did you get here?" Chloe asks, her grip on my shoulders is tight as steel.
"I'm still trying to figure that out." I say, trying to calm my breathing."I need to get back to the present. To you, to our apartment."
"Wh-" Chloe can barely form words. "What the hell, Max?"
"I'm sorry, Chloe. I'll fix this." I say, trying to search for something to fix this, but I only find nothing.
"Max. What did you do? What happens to us?" Chloe presses, her eyes red and watering, hands on my shoulders with an iron grip. I owe it to her to explain all this, don't I? I try to calm myself, despite how difficult it is with the crashing thunder and the invisible clock hanging above me, counting to inevitable doom. But I think about Chloe, the one who is holding my shoulders now, and the one in the present. The one who held me in sleep, the one who cared for me when no one else would. I think of every Chloe I had ever known, and the ones I've yet to meet.
The idea of Chloe comforts me, but it also worries me, and I don't know why.
I pull myself together for her, then I speak over the wind. "Chloe. I don't know how to properly put this, but I don't know if I made the right choice here. In a few minutes, you'll give me a choice. That choice will to be to sacrifice you, or Arcadia Bay. I will choose the town."
Chloe's face is so emotionless, it scares me.
I gulp. "Then you and I will escape. We will leave town to start a whole new life. Just you and I. We kiss on the beach. We fall in love." Chloe's eyes waver in a familiar way. That part, she's sure of. "I love you, Chloe." I continue, grabbing her hands off my shoulder. "I've loved you ever since we were little. It just took this long for me to finally see it."
Chloe's eyes water, and she places her hand on my cheek. "I love you too, Max."
Her eyes turn cold.
"And that's why I have to make you do this." Chloe says, pressing the butterfly photo to my chest. Fear travels up my spine and down my veins. No, no. That was supposed to make her want to stay alive, not worsen how much she wants me to sacrifice her.
"I can't Chloe, I can't. Especially after what we've been through the past 4 years." I try to explain, yanking her sleeve when she steps towards the cliff; away from me.
"I'm not rewriting history again, Chloe!" I shout, "that's how this all happened in the first place!"
"Then why are you here?" Chloe's voice rumbles over the thunder. Why is she so mad?
"I... I don't know." I cry, "it was an accident. Swear."
Chloe softens. "Erasing me is the best idea we have. It'll save the lives of people in Arcadia, and it will save the pain that we're bound to feel. Right?"
I shake my head and slam myself into Chloe. "Never. Never! I don't care what obstacles we face. Nothing is big enough to take me away from you, Chloe."
Chloe watches as I tear the photo for the second time. For the last time. She grabs me by the shoulders again, and kisses me as my world goes white.
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'Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.'
-The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost
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Hellions of Arcadia
Fanfiction"If you died, would anyone care? Would they really care? Maybe, they'd cry for a day. But let's be honest, no one would give a shit, they wouldn't. That's who you are. That's what you are. You're nothing to no one." A continuation of the Sacrifice A...
