When We're Older- The Maze Runner (Newt)

me

NEWT

Mae left my room about an hour later, Brenda wanted to go over their role together before we had to leave.

So now, I was left in an empty room, with an empty bed, with my empty thoughts. I didn't know whether it was the Flare, or just my mind overthinking like usual, but I couldn't feel anything.

I had told Mae I was happy, and in that time, I think I was. But as I sat on the bed, my journal laid out in front of me, opened to a fresh page, I didn't feel anything. I was numb. My pen had almost touched paper when I suddenly realized I had nothing to write. I had thoughts in my mind, I had things to say... I just didn't know how. Didn't know the words.

Sighing and looking up to the concrete ceiling, I closed my eyes, searching the depths of the endless void in my head for just one single word to write. Maybe a phrase, if I was lucky, maybe a whole passage. A couple pages like I had been writing every single day since the moment I found this empty book. But like the pages I had yet to write in, I was wordless.

A spurt of frustration caught me off guard, and I threw my journal off my lap, somewhere in the room along with my pen I chucked at the dresser. The Flare made me jumpy. My temper short. I didn't know what I expected, maybe to just feel like I had a cold, like something was itching me and I couldn't scratch it. But I got the opposite. Yes, the virus was an itch I couldn't reach inside my head to scratch, but it was more too. I had pushed the love of my life today, almost knocking her out. I wanted to rip my own head off for hurting so bad, I wanted to do the same to my arm. I wanted to rest, but as much as I laid down, it felt like I had the sudden urge to just spring into action and destroy everything in the room.

I stood up, huffing my way to the dresser where I had thrown my pen. I bent down to my knees, wincing at the stupid pain in my leg. I grabbed the pen off the ground and heaved myself back up. But instead of moving back toward the mattress and writing down useless words that were in my bloody brain, I stood there.

My arms were spread out as I stared at the old wood, no thoughts running through my mind.

Impulsively, I reached my hand up and pressed the button on the radio I had switched off when Mae left, turning it back on and waiting for music to play. I needed something. The quiet was beginning to drive the crazy part of my brain, even crazier.

I almost jumped when the sound started to play, catching me off guard from the silence that ate at my mind. I'd never heard anything like it before, so I turned up the volume just as the man decided to start signing.

His voice was soothing, the old quality of the radio making him sound scratchy. But I didn't care, for the first words he sang hit me like a bullet in the heart.

I stood still as I listened to him sing, turning up the volume even more as though I wanted his voice to visibly move through me. I needed to hear every word this man was saying, no matter if the song was total gibberish or not. Something about the fact that someone who was probably long dead knew how I felt—was able to see right through me—scared me in the best way possible.

Grabbing the radio off the dresser, I stared at it as the words made me start to breathe heavier, something that I wasn't expecting. I slowly started to limp back to the mattress, the pen I picked up still in my hand. I lowered myself down, leaning to the right to grab my journal from the end of the bed, where it had supposedly landed.

I set the radio on the mattress next to me, listening to the lyrics with a heavy heart as I placed my journal on my lap.

Most times, people's lives flash before their eyes before they're about to die. When they're falling from a building, or when the water becomes too much for their lungs to take...even when the bullet is flying straight toward them. They see their mistakes, their trials and tribulations, heartbreak, the good things too. But now as I listened to the voice of a man I didn't even know the name of, my life flashed before my eyes. I saw everything. Things that made my life worth living.