Ashtyn can still remember, even if she doesn't want to, clutching for solid ground deep inside because all she wants to do is go and turn back time. The clock ticks loudly in class, hollow like everything else, so dismal and painted gray, slowly and evenly making its way in a circle as she remembers those moments that she'd always, forever regret. An endless circle, incessant, that never ends. Just like the clock as it waits for the minute to end, so it can continue on, only to find it's making a U-turn and going around again.
It screams then, the clock inside its hollow frame as it struggles against its torturous prison, trapped against its will. Trapped like the girl with brown hair who sits in the back. A girl who only ever stares at the daunting empty seat to the right, with only the clock to ever understand her plight. The empty seat throbs while she imagines the blonde-haired girl who used to sit there, a girl who lit up the room and made the gray an array of so much more brighter shades. She imagines it in time with the clock, the perfect mirage fading in and out in time to the clock's moans and pleading screams. Tick. Tock. Make it stop. Tick. Tock. Doesn't anyone else see the dying clock? Tick. Tock. And tick, tock, tick, tock, till it's the only thing her ears seem capable of comprehending, the only sound in the classroom, and soon, panic crawls beneath her skin till she wants to rip her hair and tear it out.
Cause tick, tock. Make it stop.
The bell rings then, a relief even though she can still hear the clock, always in the background beneath the piercing sound. It breaks the buzz in her ears, the deafening silence that had grown over all the noise like sound proof walls. It's loud and vicious, like her panicked shouts.
Ashtyn stands up, grabs her stuff she can't remember having laid out, and like everyone else, she leaves the room, with her own pathetic attempt at a triumphant shout. With a veneer and a smile, she says "bye" to the teacher and "see you tomorrow" to her only supposed friends. Her footsteps are muffled by the carpet floors, and she steps forward, leaving the fake laughs on the ground behind. Her shoulders slump and soon she heads home, ignoring all attempts at conversation, pretending she doesn't hear their voices. As if her songs are played too loud, the headphones that listen to silence, unplugged from her phone which used to blast out music drowning out all noise even as the clock ticks on in her ears, there, like always.
"Emma," Ashtyn sometimes hears, as she walks out the front doors, hoodie pulled up in case tears don't remain unbidden. For a moment, she pauses, like always, at the name. She rapidly blinks, even as her own horrified voice shouts behind her, a banshee's mourning cry. She twitches sometimes; it's not noticeable, and turns around, even as students rush past her, oblivious to the girl with hazel eyes who's stopped on the third step when they're too busy with their actually important lives. And as she turns, jaw moving to form pathetic words to a ghost long gone(maybe it'll end different this time), all she sees is the mangled body she left behind.
Tick. Tock. Make it stop.
"Ashtyn," she hears too sometimes. It's different from the other cry, calm and accepting, a weak whisper that speaks louder than any triumphant shout. Sometimes, she hears it when she lies in bed, other times when she's walking all alone. It echoes, speaking all the words that there was no time to say, yet still she clenches her fists when there was still so much more left to say.
And sometimes, the worst part of her day is when she walks down that road, stupid, the one she has to walk down every single painful day. That trail she has to walk, even as the floor crumbles into a dark abyss, even as every footstep makes the ground shake and rumble until there are cracks and fissures. And she takes a step forward, dreading as she turns that corner, biting her lip to suffocate the tears that want to fall from her empty, cracked face. Because Ashtyn knows what waits ahead, forward on the block, next to that brown, little decrepit house. It creaks, groans, but her eyes focus on the far more gruesome sight, the one to the right that she can't remove from her sight.
Emma, there she lies, and Ashtyn, there she cries. Tears fall, words remain unspoken, and she's drowning, can't they see, in tears, guilt, poisonous hopes and dreams. It claws at her chest, a beast that growls for more tears from the desert sculpted from black, salt-covered sand. And it bites and rips, with jagged teeth that dig into her chest with rabid fury, just like the knives and daggers that stab into your back.
"You deserve it!" The voices yell. Cause she's the reason that Emma is dead, flashing lights, screeching wheels that turn the curb, a shout of warning that came far too late. When she's the reason her best friend is dead, angry shouts, vicious taunts, "it's your fault!"
"Tick. Tock." Mocks the clock.
Blood pools on the concrete pavement and stains the blacktop a dark, velvet red. It drips and covers the walls, forms a permanent brand on her clothes even despite how dark the black she wears or how much she drenches the fabric with bleach. It paints her hands, a putrid, ugly color that she can smell sometimes in the shower, no matter how hard she scrubs, till her skin is rubbed raw, bleeding with her own blood, as if that is any penance.
And soon she can't hold the screams in anymore, cause-
Tick. Tock. MAKE IT STOP.
...
Ashtyn formed a bittersweet smile that really wasn't sweet at all. The shadows moaned around her, and she watched as they inched and shuddered against the walls and corners with monstrous grins, their humanoid shapes urging her on as she stared at that criminally perfect wrist.
She pondered how it would look when it was finally painted red, wondered if it'd be the same shade of red as the rest of her that hadn't quite yet bled.
Then she wondered, the girl with brown hair and hazel-colored eyes with that awful fake smile.
How did Emma feel when she was about to die?
