Paper Crowns

Prologue - 1

By the way: GORE WARNING

Have you ever been at a party and seen the trick where someone will yank the tablecloth out from under the table, and nothing on the table will move? I can do that you know, but I bet you don't care. You want lead into the story. I understand.

I'm making a metaphor by the way. The tablecloth is my world, the contents of the table is yours. My entire being and life just gets yanked out and flipped upside down, and not a single other person notices. I guess it's for the better, lord knows what some idiots out there would do with magic. It gets lonely though, not a single person there to understand what you're going through. I guess I have my friends, but they're either pre-occupied with their own hell of a life or the just don't care. You know things are great when the only friend you can talk to is an origami animal.

I am getting so sidetracked.

We need to take a look at where it all started. Frankly, I've been avoiding it, but I guess it would be healthy for me to suck it up and recall just what happened. Exactly what went down the day Justin got killed by a paper airplane.

. . .

Two little kids were lounging around in a playground on a sunny Tuesday afternoon, the orange light shimmering off of the metal and plastic playground equipment. One boy lounged in the sand, making a castle at his feet. Another boy sat on the swing set right next to his best friend. The boy on the swings had scruffy, dirty blonde hair that tussled into his vision in front of his muddy blue-green eyes. He was nothing too flashy, and the kid liked it that way. Blondie was never a spotlight person, he knew himself very well for a second grader. He shyly hid behind his turtle neck  sweater most of the time, while his friend happily stood front and center in the spotlight for him.

Ah yes, his best friend the red head. He was an attention grabber for sure, his hair an unnatural fire engine red that blazed even brighter than normal in the golden sunset light, orange eyes bright with curiosity and inspiration. His sandcastle was building up and building quickly, pointy parapets forming on the top. The boy smiled brightly, giggling and asking the blonde to come and help. The blonde just sat on his swing and stared at the sunset. He has forgotten at this point what his eight year old self was mad at. It could have been frustrating homework or addition and subtraction, or the fact that the school yard bullies teased him about his sweater again. It is one of the blonde's biggest regrets that he didn't spend more time with his red headed friend. His young mind couldn't even comprehend how quickly things could come screeching to a halt until it happened.

Well first, the bullies came over. As usual.

Ivy wasn't her name, but that's what people called her. They were scared to call her anything else. To prove how cool she was back in kindergarten, she trampled right through a ton of poison ivy with nothing covering her arms. She disappeared into the thicket of poison ivy, not even her muddy brown hair showing in the plant's cover. The teachers were furious with her, the kids fell in love with her. She was the talk of the schoolyard ever since, her exciting escapades always filling the ears of the children. 

The first thing Ivy did was stomp on the redhead's tower.

"Nice sand pile loser. How long did you spend on this one?"

The redhead stood up and flailed his arms around, "I spent like, a whole ten minutes on it!"

"It didn't look like it, you had a loooooooser castle fire head!"

The redheaded boy stomped and flailed his arms, the attempts at insults would have done nothing to a normal person. To a seven year old; however, they were horrible. How dare someone call him a loser! The redheaded boy ran off to the side of the school building, running helped him work off the stress. At least that's what people thought, nobody saw the small white flash as something darted up his leg and hid in his pocket. Nobody heard him talk to it, seeking comfort in it. Nobody could hear much of anything over Ivy's laughter.

"Hey Todd, are you even alive?"

The blonde pulled his turtleneck up and over his mouth, the cloth shielding him from her awful meanness. He was to scared to speak.

"...are you just gonna let me do that to Justin?"

Hiding in his turtleneck, Todd took a deep breath and stayed silent. Later in life he greatly regretted this, but who could have imagine what would happen next? He saw it coming, but at the same time he didn't. Ivy him and his best friend were the only ones in the area, the other kids playing across the playground on the monkey bars and swing, waiting for their parents to come.

A paper airplane floated peacefully through the sky.

Todd gazed up at it and relaxed a bit. It was so amazing how high up in the air it was, swinging among the clouds, the paper blending in with the white sky puffs. It bobbed and weaved in such a cool way, it reminded him of a bird. Picking its way through the air carefully, like the wind wasn't carrying the paper airplane but it was commanding the wind.

Then it took a nose dive and speared down.

It was amazing, Ivy's voice fading into the background. Her challenges and mocking tone were lost in Todd's wonderment. The paper airplane sparkled, way to brightly, a cone of light swirling around it. It dived down and down, Todd smiling and watching it.

Then the paper hit Justin's red-haired head.

There was a giant explosion that shook the ground, it knocked Todd off the swing.

A scream split the air.

There was blood. There was blood everywhere.

The blonde boy screeched in fear and scrambled up, staring wide eyed and the red-streaked mess where his friend used to be. There was no way that was Justin, it was so... broken. Arm twisted unnaturally to the side, snapped away by the force of the blast like bent paper corners. The head was exploded into little chunks where the paper airplane had struck, pieces scattering across the once green grass. There was so much red, darker than Justin's hair. It stuck to walls, stuck to the grass, glued itself to the blobs that used to make a boy

Stumbling forward, the blonde child picked up a few pieces. his little hands were shaking so badly, the slippery red blobs fell from his grasp most of the time. Todd wasn't sobbing, he wasn't doing anything but grabbing the puzzle pieces, his mind absorbed with shock.

Maybe if he put the chunks back together, maybe if he fit the pieces in place, his best friend would stand back up and be just fine. A few silly-looking lines on his head, nothing else would be out of place. A bit of brain here, a chunk of scalp there, maybe an eyeball in between. He could put Justin back together. Their teacher was always so proud of Todd's intelligence, always praising him for his ability to work correctly and solve even the hardest of math problems. There had to be a solution to this. There was no way Justin was dead. It was just impossible.