Mr. Misty-Eyed | Josh Dun

dream sequence | forty

Hot sparks burst into the air, the remanence of the mangled car lay feet away from me. The black and grey smoke still rose from the ashes and flittered up into the air in puffy bursts. As the wind picked up, dying embers lifted up and flew into the air like tiny fireflies before fading out into nothing.

Chunks of liquid plastic still dripped down, hardening in mid-air from the cool night air. The moment was almost serene. And though I felt safe for the time being, I still didn't move from the spot I stood in. I waited for anything, and everything, to come and take away this feeling.

The sound of metal scraping against the road caused me to whirl around in panic, but again it was only bits and pieces of the car falling away from each other.

A gasp left my lips as yet again another noise hit my ears. I turned back toward the smoking car and watched at the glove compartment came apart and the small door fell from its hinges. My eyes grew wide as sheets of paper began to fall from inside. The clean edges and pristine white of the pages were almost blinding against the black ash that surrounded it.

Page after page drifted with the cool breeze, circling around me as I stepped forward and tried to catch as many as I could. The wind blew harder, pulling at my clothes as if to stop me from reading the scribbled writing I could see was already written on the pages.

I held the papers close to my chest and as though the wind had given up, it died down, allowing me the ability to read the few short words.

The writing was dark and etched, almost stained, into the paper like it had been put there hundreds of years before. My stomach constricted and my heart began to pound in my aching chest as I stared down at what was written only once on every single sheet of paper I had caught.

'I die when you die.'

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