I don't own MR

Fang

There's a certain time, a certain place, a certain sentence for everything. There's a way to do one thing, and another way to do another. There's an up and a down, a right and a wrong. So many things, and so many opposites, and so many thoughts, and so many lives. And so many lives that think differently about everything. And just like those lives, I have my own thoughts and my own fears, and my own dreams, and my own nightmares.

I had always thought there was no such thing as a purgatory state. I figured limbo did not exist. There was no such thing as an inbetween. There was only awake and asleep, up and down, right and left. There was no middle ground. You were either high or low. For a long time I figured that being stuck somewhere where you weren't really dead, but weren't really alive either was nothing but a myth made up to scare everybody and everything. Something to fear. Something to look forward to. Something to wonder about.

It was a blip in my mind that I had never bothered to focus on, to let the idea grow into a thought, and the thought an opinion. It had always just been something lost in the back of my mind; shoved away in a drawer with a lock but no key. It had always been something meaningless to me. Pointless to think about, to fear, to wonder of.

However, ever since I disobeyed Iggy's direct order to leave every corner unturned, I had began to let the blip grow into something more. Ever since I stepped into the hallway just around the corner I had become lost. Somewhere in a trance that left my body numb and my eyes foggy, but my mind was still alert. It felt as if I was weightless, and yet at the same time I weighed too much to even take a step forward.

Somewhere just in front of me a blurry figure smiled, the only thing clear about them being their pristine white teeth and thin pink lips that were pulled back into the most hideous, most deliberate smile I had ever endured.

"Fang," a feminine voice breathed out, a whisper in the miles that distanced us. "Fang, you're such a good boy," out of the blurry lines emerged a crystal clear image of my mother. Her dark hair tied back into a swaying ponytail and her eyes shining with the kind of compassion she had kept hidden from me for so many years. She wore a white labcoat that shone as brightly as her teeth, and maybe had she not smiled at me as if I was her prey I would have hugged her. I would have been happy to see her. But I couldn't. Not with the grin she was throwing my way, not with each calculated step towards me.

"M- mom?" I spoke up, or at least, I thought I did. She seemed absolutely oblivious to my scared tone however as she cleared the gap between us, resting a hand on my shoulder.

"I'm so glad to see you. You always come through," the smile faded into something even more sinister before she clutched my shoulder just a little tighter, and used her strong grip to pull me forward and just past her. She pushed me for good measure and I stumbled into the darkness. Lost in my own mind.

This was that inbetween I began to question. Where I no longer felt alive, but I knew I wasn't dead. I couldn't be dead. My arms still moved when I commanded them to, though their speed had been notched down to that of one's limbs moving through water. Darkness lay in my wake, consuming me until I was choking on it, and I felt as if my life was teetering on the edge of something I couldn't even see.

It took me a whole ten minutes, or maybe even ten years, to realize my eyes were closed, and when I finally comprehended it, I opened them, and immediately wished I hadn't.

I was falling, and the ground was so close, but it was as if time was ticking by slower purposefully, laughing at me as it taunted me with the promise of a bloody thud at the end of my life. Every second lasted just a bit longer than the last, slowing my fall without really slowing, and the farther down I got, the more I realized I was about to die.

"Help!" I cried out, but the word was torn from my mouth into the wind that rushed past me right before I landed, a broken heap lying on the ground. Somehow still alive, yet lost in the thoughts of my own pain. Pain that was much worse than death.

Something like a groan escaped my lips as I rolled onto my back, trying to blink the drops of blood out of my eyes as I looked up at the crimson sky that soared above me, as bloody as myself. Ribs were shattered, my ankle was broken, a shoulder was dislocated, but the pain was so horrible I couldn't figure out which one it was. Blood was everywhere. It swarmed around me in a lost state. My own blood. There was enough just in my peripheral vision to make a small waterfall. Enough to create a river that I could drown in.

"Fang!" A voice shrieked, so loudly I had to squeeze my eyes shut to help to compensate for the pain that surged through my ears. My limbs were unmoving at the moment, and it was all I could do to listen to her sob.

Her voice continued to cry out of to me, and the tears that rained from her eyes fell onto my hand which stretched out somewhere to my left. I couldn't see, but I could feel, and I could feel her tears even if I was numb. I could feel her sadness, and her pain. "Fang, help me!" Max yelled, and somewhere inside of me a feeling of hopelessness thudded into my heart, weighing it down- weighing me down until all I could do was turn my head and watch, eyes wide open as they hurt her.

I laid flat on my back, watching in pure fear as the erasers began to kill her. Ever so slowly they ripped my Max apart. Right before my eyes I watched it. I watched them kill her. All while she screamed for me, or maybe I was screaming for her. Or maybe we were both screaming for each other. My throat was numb but I still felt the soreness that came with yelling for hours, still tasted the blood in the back of my throat from tearing my vocal cords up.

They cut her. They took a dull knife and they ran it across her skin. slicing her flesh up slowly, causing her tears to fall harder, and her screams to get louder until she was nothing but a silent body, a dead carcass that fell limply to the ground, a chain wrapped around one of her wrist, holding what was left of that arm up, making her dangle from it precariously.

I was screaming. I knew I was screaming now. It was me who was yelling for her, praying this was all just some sick nightmare. It had to be. "Max!" I shouted, but there was no Max. She wasn't Max anymore. Just a hollow shell of shattered bone, torn up flesh, and blood that would never stop flowing.

"I can't believe you could really kill her," an impressed voice spoke up, and I felt the tears in my eyes fall as I looked towards Jeb, who had a growing sadness in his eyes that was completely masked by the smirk on his face.

"What are you talking about?" I hissed, my voice cracking and my life depleting. Although I didn't need an answer, because it was then that I realized I was no longer laying down. Instead I was standing to my full height, a dull knife in my hand. One drenched in blood.

"No," I whispered quietly, looking down at my hands, stained with a dark crimson color. Something that once flowed through Max's veins. I turned to look at her, to see her still alive, to assure me that I hadn't done the unthinkable.

But she wasn't alive. She was dead. Still laying on the ground, only this time without the cuff to hold her where she once stood, and this time her eyes were wide open, filled with a certain kind of fear I had only seen in her eyes when I went on my rampages. When my anger got the better of me and I hurt her. Only this time I had done more than hurt her; I had done the unthinkable.

I had killed Maximum Ride.

10 Reviews for the next update. And honestly? I think we all need the next update.

I personally loved writing this chapter because of the way I had to write it, to make you readers feel as lost as Fang was, and I hope I did the trick. This could be my favorite chapter possibly.

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: Stay With Me by MPHKnows is an absolutely beautiful one-shot that I think each and every one of you should read it. It was written amazingly, and the story of it is awesome.

Soar on

VR