TITLE: Stop the World
CHAPTER/TITLE: Chapter Fifty One/ Breathe
RATING: T (violence/language)
A/N: Wow, I know it's been a while since I did any Four Brothers stories! I have LOADS of them just sitting in my computer, waiting to be finished! I'm going to post this now and maybe it will make me finish it, along with the others! Whoops.
Review please?
Chapter One: Breathe
Sometimes Jack Mercer thought life would be so much easier if he could stop the world from spinning. If just for one second, he could freeze everything, where he was, where he was going, and step outside of himself. He could look ahead and behind at his choices, mistakes, and for one single, solitary moment take in the silence, the nothingness – and breathe.
It is something just about every single person does every single day, breathing. Humans come out of the womb having the innate sense and ability to do so. They do it to survive, to calm themselves, to hold in strong, volcanic emotions that if left unbridled could overpower us and erupt.
Jack couldn't breathe.
There was no space to do so.
Everything and everyone was closing in on him at a rapid rate. The world was spinning out of control. His world. His family. His life. It was too much. Too fast. He needed more time. Time to plan, to remember, to say goodbye, to play his music, to breathe.
Even as he contemplated his new grim fate and this implausible desire to grab the earth by its axis and click "pause", the seconds, minutes, were still spinning by.
Jack focused. He took a claustrophobic and cracked breath.
Another second gone. Forever wasted.
His life had always felt like it was spinning out of control. Evelyn had helped to steady his world. At least soothing his roller coaster down to a merry-go-round. Now, it was as if everything was in fast forward.
Jack had heard that when certain people hear life altering, world shattering, news or experience some traumatic event, that everything seems to put on the brakes and proceed in slow motion.
This wasn't true for Jack.
Sure, his life was being altered. His world was shattering, but it was still spinning, faster even. Time seemed to be skipping ahead, as if purposefully attempting to rob him even more. Everything was flying by him so rapidly, yet Jack was acutely aware of each detail that spun past him. Images were sharper, serrated. Words clearer, cutting. Emotions felt raw, real.
With everything he had, Jack reached out into the void, trying to pull himself away from it all. He needed to stop the world. He needed to get off. He had found a few ways to do so before, in what felt to him like a different lifetime. Heavenly chemicals that would take him as far away from the world in his mind as he wanted.
This time, he needed the escape more than ever. And this time, he had to do it on his own.
Jack willed his mind, willed every fiber of himself off the spinning storm. There was nothing in the void to grasp, to pull himself off with. He focused only on his craving for that sweet surrender, and with one harrowing step, Jack leapt off the world, falling eagerly into the darkness.
Everything was black and barren, and here – Jack breathed.