Devil of Clinia

Puppetmaster's Toy

Mar's POV

I haven't been seeing Aurora at school lately. I wonder if she's sick or something. Hope she feels better if she is.

Lawson's been more distant but we've been tightly knit together for so long it's understandable he needs a break.

Except it hasn't just been him. Everybody has been cold lately. So much more blank and emotionless. Almost seemingly inexperienced at life. So very lacking.

I vowed to not keep suspecting everything and being so paranoid, but this really seems different than all the other times. Even in Clinia everything was more of a theory build up of suspense and agonizing fear, but this just feels like a sinister power above me. It feels like something lurking and creeping in the clouds, peeking from the stratosphere and infiltrating into my very unsound mind.

I would hate for life to become so excruciatingly repetitive again. Imagine that, being back in Clinia or never even leaving. I laugh at the thought of it. I'm so tired of it, and I imagine anyone else would be. It's exhausting to hear or think about over and over again. I want to forget that it even existed, which was working for a while. Originally I wouldn't have minded keeping the past and simply moving on from it, expanding my life experiences, but now more than anything I want that part of my life torn away from me as if it never occurred. It burdens my daily life like a fly endlessly buzzing around my face. I wish so much that I could grab ahold of it in my palm and crush it in my fist, then toss it away and leave its corpse to rot on the road, where the unnoticeable body will be ran over by car after car, and I would never have to think about it again.

It's almost like meeting Aurora reinstated my memory, and now it is no longer slipping from my mental grasp. I'm cornered with the past towering above me and obliterating my life that it controls.

I sit inside the cafeteria at a lunch table with my head resting on my arm.

"Hey, you doing alright?" A school counselor tapped my arm.

"Yeah I'm doing fine." I look up, but when I do I see a couple spots in my vision because I lifted my head too quickly.

She nods and walks off.

I don't recognize the counselor, but she seems new and unsure because when she walks away she seems lost as she stops to figure out which hallway to strut down.

I scoff, and drop my head back down.

Lunch feels like it's not long enough, and my nap is cut short. I wake up feeling groggy and disoriented.

I follow the horde of students out of the lunch room, and go to my class in which has a couple of my friends, Ezra, Ebony, Jess, and Katrina.

Ezra was acting like his past self, telling outrageous stories and being theatrical with every motion he made. Ebony I met when I borrowed a pencil and I did in fact return it to her. Jess I met when she joined tutoring with Ezra. Katrina was a foreign exchange student I was assigned to assist from Poland, who was originally from Russia. Katrina was really good at math and she helped me when I forgot the homework from time to time.

I started to develop a genuine crush on Ezra again, but it was difficult because I fell in love with the same person yet it wasn't the same person twice.

Off topic entirely, but lately I've been asking myself why I haven't seen Sparrow. It's possible he lives in a different state, country, or even continent, but it's odd everyone else from Clinia would be right here besides him.

Right as I begin to think about it, he walks by.

"Isn't that odd..." I whisper.

Against my greater judgment, and against the vow I made, when I get home, I begin jotting down everything that's been weird on a white board.

Really going back to my roots here. Where it all started.

I feel like I'm putting a magnifying glass up to my life, inspecting everything I did so that I can do it better than before.

I inch my way closer to solving a theoretical mystery, or I'm wasting my time and broke my promise for nothing.

As I'm writing stuff down I feel compelled to stop. My arms start to tense up and twitch like they are trying to move on their own.

Eventually I pull against it and what felt like strings tugging on me stops.

Just more for me to note on the board. I shake my head and resume writing.