N I N E T E E N

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I took the painkillers from Bentley's outstretched hand, roughly taking two and gulping them down without water

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I took the painkillers from Bentley's outstretched hand, roughly taking two and gulping them down without water. I needed something, anything to get the pain of the  headache to stop.

Now, I just needed something to get rid of the images.

Hendrix sat beside me, his eyes rimmed in red and his hands fidgeting for hours on end. Adir was on my other side, fiddling with the ring on my hand, his gaze unmoving. Laken was seated on the other side of the table, silent and lost in his mind as Bentley now talked to him.

Bentley knew the most on Laken's history and he was the best at comforting him so we let him be. There was nothing to say.

Because how could we get the images out of his head if we couldn't get our own out?

The dead body. Slumped. Head resting on the keys. A knife driven through its skull. A deafening sound. Blood pooled beneath that spot. The splatters of what pumped around in my very own body. The single overhead light and pale faces of colleagues and staff.

The words.

Teachers were rushing around, scrambling for a way to calm down the now hysterical students. People were sent back to their dorms for the rest of the night, locking them away from the rest of the school.

Phones calls were being made left and right. Police stations. News stations. Parents.

God it was a mess.

Yet here we were, sitting in the cafeteria in the dark. The dark helped mask our feelings as we sat without uttering any words.

The darkness portrayed our realisation; this wasn't a joke. If this person had gone through the effort of killing someone, what wouldn't they do?

Hendrix's tapping of his foot made my anxiousness rise in levels as the words echoed in my mind. I could feel it bubbling and my mind whirled with thoughts of what would happen.

Your turn, Wilson.

Your turn, Wilson.

Your turn. Wilson.

Your turn.

Your.

The thought almost made me empty my stomach. Wilson. God, how I now hated my last name.

I had never seen a dead body. Well, I had but I was so young I forgot what it was like. You would have thought that I would have seen others with all the charges I had gotten tried with. But no. The freshly pale skin of the victim's body mirrored my own as my skin paled and hollowed slightly. My hands were red from digging my fingers into them, and my mouth felt drier than the Sahara dessert.

Clearly, the others hadn't seen one either, and the incident had brought back horrifying events for Laken.

The dead. They weren't uncommon. Everyone ends up seeing a dead body in their lives, whether it's in real or on the news. Boy, was I glad I never watched the news. But now instead I had seen one.

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