The Pages Bloom

❀1

Anger. Sadness. Pain.

The weight of the jumbled emotions seemed to flood the living room like a reckless tsunami as everyone flew about like ragdolls being slammed around the house. Even more jarring than the erratic movements rattling the floors and walls were the words. A word here, a word there, all flung about with too much meaning to decipher, yet none of them meant a thing to me. I stood in the center of it all, my mind dead and dull like a ghost, my presence paper-thin—if not totally invisible.

Of all the things being said and mentioned, my name was never one of them. I wasn't surprised—my name has never been a hot topic around here, after all—but it felt as though I had been forgotten, forgotten in the time when I needed to be remembered most.

I don't remember exactly what happened after that, but maybe at that point I had managed to slip out of my own memory and disappear altogether. It's a blissful thought.

❁❁❁

Cold moonlight peeks through my window curtains, enshrouding my bedroom with a faint glow as I groggily lift my head from my desk.

I blink at nothing in particular until my eyes brush over my watch, time as cruel and unrelenting as usual as the constant tick-tock drums inside my head. I frown.

Every second and minute that passes, the farther away I get from her. I wipe my eyes—which haven't really been dry all day—as the memory of her flutters down as easily as a butterfly's flight, yet somehow manages to hone the weight of a pile of bricks.

I shake my head as it starts a set of almost rhythmic throbs, knowing full well that I'm powerless. I can't stop death, and I can't stop my brain.

I pull myself from my chair and leave my bedroom, absent-mindedly wandering the hallway until my feet carry me to my parents' room. The door is shut, and the rest of the house is eerily quiet. It was never a loud place to begin with, but the perpetual silence that dominates now is almost as choking as the chaotic noise earlier that burst through the house like lightning.

I tap a light fist against the surface of the door, my breath hitching in my throat as I await a response. I'm waiting for so long that I almost jump when a quiet voice erupts from the other side.

"Who is it?" The voice is shaky and unstable, like an old bridge threatening to come undone by a sudden weight. My heart aches as I picture my mother—stern and collected—rendered torn and distraught by grief, but I force composure into my voice nonetheless.

"Saki," I reply, somewhat satisfied at the result. There's no response, however, and I press myself closer to the door.

No words, no movement. I draw my body away, closing my eyes as I come undone, falling prey to complete and utter chaos.

A bubble of grief encases my head like a fishbowl, fear and anguish swirling around my mind until my thoughts become no more than a flooded mess of incoherency. It chokes the oxygen out of my lungs, leaving nothing but pain behind, yet no matter how hard I try to reach the surface—wherever that is—there's no hope of swimming away when the sea I'm drowning in is my own, muddled brain.

I try to move somewhere else, anywhere else that won't remind me of the reality that's sinking me, pulling me deep into an abyss of anguish that's full of everything and nothing all at the same time, but it seems I'm anchored. Anchored, drowning, and hopeless.

Tears sting the corners of my eyes as my pacing slows, my body freezing up despite my nerves feeling as though they're on fire. Cold, salty liquid streams down my face like icicles grazing my skin, but nothing works in alleviating the invasive heat attacking me. Nothing I do calms me down. I can't do it on my own-there's nothing that I can do on my own.