This World is Outrageous { BOOK 2 }

Death is Contagious PROLOGUE--SNEAK PEEK

Prologue

This is an apology.

Never did I want this—any of it. I wanted our family to be a happy family of five, one like those that you see on television. Happy and carefree. I wanted two parents and three children consisting of a nineteen year old and two seven year old twins that are less than six months away from being eight years old.

I only wanted a happy family. I don't feel as if that was too much to ask.

But then the father of the family of five gets supposedly killed by the Jotunn Warriors.

The mother—Grace Zachary—does not know how to grieve the loss of her husband so instead she turns to drinking in order to drown out her sorrows. Two months after his death she looks twice her age. She comes home drunken and seems to have forgotten how to smile.

The family begins to crumble.

Then the society of Exitium comes into play, wrecking any chance our decreasing family has of being normal. The twins, who are so young, understand everything perfectly. And every day they fear for their lives.

I guess that's where I made the mistake of leaving them behind.

Then, there are the Jotunn Warriors—the once humans. These Warriors are made up of the deceased.

How incredibly sick.

The start of these nine to twelve foot tall beings all came from a harmless experiment. From there, it became an army. Then from an army to an invasion. That invasion forever etched itself into everyone's worst nightmares. States were destroyed and every dead carcass was transformed into these monsters.

Thus forming the original cause for tearing my life to shreds.

These evil creatures are ruining what little remains of my family. They rip apart any and everything that they can get their hands on. They do a mighty fine job at tearing my entire life apart.

Brick by brick my reality keeps tumbling down and I wonder if it will ever stop.

The Jotunn converted my father into the very thing that ruined him. The very thing that killed him. They turned the father I loved into a monster—a killing machine.

I killed that monster.

I killed my father.

When I left my family all those months ago, when I left them to fend for themselves, I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I made the right choice.

Did I?

Now, all I want is to be in my home. I don't care that my drunken mother is there, or that my siblings have to live in the cruelest of worlds. I just want to be home.

I don't want to have to fear every single moment that passes. I want to be a typical nineteen-year-old who's able to be in love with Casper Alexander-Fernando Bunk. I don't want to keep putting him on the back burner.

I want to be a nineteen year old who has a father to protect her from any heartache a boy might send her way. I want a mother who is coherent in everything she does and at least understands the damage she causes. But she doesn't, and she never will. I want my siblings—Ema and Evan—to feel safe and not fear whether or not they'd live to see tomorrow.

These are the things that I want, but I can never have.

Regardless I still wish I could do more. I wish I could be in two places at once, but I can't be. I wish I never left my broken family alone, that I never ventured away. I wish I never ran into Eli in the street that day. I wish I never killed my father, that I never endured what lay under the mask of the Jotunn Warriors. I wish I felt courageous. I wish I wasn't broken.

I wish, I wish, I wish.

Through all of this, I have discovered it takes ten times longer to build yourself up than it does to tear yourself to pieces. Tearing yourself apart is easy. Stitching yourself back together and mending the wounds you cause is hard and all together time consuming. Maybe if I had stayed put, maybe if I hadn't tested my boundaries, maybe if I played by the rules, then maybe I wouldn't feel as helpless as I do right now.

Maybe my future would be different.

Everything I never wanted for myself or for my family has come true. I am stuck in a helpless predicament. This is my downfall. This is my death.

Love, I have learned, is a deadly game. The love for my boyfriend, my friends, my mother, my siblings, even my father.

It's such a deadly game and in this particular hand, I'm playing all my cards.

I will not make it to see another sunrise. I will not make it to see God painting the sky glorious colors. I won't get to see Ema and Evan grow up. I won't ever see my mom find the happiness she deserves, and I won't have the opportunity to live a life with Casper Bunk or to see that New York lives for another hundred years.

I have wedged myself between a rock and a hard place. Unfortunately, this is going to be the death of me.

This world is outrageous, there is so much death and darkness. And I feel like the weight of the world is mine to bear. I'm tired of death. Death is contagious. Not in the sense that if one person dies, so does another. But in the sense that when someone dies, a piece of you goes with them.

I have no more pieces left to give. I am tired of death.

I tried so hard to avoid reaching this point, but I failed. I failed as I always do. I not only failed myself, but my family, Casper, Willow, Avery and Demetria. There is so much to say to those I love and such little time to say it.

I am Bryony Hope. I am not, I have never been, nor will I ever be Baylee Areaux Zachary.

I'm sorry, but I have no more pieces of myself left to give. Death is contagious, and it's time my story ends.

No take-backs.