The sun reflect off of the field turning the wheat orange and gold. She walked through, wheat trampled beneath her feet, hand brushing over tips of the long stalks. It tickled. She felt a smile tease her lips, but it was tamped down by the spike of terror that ripped through her. She glanced around her breath coming in gasps. She was alone. She was fine. But the terror continued to accompany her and she walked further and further. As she got closer and closer she broke into a run. Maybe she could outrun the terror out run what she was certain happened that night. They had told her she was crazy that the he had never existed that she was slipping. But she knew. She was right. 2 steps away 1 step. She stopped a human shaped hole of trampled wheat. Dark dried red staining golden brown. This is where it had happened where she had killed the one she loved.
“The space between the stars… what would you call it?” She asked, hand streatched out towards the stars as if she could reach out and grab them. The night was dark, almost pitch black, Exept for the stars that shone brightly illuminating the rolling hills. “I don’t know,” he answered, she giggled at that. Her voice echoing in the quiet night air. “Come on silly, you don’t have to think so hard.” “It’s a complicated question,” he told her defensively, she just laughed. He smiled and hugged her close. He would be happy to stay here forever as long as she was here. ~ “The sta…rs” she grasped out, her hand tentatively reaching out towards the open sky. “The stars? What about the stars” He pleaded grasping her pale shaking hand. “You promise to ans…wer me this time…” “Answer what?” “Prom…is me” “I promise” “What would you…call…the place…between the star…s?” “You silly this isn’t the time for that” he cried, Tears moistening his eyes and running down his cheeks, he held limp bleeding body close to his chest. She was pale, too pale, her voice shaky with pain. He pushed on her wound. Blood running over his fingers. But it was no use, she was too far gone. “I love you.” He wispered “The…question?” She asked again her voice thin. He wanted to give her an answer but his mind was blank. Blank. Blank. Blank. “I-I-I don’t know” “Some….da…y you’ll….kn…ow“ She closed her eyes and took in a deep shuttering breath. A breath that would never be released. She was gone, He looked at his hand wet with blood. He thought he knew now. In a word without her. It was nothing. A Void.
“You’ve caused me so much pain, yet the love I feel for you blinds me from it.” “ You’re insane” she told him staring at his manic face. He smiled, not the loving smile one gives to a significant other or even a smile one gives when happy. No. An uncontrollable smile. An empty smile. An eerie unnerving smile. “Ha-ha-haha-“ he laughed, his head nocked back. Hand running through his hair. She took a step back. Then another. She turned to run. The night was eerily quiet. Too quiet. She looked back not quite ready for what she would see. He stood still in the same spot. His eyes boring into her. Like he could kill her with his stare. Then in the blink of an eye he had a gun. Now that really would kill her. She watched her feet rooted to the ground as he raised the gun as if in slow motion. She watched as he aimed. Then- BANG. He fired. She watch the bulletin race forward. Getting faster and faster as it got closer and closer. She thought she would feel the impact. But she didn’t. She didn’t feel anything again.
“Think of the children” she tells her little brother after he refuses to turn off the light. A lie they both knew.
“Think of the children” she tells her mother in line when she won’t buy her a cookie.
“Think of the children” she says ending her work presentation.
“Think of the children” she tells the man she is trying to sell to.
“Think of the children” she preaches to the masses as she declares war.
“Think of the children? Ha.” A teenager mocks as she stand over her a gun pointed towards the dictators heart.
“Think of the children? Really?” The teen mocks again before pulling the trigger.
“But…Think- of the children”the dictator gasps her blood spilling over the marble floors.
Think of the children, the dictators last thought. Always and forever a lie.
“Wars have been started over less” she said heels clicking as she descended the steps in a hurry.
“I understand that but-“ her brother mumbled running to keep up with her.
“Great, now that you understand go get the guards rounded up and have them send out the emergency letters”
“I really don’t know if this is necessary” he continued.
“I can assure you little brother that it is,”
“Why the heck would someone kill of so many innocents over-“ he started for the umteanth time, but was interrupted once more when a red high heel that wizzed by his head at a almost inhuman speed.
“Shhhh” his sister told him putting her finger over her mouth in shush gesture silencing his protests of her shoe throwing.
“Who the heck would start a war over a popsicle!?” He yelled, a moment before the cannons struck.
The walk was painful, metal chains cutting into her wrists. But that wasn’t the only reason. The town they walked through was completely destroyed; buildings demolished, glass windows shattered, paint chipping, debris littering the dirt streets. The only sound that echoed through the unnatural silence of the town was the scuffing of shoes and the squelch of blood as the prisoners walked through the sweltering heat. But the smell was worse; the worse thing she had ever smelled. The smell of thousands of rotting corpses. Her chest constricted, heart seeming too slow as her stomach dropped. She scanned each of the dead faces as they passed. Some too far gone to even recognize. But some she did. The baker that lived across the street, the shop owner that had always given them the best deals on meat. But worst came as she walked by a body trampled on and pushed to the side of the road, her own. This was her villiage but in this timeline she had stayed to fight.
The person staring back at me in the mirror is never the me I want, not the me other people see. But the me that I see. It is the strange me, the one I hate, the one no one would ever want to see. But I see all the same, I see it. Every mirror, I see it. In the shards of the broken mirror it still remains. Me.
