VANISHED (#1 in the VANISHED series) #NaNoWriMo2019 ✔

t w e n t y ✔

I'm sorry for your loss. My deepest condolences. This fucking sucks.

What to tell this woman? She had to have predicted it. She had the same powers as Mrs. Sullivan and Stella, so surely she was well aware Arielle had caused all this by being too stubborn. By trying to be brave. By trying to find Jade—

Jade.

Ignoring the warning alarms blaring in her skull, she opened the car door and hauled herself out. The air was muggy, but no sea scents reached her nostrils, and for a second she wondered how far she'd driven. She didn't recall the last city sign she'd visualized.

She slammed the car door. "What the fuck, huh?" Tipping her head back, she glared up at the stars, some covered by a film of clouds. "Where is Jade? Why have you strung me along like this? Secrets? What happens after death is a secret? Fine! Whatever! But where is Jade?"

Her knees buckled and she crumbled, pounding her fists on the pavement, screaming, sobbing, her pleas a blubbering mess of curses and begging. Tears, boogers, saliva—a mix of all three covered her face, but she didn't care. Who would see her here? Some trucker? Some rapist hiding in the obscurity?

Her life no longer mattered. Not when so many that she loved had vanished from it. Snatched from the earth and sent on to who-knew-where.

"W-why do you keep taking my loved ones?" She stopped crashing her fists to the ground and brought her hands close. Cuts and scrapes populated over her skin, and the slits filled with blood and pebbles. She blew on the wounds, hissing at the pain, then peeked up at the sky again. "Is it me? Did... did I do something to deserve this? Am I... am I bad? So y-you... steal my friends, my family?"

She wasn't sure who she was talking to. Having never been religious, never uttered a prayer or opened a Bible, she had no idea how any of this worked, if it was real, if it made sense. But with how recent events had played out, she couldn't help but wonder; was her life a game of chess? And some sick individual hid the clouds and moved the pieces around to drive her insane? To extract revenge on something she did?

I did nothing wrong.

Sure, she stole a lip-gloss once, when she started Junior High, to impress the upper-class girls. And she'd taken more than a few sips of alcohol behind her parent's backs. And she'd smoked and done a few drugs and had unprotected sex and partied until dawn—but were these all offenses that warranted such chaos? Did they mean she should lose those around her, those who uplifted her, kept her from turning herself in at a mental institute?

"I-it's not fair... not fair." She resumed slamming her fists on pavement, seething with each pound, sensing her wounds worsen, grow, throb.

She didn't care.

"I... want... the... truth."

The final blow made her slip, and her nose smashed onto the asphalt. She grunted, her fingers digging into the tar and breaking her nails. She winced and cried out when her forehead scrubbed against the sharp pebbles, but she didn't move, couldn't move.

A chilly breeze whipped through her hair, sending a welcome drizzle of relief down her neck, relaxing her spine.

"Truth..."

"Huh?" She zipped up, staying on her knees. She could have sworn the wind talked. "Is someone... there?"

It must have been a glitch, her imagination playing tricks on her. She'd been so distraught, there was no way her mind was in the right place, no way anything made a lick of sense. Not anymore.