Death Code

Prologue (Asher)

Hopelessness.

Complete and utter hopelessness.

The feeling of knowing something horrible is tsunami diving its way towards you and knowing there is no protection of elevation, no car to speed away in, no safety to grip onto, no anything to tame the clawing insecurity of suffocating on water.

Knowing these are your last minutes and all you can do is enjoy the light of the sun, smiling over you and the soft sand, hugging you from beneath your feet. 

Without thinking, the words "I love you" come flash flooding out of my mouth in a hush whisper.

I didn't really know what I was thinking, but it wasn't a lie, I love her and it's insane. I know it's insane, I shouldn't be having this feeling that I don't really know what the heck is, but I know I never felt this way about anyone before.

And I'm young and stupid and naive and I probably have this feeling all mixed up with the feeling of like, but it's out there and I'm not taking it back because I can't stop thinking about her all the freaking time and heck, I think I love her.

"I-I...I" she stutters and hesitates and I don't know what I should think.

"It's okay," I say, but it's really not because my heart is breaking in a sea of disappointment and rejection and I don't know how I should feel about the fact that she doesn't feel the same. And I continue to speak and be a gentlemen because I don't want to lose her, but it's all in a swampy haze. I think I say something about her not having to say it back, but I'm not sure and I think I need to get out of here before my weeping heart bleeds it's tears across my cheeks, but then she says it. The three worded phrase that stitches my wounds together.

"I love you," she says.

But something's off.
The words feel off.
Her voice seems off.
She seems off.

Does she not feel the same way? Did she only mutter those words to make me happy or because she felt force to? Did she only say it because I said it?

God, I shouldn't have even said anything at all. Why did I have to screw everything up like I always do?

My feet were too busy selfishly wondering about a sprinting marathon of questions for my ears to tune in to her trembling vibration of sounds wavering my name.

And the next thing I know her body is collapsing to the ground into a pile of limpness and I hear screaming, but I'm so lost and so confused and so so so shocked because I can't even register it's my own voice hollering like a lunatic.

My knees bust against the ground and I'm shouting for her to wake up and I'm shouting for someone to help her and I'm shouting at myself of how I could let this happen.

I think she fainted, but her body is so so so stiff and her eyes are so so so still and there's a pool of crimson, bleeding out of her head and all I could think about is how I didn't catch her. How my arms had turned to butter. How she had slipped right through them.

And my eyes are a roaring wave of a water fall, combusting against the rocks on impact and I'm somehow able to see through water to stare. And I'm staring and I'm staring and I'm staring into the frozen of nothingness in her eyes, wrecking me apart like a glacier of ice, because I can longer drown in her cycle of water brimming with life.

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