You Will Be Found

I Am Damaged

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Oh yeah, he should've figured that something like that would be there. If he had been less cynical, he would've taken it as the universe giving him a sign not to go through with it. Too bad it didn't cancel out the overwhelming reasons to the contrary. No amount of talking about the steaming pile of utter shit that was his life could convince him it was somehow worth living.

Yet at the same time, he'd be waiting for a while before the clock struck midnight. If nothing else, it would pass the time. Maybe they could both pretend they had friends.

Barely knowing what he was doing, he pulled out his phone, dialled and called.

"Hello, thank you for finding the courage to reach out to us today," came the voice on the other end, a gentle lilt belonging to a young man, scarcely older than Ryan himself. "With whom do I have the pleasure?"

"... I can't go on."

A tiny crack in the dam, allowing a steady stream to persist through, splattering on the ground with the weight of all that had preceded its leakage. The cracks grew, more fluid spilt out, until the dam caved in on itself, letting the water burst free.

The flood swept the whole world, toppling mountains, shattering structures, drowning valleys and fjords and cities, swallowing whole continents. The Earth was trembling with its magnitude, scarcely able to bear its own weight.

Then a hurricane came, covering every square mile as far as the eye could see, sucking up the debris of the ruined Earth and spitting them out again haphazardly. It was coming right for him. He saw it coming but didn't move. It got closer, closer ...

In the eye of the hurricane, there was quiet, for just a moment.

He was back in that flat. It had been severely neglected, left in shambles. His mother was staring right at him and he was teetering on the knife-edge of uncertainty.

All he saw was the yellow sky.

"For the first time in my life, I had a reason to believe I'd be okay."

The sun was streaming in, shining on his face.

Maybe, if everything could've stayed that way for forever, he could've been alright.

But this was only the eye of the hurricane. A moment was never as long as you wanted it to be.

He'd lost Chloe. It was as if their mother had taken her with her after she died. Away from him for good. It was the lack of Chloe's light that had made his world go dark, not his mother's.

Maybe in hindsight, it should've been a sign. Much like the scorpion destined to sting, no matter how much he wanted to believe, however much he tried not to see what was really there, there was no hiding who he was.

And then

the sky

collapsed

without

a

sound.

The attack had stripped away everything that wasn't the absolute worst of him. There was no more pretending he was something better than these broken parts, this mess that he was.

The broken pieces of sky plummeted around him, hitting the ground with the force of flaming asteroids. All the stars soon followed, noiseless as falling tears, leaving behind only empty blackness.