Saving Grace (editing)

22: elliot // Gone

t w e n t y - t w o

For another little while, things were alright.

They were.

But only until they weren't. Only until they suddenly were not alright at all.

Because the world suddenly caved in and everything ripped apart.

The world had, for Eliiot at least, reached its very end. Only, the apocalyspe hadn't fully reached its conclusion yet.

A moment before everything did collaspe though, Elliot could say that the whole world froze, ceasing to spin on its axis. It had slowed to a sudden stop. It halted.

And then it spun out of control, whirling so fast that the world cracked in half.

That last beep echoed in his mind, still so clearly and continuously and still so, so unforgiving. He couldn't get it out.

Elliot could not.

Not accept it.

It.

He wouldn't.

It couldn't be true.

He was just in a morphed nightmare.

She wasn't gone.

She wasn't.

Gone.

Gone from the world.

Gone from existence.

Gone from him.

Gone.

She...

Was...

Was she?

No.

No.

Gone. She was. Gone. She. Was. Gone.

And Elliot realised that the world not only broke and crumbled around him, it opened up and swalowed him whole.

It swallowed Elliot up.

- - -

Susie cried for a week.

She stayed home from school until her sobs became slow tears and her slow tears became little frowns and her little frowns became lingering sadness. And sadness was okay, Elliot told her. Sadness is better than feeling nothing at all.

Elliot slept by her side.

"I miss Mummy. But she's... She's in heaven now isn't she."

Elliot still slept by her side even when she told him that she was okay.

Their father stayed in his room for an entire day after that night and the next, he went straight to work.

Elliot didn't know how to comfort hin. He never stuck around long in the house anyhow.

So Elliot had to be the rock; the support for what was left in his small family.

Yet he couldn't always be strong could he?

When he came back to school, after a week and a day, students, people who weren't even friends of his, tossed him sympathetic looks and pats on the back whenever they walked past in the corridor.

He felt sick.

He stayed home for the rest of the week.

Elliot didn't want people to say they were sorry or that he was going to be fine.

He wanted his mum.

He wanted to reverse time.

God, he wanted to see her beaming face and crinkly eyes and wavy untamed hair.

She was the ruler of the universe and was supposed to be unbeatable. They were unbeatable. Weren't they?

At the funeral, he just stared blankly at the framed picture that had been placed on the altar, a black and white photo of her smiling.

He tried to steer his vision away from the coffin that was right in front of him.

He doesn't remember much from that day.

He does remember that it seemed to be too sunny. He had thought how dare the sun shine down on the world.

But he would've hated it if it was snowing too.

He hates everything.

He didn't cry either.

He hasn't cried yet. He hates himself.

He recalls the words of how the world was not a wish granting factory.

Grace had told him that quote.

He hadn't visited Grace in ages.

Elliot was so wrapped up in his own problems that he had almost forgotten all about Grace.

Would she notice his absence?

Could she be waiting by her window and looking at the door expectantly for his arrival?

Would she notice that he was gone from the world because the world itself had exploded? That he had fallen into his own mind of delusion and utter dysfunction?