Break's over and I'm back at it! As should you! Back to work! Hyah! HYAH! *cracks whip*
FON FAKT DID U NO: Perogies, breaded fish, and cooked vegetables are my favourite meal.
"I...I don't know what to do..."
My voice wavered in sync with the smoking gun in my hand. I had just killed him. I had just killed Cameron. He was lying there dead on the ground. My throat was hurting, but I wasn't very sure why...I found myself looking at him, thinking in the back of my mind that if I willed it hard enough, maybe he'd get up and everything would be fine.
He didn't move.
And I froze.
"Chaos, if I do actually die, can you continue the story for me?" Cameron asked.
I felt as if I was going to be sick. "Cameron, please. I don't like thinking about you being gone. So stop talking about it."
"But will you?"
I squinted my eyes shut, wanting more than anything for this conversation to be over. "Yes, Cameron. If you die, I'll finish the trilogy. Now please stop."
I had to finish the trilogy. All of them. All three. I had to.
Trudging over to Cameron's laptop, I slumped down in the chair. Out of curiosity, I checked his inbox. Names popped up. These were people that he was talking to.
He wouldn't be talking to them anymore.
Switching over to the Doc Manager, I stared at the screen for a long time. What should I do? I couldn't just...get started, could I...?
"There we go! Finished!" Cameron exclaimed. I turned to see him leaning back contently from his laptop.
I rested my arm on the back of my chair. "What did you do?"
Cameron turned to face me. "I finished the Bonus Chapter that reveals the truth about Cece. It's ready to be posted."
"You aren't going to post it, though, are you?" I asked doubtfully.
Cameron scoffed. "Of course not! I wanted it done in advance so that I'd have a good idea of how to work up to it." He turned back to the laptop and began to read over the chapter. "If I posted it now it'd be a huge spoiler."
There it was. In the Doc Manager.
BONUS: Backstory.
With a shaking hand, I entered the document, changed the chapter number to twenty-three, and submitted it to Fanfiction, barely noting the section made above the chapter depicting what I had done.
Window to the Past
BONUS CHAPTER: Backstory
Fey Choreman danced through the living room, singing a little song she made up about dinner. Her mother was making her favourite meal: perogies and breaded fish with cooked vegetables. She jumped up and down off the sofa and the coffee table, earning a frighteningly powerful scream about roughhousing around the furniture. Fey instantly stopped the jumping, but she still sang under her breath.
"Perogies and fishies on my plate, they are so yummy enough to satiate - Mom! What does satiate mean?" Fey stopped her dancing and turned to her mother who was currently in the kitchen across from the living room.
"It means something that makes you happy," she said in a hurried tone as she rushed back and forth in the kitchen. "Where did I put the flour again...?"
"Satiate! Satiate! Satiate!" Fey sang again, foregoing all of the other words she had used for this new one. Then she stopped again. "Mom!"
"Yes, dear?" her mother responded. "What is it?"
"I wanna help!"
Her mother breathed a sigh of relief. "Alright. Could you get a pot and boil it on the stove while I cut the vegetables?"
"Mmhmm!" Fey affirmed. She opened a cupboard, grabbed a large pot, and promptly waved in front of her mother's face. "'S this one good?"
"Yes, dear," her mother affirmed tiredly.
Fey smiled, walking over to the sink. "Yes, dear! Yes, dear!" she chanted as she turned on the hot tap and filled the pot. Fey continued to hum a cacophonous tune as the pot began to overflow.
"Not that full, Fey!" Her mother reached over Fey's shoulder and turned off the tap. "You'll never make it to the stove without spilling that. Only half full. It's a big pot."
"Okay!" Fey tilted the pot vertically, splashing some of the water on the counter. She leveled off when the pot had been emptied halfway. Forgetting about the spilled liquids, she put it on the stove and clicked the dial, just like Mom had shown her. The fire lit, and she put it on high. Her mother was beside her, cutting some carrots on a cutting board.
"What now? What now? I wanna eat!" Fey cheered, apparently a bit too loud for her mother's liking.
"Go downstairs and get the box of perogies from the freezer," her mother said with a wince. "I still need to find the flour." She put the knife down beside the pot and began to search the kitchen.
Fey skipped down the stairs, eager to dig into the perogies and fish her mother was making. "Should I get the fish, too, Mom?" she yelled up the stairs.
"Yes, thank you," came her mother's reply.
Fey ran down the hallway to the cellar, practically tearing the door off its hinges as she made a beeline to the fridge. This door got the same treatment as the cellar's as Fey's eyes hastily scanned the shelves for the elusive boxes.
"MOM, I CAN'T FIND THEM!" Fey screamed up the stairs.
"Are you looking in the fridge or the freezer?" her mother called down.
Fey looked at the appliance in front of her. It was the fridge. "I'M LOOKING IN THE FRIDGE!"
"They're in the freezer, dear!"
Fey slammed the fridge door shut and jumped to the side, lifting open the door to the freezer. She scanned the contents but still couldn't find those perogies.
"MOM, THEY AREN'T IN THE FREEZER EITHER!"
"Then go outside, they're in the shed."
"BUT MOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!" Fey protested.
She heard her mother sigh. "Fine, I'll do it."
Oh, no. If her mom did it, Fey would not hear the end of it. "NO, IT'S FINE!"
She raced up the stairs and put on her shoes. Thirty seconds later she was rummaging through the ancient freezer in the shed. Finally finding the boxes she had fought so hard for, her hands shot out like lightning and latched onto the boxes. Whipping around, she kicked the freezer door closed and charged into the shed door. She was repelled by the door, which had become stuck. Grunting in annoyance, Fey backed up and drove her shoulder into the door, only to fall to the ground. Fey growled and got to her feet, dusting herself off. She was about to fling herself at the door until she noticed the latch had fell. Unhooking the latch, she pushed the door open and walked back into the house.
The boxes hit the floor.
"MOOOOOOOOOMMMM!" Fey screamed.
There, on the counter, was her three-year-old brother, Matthew, face dunked in the pot of boiling water, neck skewered on the cutting knife.
Fey's empty eyes stared blankly at the hospital wall, looking over the cat poster for what felt like the millionth time. She tried desperately to convince herself that what had happened hadn't happened, but it wasn't working. Her dad sat beside her, his head in his hands, mumbling inaudible prayers. Thinking it was a good idea, she began to do the same.
Currently, Matthew and Mother were in the emergency room, undergoing an operation. Fey's dad was extremely squeamish, and he wasn't able to take the sight of his son with his neck slashed open.
As it turned out, neither could Fey.
"Perogies and fishies on my plate..." she sang shakily, trying to comfort herself. "They are so yumm-mm-mmy enough t-to sati...satiate..."
She was interrupted by the sound of footsteps in front of her. A doctor stood in front of them, and she motioned for the two of them to join her. Fey felt as if she wasn't even in her own body as she followed her father down the stark hospital hallways.
"Why does it smell like dead people, Dad?" she asked, wrinkling her nose.
Her dad shook her head. "Not now, Fey, please."
Two double doors rose up in front of them. The doctor pushed them open, and held them for Fey and her father. She looked and saw her mother by the operation table, her face red. She was dabbing her eyes, and her breath was broken.
"...How is he?" Dad asked.
Fey's mom nodded. "He's alive...but..."
"B-but?" Fey piped up before she realized what she had said.
"Honey, you might not want to be here for this," her mother told her.
Fey stamped her foot down. "No! What happened?"
Her mother looked as if she was going to argue, but her state got the better of her. "Your brother's fine, but...he's going to look different."
"Wh-what?"
The doctor stepped up. "He has very severe third-degree burns in the facial area, especially in the oral region. Which...comes with its own set of effects..."
Fey managed to tune the doctor out and ran up to the operating table. She looked down at her baby brother. Covering her mouth, Fey tried to withhold a scream.
His face was completely distorted. His skin was burned nearly black, his face white and leathery, with strange bumps and holes littered around the area.
"Oh..." Fey whispered. "What...is he okay?"
"He's alive," the doctor confirmed. "And he'll stay alive. But as I said, the burns have...well..."
"What?" Fey's dad asked. "What did they do to him?"
"His oral area received the worst burns since it was touching the metal of the pot, and..."
"What did it do!?" he practically yelled.
"He's mute. He will never speak again."
"Fey, can you get your brother, please?" Fey's mother asked. "We need to talk about something. Where is he?"
"He's in his room," Fey said. "I'll get him."
Fey got up from the living room and turned around, going down the hallway. She stopped at her brother's closed door. She knocked on it twice. "Matthew? Mom wants to talk to us. We're in the kitchen."
She stayed at the door until she heard footsteps, then walked back to the kitchen. Fey sat down across from her mother at the table and waited for Matthew. Fey traced circles on the table with her finger uncomfortably. She looked across the table at her mother. Her eyes were sunken, her expression sullen and somber. She had rested her head in her hands, and that structure threatened to crumble into an unstable cry session at any moment. Fey didn't like seeing her mother cry, but she couldn't really blame her. Dad had been in the hospital for a very long time now. That, more than anything, was probably what this was about.
"Could you get your brother, Fey?" her mother asked again.
"I already did," Fey said quietly. "But I don't know whether he's coming or not. He probably ignored me."
The end of her sentence was accented by the slam of a door.
Oh boy. He'd heard.
And he'd probably be in a sour mood for the rest of the afternoon. Great.
Matthew walked down the hallway with his eyes low and his journal under his arm. He slumped down on the seat beside Fey, shooting her a dirty look.
"Look, I'm sorry, okay?"
Matthew frowned, then opened his journal and began to write. He picked up the book and held it up to Fey's face.
you just didn't know I was listening
"Well, no, I didn't," Fey admitted. "But-"
"Please, stop," their mother begged. "I have some...some news for you."
Fey closed her mouth and gave Matthew a pointed glare after he showed her some choice words from the journal that he had prepared from past arguments. "What is it?"
"Your father, he's been in the hospital for a long time now, and..." Their mom dabbed at her eyes with her hands, trying to hold back tears.
Matthew wrote something and held it up to Mom. She shook her head.
"No, he isn't dead," she said. "He's...he's got ALS."
Fey stared at her mother, confused. "What's that?"
"It's a terrible...terrible disease that...that..." her mother tried to explain, but she couldn't take it. She began to fan her face as more tears came, and with a mumbled apology, she retired to her room.
Fey watched her go sadly. By that reaction, ALS wasn't anything good. She felt a tap on her shoulder and turned around. She saw Matthew holding the journal up. The left side of his mouth was curled into a frown.
Fey resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She had seen that specific page quite a few times, and Matthew used it so much he had dogeared it.
"Alright, fine, but we're probably going to get some weird Wikipedia page with medical lingo I don't understand."
I don't care
This was the page she'd seen more than any other. With a heavy sigh of resignation, she and Matthew walked to their dad's office, and Fey sat down in the large swirly chair. After a bit of gratuitous spinning, she rested her hands on the keyboard. Opening the browser, she typed 'als' into the address bar. Then she frowned. It wasn't working. She felt another shoulder tap.
"What? I know, I'm trying to-"
Matthew pointed at the word again. Fey didn't get it. Matthew slapped her shoulder and took his pen.
"Mom told you not to hit," Fey reminded him caustically as she rubbed her shoulder.
you idiot.
Fey stared at the page blankly, then back at the computer.
"Oh."
She navigated to the Google website, then typed 'als' in the search bar. Pressing enter, she looked at the results.
"See? I told you. Wikipedia."
Matthew wouldn't have it. He jerked his head at the computer again, telling her to keep looking. Huffing, she scrolled down the page to a dedicated web site. Clicking on the link, she began to read.
And she didn't like what she saw.
Matthew stared at the floor of his room, holding back tears. He listened to his mother talking to the police on the phone, frantically describing what Fey looks like. It had been two months since he found out his father had ALS. And Fey hadn't come home from school in three days. Matthew drew absent circles in his journal. He wanted to ask his mother, but he was afraid to. With her juggling Dad's sickness, Fey's disappearance, and his disability, she didn't need another issue on top of it. And yet...he felt as if something was wrong. Even before he went to his mom to ask about something.
He heard a knock on his door. His mother carefully walked into his room, trying to avoid his gaze. "Matthew, I need to talk to you."
Setting his journal down on the bed, Matthew prepared for whatever she was going to talk to him about. Contorting his face hurt a bit, but he wanted to be sure his mom understood he was not going to enjoy this conversation.
"Yes, I know," his mother sighed. "It's usually bad news, but..." Her shoulders slumped and she hung her head. "Look, Matthew, I'm going through a lot right now, and I need you to try to keep your chin up for me...Fey's missing, and...I need your support, okay?"
Matthew simply stared at her, trying his best not to change his facial expression of general disappointment.
"I need you to go to public school."
Instantly the journal was in his hands and he was writing rather angry words.
no you're insane. I'm going to be killed
"Don't be melodramatic! You're not going to die, Matthew. I'm sure you'll be fine."
Matthew flipped through his journal, looking for another dog-eared page.
WHY.
"Your father can't work; he's hospitalized. And the money we're getting is barely enough to cover your dad's bills. I'm already working a few jobs, but the supplies I need to homeschool you are too expensive. Public schooling is covered with our plan."
Matthew shook his head and crossed his arms. He flipped through the book and held up another page.
No.
"Please, Matthew, I need you to cooperate with me on this!" his mother pleaded. "I can't handle all this pressure! Please!"
Matthew was about to show her the same message, but her tone caught him off guard. She seemed vulnerable. And Matthew finally took a moment to look at his mother.
It was obvious she had been crying for at least the past few days. It was bad for him, understandably. His father was dying and his sister was missing. But to his mother...her husband was dying, her daughter was missing, and her son was disabled. Matthew took a deep breath. He picked up the pen, picked up the journal, and began to write a word.
Fine.
Matthew came home from school, trying to cover up the bruises on his arms with his long winter coat. He didn't want his mother to worry. Dad's condition was worsening, and so was Mom's. She didn't need to know what was happening at school.
"Hello, Matthew," she called from the kitchen. "How was your day?"
Matthew nodded absently, making a path straight to the bathroom to clean up the blood that was seeping through his cracked skin.
He wasn't getting beat up. Nothing that extreme. To the people doing it, anyways. They were simply playing a bit rough. But to Matthew, 'a bit rough' meant bruises, opening healing scars, and not being able to tell them to stop. Multiple times, he had tried to show them a few choice words from his book, but he never got the chance. Did they really want to hurt him? Matthew didn't know. But the fact was that they were, and Mom didn't need to worry about it.
Matthew stared into the bathroom mirror, dabbing at his leathery face. The blood wasn't running down his face, which was good. It was simply seeping into the cracks. Nothing too painful today; a simple wet cloth would clean it up nicely. The bruises, though, were another problem. Matthew had tried using his mother's cover-up, but it came off much too easily. The quick-fix solution left him with a nice awkward explanation as to why his arms were purple over dinner. He opted instead to wear long-sleeved shirts as often as possible.
Satisfied with how he looked, Matthew was about to open the door to the bathroom again when he felt a twinge at the back of his neck. Bringing his hand to the small spot of pain, he felt something wet. His hand came back red. Silently cursing those kids at school, Matthew tried twisting his neck in the mirror so he could see exactly how bad the wound was. He remembered something about a basketball making contact with that part of him. Grunting in frustration, Matthew grabbed a small mirror from the counter and used that. He was pleased to see the wound wasn't that big, so if he bandaged it, he could sweep his hair over the majority of it. Hopefully, it would heal by the time he got his hair cut.
"Matthew? Are you alright?" his mother asked, knocking on the door. Hurriedly, Matthew knocked twice, signaling he was fine. Once again content with his appearance, he unlocked the door and gave his mother a small smile.
It was the little things Matthew needed to do to make sure his mother didn't know that he was dying on the inside.
The orange sky began to give way to the inky blackness of the night. No stars were out, nor the moon. No, not yet. The sun still had ample time to hide its radiant face from the face of the earth before its younger sibling filled the horizon. A chilly evening breeze blew past Matthew, brushing uncomfortably against his burn. He tried to resist, but he winced. This caused his skin to grind together, which caused quite an annoying twinge of pain. Matthew wasn't allowed to use any expression. Well, he was, but it just kind of hurt.
The twilight air felt unnatural to Matthew. He had never been out this late. The streetlights lining the sides of the path cut through the darkness with a rather eerie halo of yellow-orange light. The cold dirt crunched loudly under his feet as he walked through the park. He looked to the left of the path up ahead and saw someone sleeping on a park bench. With his heart shooting up into his throat, he jumped off the path into the damp grass and hid behind a tree. Then he realized that it was a woman, and she was sleeping. This didn't change his opinion of the mystery person much, as he knew firsthand exactly how much harm a woman can do. Opting to stay out of the spotlight the lamps cast, Matthew snuck past the woman as quietly as he could manage before continuing on his way.
He began to hear the rushing of water, telling him he was getting close. Beyond a small group of dark trees was a large concrete bridge, tinted a gamboge hue by the flickering bulbs buzzing loudly above it. The buzzing, though present, was largely drowned out by the sound of the rumbling rapids beneath the overpass.
Why had Matthew come here? Simple. He had been asked. Specifically, by his peers.
Normally, being asked to go under a bridge at twilight to meet the people who relentlessly bullied you would raise quite a few red flags for Matthew. He was no idiot. But his father's condition was worsening. The doctor gave him one more month before expiring. This, along with the fact that they hadn't found Fey in three years has been weighing on his mother, and Matthew had been struggling for a long time to keep the fact that he was being 'bullied' a secret. She didn't need to know about it.
But was he being bullied, really? Matthew wasn't sure, when he tried to take a good sober look at it. They were just having a bit of childish fun, right? Maybe they didn't realize how much they were hurting him. Maybe they thought he was kidding when he told them it hurt. After all, to them, it was merely pokes and prods. To him, they were more like hot pokers and cattle prods. But the point remained that maybe they didn't mean it. Matthew realized this might be a bit naive to think about them suddenly apologizing for something they didn't think they were even doing in the first place, but he just wanted it to end. So when he heard about the ringleader inviting him here to apologize, Matthew chose to disregard the fact that he had specifically stated that he should come at night. He chose to ignore the issue of being on a dimly lit bridge. He chose to forget about the fact that this literally never happens.
On second thought, maybe this wasn't really a sober look at all.
He heard someone call his name, and he looked down over the bridge at the riverbank. There they were, waving up at him. Well...they seemed sincere enough. Maybe they did mean well. They were asking for him to come down there. Matthew decided to comply.
Five minutes later he was on the ground with a bleeding wound on his right side. People were yelling at him, their breath smelling of alcohol...and worse. He trembled on the ground, unable to understand what he had done to them to deserve something like this. A vision in his head flashed by; his face on a slip of paper stapled to a phone pole. He wanted to scream, cry, protest, apologize, yell...anything to save himself from these drunk savages...
Then he was kicked into the river.
Miles was a bit of an enigma. He was a drifter, having no set place to call home. He did have an occupation, but if you were to ask him, he wouldn't be able to tell you very much beyond a small boring synopsis. As he took a small break from his job to take a walk down a riverbank, he expected a set amount of things to happen. He expected his head to be cleared by the night air. He expected the scenery to be at least slightly breathtaking due to the water and the light interacting with each other. He expected it wouldn't take that long.
He didn't expect to see a young, disfigured boy wash up on the riverbank. Dialling for emergency, he held his phone to his face as he dragged the boy out of the water, wincing at the apparent stab wound on his right side, and the...state...of his face. Miles didn't know CPR. He didn't know how to implement artificial respiration. All he could do was hope the ambulance got here soon.
The boy's eyes opened. Only for a second or two, but that was all it took. Their eyes met. Miles saw something familiar in those eyes...something he couldn't place. Something he felt he needed to know. The boy saw something, too. But he didn't have the luxury of time to figure out what that thing was. He fell unconscious just as the distant sound of sirens filled the quiet evening air.
Fey didn't want to wake up. She knew she had to, but she didn't want to. Whatever she was lying on felt pretty good. It was soft...and warm...and grainy...
Grainy?
Fey shot up in shock. She was on a beach. Was this a dream? She moved her hand to pinch herself on instinct. There was a problem, though. At the current moment, she didn't have hands. When she moved them into her view, all she saw were two strange blue bumps that moved at her command. She moved to stand up. Curiously, when she got to her feet, she didn't seem to be that much taller than she was when she was lying down. She moved to a small pool in the sand to get a better look at herself.
And she screamed.