Consuming Darkness, Arising Light

Chapter 5: Deceit And Warnings

(A/n: Trigger Warning: accidental suicide)

August 11th- Kenny

Kenny detests waking up after a death. His whole body would ache like crazy, it's a pain he would feel every time he's revived. He would always have to bear with the aftermaths of his deaths without any relievers, his family is so poor that they can't even afford cheap medication. He seldom forgets the cause of his deaths, mainly because he always died from outlandish or arbitrary things. But for some reason, he can't recall his last death, and his pounding head isn't making remembering it any easier. But it doesn't matter, majority of his deaths aren't memorable anyway.

With a pained whine, Kenny weakly lifts a hand to massage his forehead, his blonde locks visible and messy, though one of the strands is a different color. He always wonders why he never stays dead. He never got around to asking God or Satan themselves for his inability to remain deceased whenever he visited their domains, surely one of them or if not both would have an answer. Kenny hates dying—it's painful, gruesome, and stupid. He recalls his best friends witnessing him losing his life back in Preschool when he first discovered that he wasn't an ordinary human. The cause of death that time was his own fault. He'd consumed a full bottle of glue, thinking it would taste like milk due to its pure white color. Plus, he was very thirsty that day. The teacher panicked, but before he could get any medical help, he choked and died. Right before all of the children's eyes. It was a very scary and confusing experience to abruptly wake up to a bright, cloudy sky, and winged beings traversing either through the air or on foot, only to realize he was in Heaven. He didn't stay there long, at least that's what it felt like at the time because the next thing he knew, he was at home in his shoddy looking bedroom, lying on his decrepit mattress. Like he is right now. Turned out he'd been dead for three days. He didn't know this until his best friends told him that day he went back to school, Stan, Kyle, and Eric were the only ones who knew he had died and remembered it. It's been a reoccurring tragedy since then, it was never constant, but it still annoyed Kenny. Mainly because Eric soon started thinking his deaths were funny. He at first thought it was both cool and freaky that Kenny could die and come back to life as if nothing happened to him, Kenny once had the same thought, and even questioned Kenny about his visits to the afterlife. But that fascination of his changed into facetiousness after his fourth or fifth death. As for Stan and Kyle, they had randomly came up with some catchphrase together after someone had killed Kenny, but he appreciated their concern nonetheless.

After awhile of soothing his head, Kenny slowly sits up and shivers. He looks down at his bare skinny arms and dirty white undershirt. "Huh?! Where's my jacket?!" He thinks in shock. This is the first time he woke up without his orange parka on his lithe frame, he always had it on him even in the afterlife. The blonde-haired boy frantically searches for his cherished jacket, it isn't anywhere on his tattered mattress or on the wooden floor. He looks to his cracked alarm clock that's located on the floor right beside his bed for the time. The red digital numbers show that it is 5:45 a.m.

Kenny isn't sure if he should trust this busted clock of his, it's rarely been right ever since he accidentally broke it one morning. So instead, he looks up at his broken window for confirmation of the time of day. The night sky is brightening ever so slowly with a tinge of orange below, meaning the sun is about to arise. He can vaguely see the stars disappearing as the sun gradually rises into view, the scattered, thick clouds unchanging. Kenny looks away sighing in disappointment, he was hoping to have been revived after school started, so he wouldn't have to go. He scratches his hair whilst standing up, heading to his bathroom and hoping to find his parka in there by chance. He lightly tugs down a string suspending from in the middle of his bathroom, the light overhead flickering rapidly for a brief moment before staying on, coating the small space in dim lighting. "I swear it's gonna go out one day," he thinks with another sigh. He climbs on top of a stool that's surprisingly in good condition, and gazes at himself through a cracked but clean mirror. His hazel eyes widen almost instantly upon first glance, and he leans a bit closer to the mirror. "What the..." A single strand of his hair is white.