Prologue: Dear Diary

Dear Diary,

It's been ten years. I spent a decade thinking that writing down my experience was stupid. I spent a decade believing that except for Dan, nothing interesting would ever happen in my life. And that wasn't exactly the best sort of interesting.

I was a child in a lot of ways. I still am, legally. But aside from that, I don't think anyone can call me a child ever again.

Not after this.

I can't think yet. That's why I'm writing this down. I can't think until I've mulled over it in my head. It happened a week ago. Or at least, it ended a week ago.

I fought for the first time.

I killed for the first time.

I never feared for my life before this... It's exciting, and horrifying. I don't think I could get that much adrenaline out of an injection.

I've been through hell, and I think I might have to go back again soon. I need to write this down while I still can. I need to process it all. So, here goes.

This might take a while.

Chapter 1: The End

As begins many stories like this, I woke up. It was a Saturday. I was on the floor.

Allow me to explain the significance of my presence on the floor: On an ordinary night, I hardly move at all during my sleep. I go to bed, put my head on the pillow, and boom- All systems offline. But, if I'm in a bad mood, or I'm dreading the next day, I have a hard time shutting off those systems. I stay awake for anywhere between ten minutes and two hours. This could be for something as trivial as having a hard test the next day. I toss and turn and usually find myself right on the edge of my bed. It's not uncommon for me to fall off the bed upon waking up, which sometimes I am thankful for, since it jolts me awake and gives me a quicker start to the morning.

I have only woken up all the way on the floor once before. I had a nightmare that night, although I only remembered what it was about after the horrible event that happened that day. You know how some people have awesome senses of time, or well-tuned gaydars? I have an extremely accurate sense of impending doom. As far as I can tell, I only wake up like this when the next day has something horrible coming to me.

So, I woke up on the floor. That would be the first indicator of weird stuff going down. More to follow.

I picked myself off the floor, already panicking slightly. The last time this happened, Danny died. I wasn't always an only child. Who was next? My mom? My dad?

Me?

I walked downstairs to make sure my parents were around. They were routinely in the living room at this point, either reading or talking or doing paperwork or what have you. You have three guesses as to the number of people in the living room when I walked down there, and the first two don't count:

That's right, one. Including me. So I was alone, which has been terrifying for me ever since my brother died and left me, well, alone. It was a little disconcerting, to say the least. My parents were always super distant before the accident. Now they spent a great deal of time with me, partially to ward off my anxiety, and partially to ward off their own guilt. When I was younger, I assumed that they only did this to be nice to me, but as I got older it became more and more apparent that they were mostly making up for lost time because hey, who knows when Kid #2's time'll be up?

It really sucks, losing an older sibling. You were never supposed to be an only child, you always had the other kid, you never knew what it was like without the other person. That's their burden, not yours. But it doesn't always work like that.

I'm not intending to mope around, I'm just trying to give you, whoever ends up reading this diary while I'm away or after I'm dead or whatever, a handle on what I was thinking and feeling. Everything I'm about to say will make a lot more sense with that understanding. So, I'll leave my emotional exposition for later.

No one in the living room. Odd, but it happens. Trying to assume the best, I walked into the kitchen to get some breakfast, of course with the ulterior motive of looking for them. No one. I opened the fridge. It was empty.

...Huh?

I opened the cabinets and the pantry. Empty, all empty. Everything was gone. Maybe they cleared it all out and went grocery shopping? I looked for a note. I'd be damned if they took all the food and didn't leave me a note. After a thorough scan of the kitchen, however, I found no note. I went upstairs to see if they were in bed. I had to come up with some pretty far-fetched stories to explain that, though. I guess it was possible that they had cleared out all the food last night, went to bed and were going to go grocery shopping today? But why would they sleep in, in that case...?

I reached their door and knocked, but there was no response. I knocked louder. Nothing. I listened to see if there was any breathing. Still nothing. I slowly turned the doorknob, and pushed the door open. Not remotely to my surprise, I found an empty room with a perfectly made bed.

I was on the verge of hyperventilation at this point. It didn't even make sense for them to be dead, unless there was one sick serial killer in my house last night. I ran back downstairs and picked up the phone. There was no dialtone. Why was there no dialtone?

What gave my phone the right to not be giving me dialtone, damnit?

I started punching in my mother's phone number. Nothing was happening. Same with my father's. Same with 911. I caught myself breathing rapidly, and slowed it down. I took deep, deliberate breaths.

Everything was going to be okay. I was going to walk slowly over to the living room, turn on the TV, and watch something stupid and boring until my parents came back. The phone wasn't working because the power was out, that's why the lights were all off, and everything was okay.

But, if the power was off, the TV wouldn't work. I pushed the power button. As I expected, nothing happened. Whatever. I'd just read a book. I walked over to the shelf and noticed that all of our books were uniform sizes and color, and had no titles. What the hell?

I picked one out and flipped through it. My suspicions were confirmed: It was as blank as everything else in my stupid house. I may as well have been in a doll house. So much for controlled breathing.

I practically flew out of my house and down the street. Despite no lights being on in any houses, I started pounding on doors. I screamed into the houses for people to let me in. Nothing doing. I ran back inside, bolted up my stairs, dove into my room and slammed the door. I collapsed onto my bed and started rocking back and forth. I was alone.

Alone.

All alone.

The world was empty.

After a little bit, I noticed that my eyes were starting to hurt. Something was shining in them. A light. I looked over to its source... My computer screen? That couldn't be happening, the power was out. I flicked my light switch. The lights did not turn on. See? Power, down. My computer screen could not possibly be...

Glowing. I walked over to it. The closer I got, the brighter it grew. What? My fear had peaked now. It was like I wasn't controlling my own body, I was just watching it happen. I slowly reached out to touch the monitor. It only grew brighter. My room started to become pure white, everything obscured by the light.

My index finger made contact with the screen, which by now was blending in with the rest of my room. The light flared, consuming everything, and then faded, consuming me.

I was gone, my room was empty of people.

I learned later that after my departure, my monitor went black and read, "Realization Complete."