The Lost and Broken

in a world far away,

Unedited.

Sometimes it's difficult to pinpoint exactly where in life everything started to turn against you. For me, though, it's not so hard. In fact, despite one exact obvious point, there's been a few situations I've found myself in that have increased the speed in which my life has plummeted down into oblivion.

The first was when I watched a boy lose his grip on life before my eyes. For years, I blamed myself. I still did. I couldn't even stop the guilt coursing through bloodstream long enough to make an appearance at his funeral. I couldn't bear it. Needless to say I'd never dealt with death in a proactive way. Of course, everything went downhill from there – bad fortune began to cling to me like a bad smell. It started small – my pet fish died suddenly, the cat I'd had for two weeks ran away and never came back, and I broke my arm in two places. But ever so slowly everything started to escalate until they found cancer under my grandmother's skin, and my teenage neighbour's body in the river across town.

I hadn't gone to those funerals, either. Blame still ate away at me, even though I wasn't the one who'd burnt my grandma's skin over the years, or pushed Jack to drown himself; even though some rational part of me knew none of this was my fault.

The second incident came after a sudden break from bad fortune. I'd begun to think everything in the world had righted itself, and with this positivity, it wasn't long before my world was again on fire. Only this time, it was literally.

No one was home when some electrical fault ignited a flame in my sitting room, and quickly spread to the entirety of the house. I returned to witness firefighters unsuccessfully battling the scorching creature, though I barely registered them in my mind – it was preoccupied by the devil whispering that, somehow, this was because of me. Even when I dropped my school bag on the concrete path and sprinted inside, I didn't hear anything but the threatening blame. I knew there should've been footfalls behind me, someone yelling, and there probably was, but I wasn't aware.

Flames licked my bare skin as I moved through the hallway, and my palms blistered when I tried to open doors. Through the pain, I was barely aware of why I'd gone back in the house. What was I going to do? Where was I going? I kept moving forward, in search of something that wasn't going to be found.

My heart beat faster and harder. My eyes grew heavy. The thick smoke stuck in my throat, forcing out the oxygen until the devil laughed and world grew black.

I woke up in a hospital bed, with my mother looking down at me with sadness on her features but blame in her eyes. She gave me only a few minutes for my mind to try and comprehend the events that had occurred prior – whatever they really were – before she spoke.

"Tess, staying here in Thermont doesn't seem like a great idea for you right now," she whispered as her hand toyed with my shortened hair. "Your father and think that it's best if you go away for a bit."

There was an undertone to her words, as if she were reading off a script but her innate feelings were very, very different. Despite this, I knew leaving was easiest. Maybe they, too, knew that I was a bad fortune omen. I couldn't disagree with where their blame was aimed.

My attempt to reply came out with one croaky, mutilated word. "Where?"

A small, wry smile appeared on her lips. "It's just a camp a few hours away. I've heard it's very lovely, and the people are very nice. You might never want to come back!"

Her attempt to be cheery fell short, but her humourless laugh echoed around the room. I was too drugged up on morphine and wrapped in bandages to give an appropriate response. It was as if so many thoughts were flying around my mind, but they were fuzzy and incomplete. So I simply mumbled one word – "Okay."