Keep Him Alive (A Saw Story)

Chapter One: The Plot Against America

8:23 pm

The Gordon Apartment

It would generally come into consideration that it is rather the overuse of metaphors that tend to keep readers from following along, but those words are actually the words that create the image in the reader's head. "The Plot Against America" is quite an interesting story, but also one insanely hard to follow along with. Through her efforts were strong, she couldn't bring herself to understand what the fuck she was supposed to process.

It wasn't the metaphors themselves that confused her, or that she, lying down on her bed, was most likely not in the best position for one to be reading in, but rather the fact that she kept finding herself unintentionally reflecting those metaphors onto her own thoughts, which was now why she had to reread it as unassigned homework.

"Dammit." she groaned, dropping the small book down onto her chest. Its surprisingly dense paper cover pressed down onto her torso, persuading her to pick it up and drop it onto the floor.

Looking back up, she found herself staring straight at the ceiling above her, who's empty white paint streaks drove her crazy. When her parents had purchased the house, they claimed that a white ceiling would illuminate the rest of the room during the day by reflecting the sunlight that shined through the windows, but Avery's habit of keeping the shades down caused the room to remain quite dark. During the day, the light tended to sneak through the spaces between each blind, while at night, the place was almost pitch black.

The walls of the room were a bold brown, decorated with posters, lights, pictures, a variety of random things, really; but the ceiling was just- nothing. Its emptiness was too striking not to bother her. Whoever entered was doomed to see that endless void before noticing the beauty of the rest of the space.

A quiet knock interrupted her thoughts.

"Av?"

"Come in, Mom," Avery responded once recognizing the soft voice that came.

Alison opened the door and leaned into the room, holding onto the doorknob with one hand while stretching out the other in a comical manner.
"Dinner." she said with a smile. Avery chuckled and side high-fived mother's hand to get out of bed. She pranced to the kitchen only to be stopped by the unexpected one sitting at the table.

"Dad." she began, unaware of the ambiguous expression that came upon her face when she noticed Lawrence present.

"Hello, Avery," he responded with a smile as she sat down. He glanced at her as he spoke, but soon quickly reverted his eyes back to her mother. Diana was sitting next to him, and it seemed like they had already started since everyone's plates were over halfway gone; well, almost everyone's, but Avery didn't seem to take too much offense from the fact that nobody had called her until they were almost finished.

"What were you doing in your room?" Lawrence asked her in an almost inconspicuously cynical tone after an awkward moment of silence.

"Oh, just reading." she responded, politely, keeping her gaze on the untouched plate in front of her, "I wanted to reread a book that we are reading in school because I found it confusing."

"You need to pay more attention in class if you're having difficulties. Junior year is the most important year to finish off with good grades."

Without moving her eyes, Avery nodded. She could feel her mother's commiserating eyes on her, though that sympathy was unwanted. Lawrence's comments towards her academic achievement were nothing new, and both she and her mother were well aware of that. Unlike her, Avery saw his comments as rather critiques instead of insults, though she was unsure if she had forced herself to think that or not. Lawrence cared about his daughters, nothing else said.