BEFORE YOU READ THIS: You need to understand that from the first sentence to the last Ari is having a panic attack of sorts. Though at some points it's milder than others; it's there. He is on overload. So yes, it is choppy, and filled with short, quick sentences, but its for a reason. I'm trying out a new technique I learned in my Creative Writing class.

I don't own MR

Ari

I was having a panic attack.

Not the kind I usually would have though, where I speak too fast for my words to make sense, and I fling my arms around like an italian facing a white-hot temper. It was the kind of panic attack where your mind worked faster than you could comprehend, and suddenly your breath was taken away from you. All I could think about was forcing myself to breathe, to open my mouth, to suck air into my lungs, but I was too busy hyperventilating to really be able to get a proper amount of oxygen inside of me.

"Stop." I gasped out, not sure who I was talking to. Maybe it was me, or maybe it was Lupo, who had mercilessly shoved me around the corner and straight into the illusion. Maybe it was directed towards Max, who had come up with this plan without ever uttering a word. I wasn't sure at the moment, but my mind was moving too fast to care.

Worthless.

Can't breathe.

They're right behind you.

I can't go through this again.

They brought the needles.

No.

"Stop! Please! I'm sorry!" I shrieked wildly, kicking my restrained legs until I could feel the leather cutting into my flesh, ripping it ever so slowly, drilling a constant pain into my mind.

"Sorry isn't good enough, Ari." Jeb spoke up quietly, stabbing a scalpel into my arm without even blinking in fright as I let out a ferocious yell of agony. It was happening again. I had screwed up. I was being punished. I wasn't like Max. I wasn't perfect in his eyes. I was broken, I was lost, I was useless. I was second best. He didn't love me. He loved Max. I wasn't his son, I was a mistake. "You must face the consequences for failing, again."

Again. Jeb snarled the world like it was a disease he was trying in vain not to catch. He always snarled the world. Ever since the second time I failed him, ever since I refused to kill what I didn't have to, he had deemed me the one who had messed up again. He never let me forget that word. It represented every time I had let him down. it was so simple, five letters, two syllables, and used in everyday conversation, and yet when he said it, the word made me flinch, made the shards of my heart contract. He never loved me. I was his experiment. At least he could call Max his daughter. What could he call me?

The one who screwed up. Again.

"You know what happens when you do something wrong, Ari, and the more you scream the worse it gets," Jeb warned, dragging the blade down my arm. My mouth opened to cry out, but my voice was already lost. I had already screamed too much, and so I settled on crying. Jeb was the only person who had ever seen me cry up until a certain point, and that was the only time he acted civil to me, but not now. Now he didn't care that I was crying because he was punishing me. I had wronged him in some way and he couldn't stand that I had done it to him. Again.

"Dad please," I pleaded, squeezing my eyes shut to keep from seeing my own blood drool out of my arm and drip down onto the tiles. I'd end up cleaning up the mess when it was all said and done. My mistake. My punishment. My mess. I had to clean it up.

"Don't 'Dad' me you pathetic excuse for a son. I can't believe Max and you share the same DNA, why is it that she listens and you don't?" Jeb asked, slicing my skin like butter before yanking the scalpel away, leaving nothing but a deep open wound on my arm as he moved around me, looking for the next place to cut me.

I didn't answer him. I didn't want to tell him it was because she was so afraid of him she'd rather kill a guy than face his wrath. That would only lead to more punishment for me, and maybe he'd even stop with the scalpel and move onto the more horrible weapons, like the lighters and the whips. I still had scabs on my back from last time.

I felt the blade enter my skin before I saw the tint of the metal against the fluorescent lights. I was so caught off guard by the sharpened object stabbing a slit into my ear I couldn't do anything but fall into another panic attack. I always had them when Jeb hurt me, and now was no different. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't think, I couldn't move. I had been in the midst of a panic attack since the beginning, I realized, but now it was worse, now it was life threatening.

"If you pass out I'll make it worse," Jeb sneered, letting the scalpel run down my cheek without cutting directly into skin before stabbing it into my stomach. I had never sobbed as hard as right then, as my vision blurred and my life dwindled, and my panic attack began to drown me in his menacing voice, and angered words that were sharper than the blade that continuously inflicted me with physical pain.

This was it. This was my ending chapter, my final thought. Jeb was going to kill me. He was finally going to do the one thing he'd been dreaming of doing since I was created. He was going to get rid of me. Nothing could make this knowledge, or the physical agony any worse. Nothing could make me wish to live anymore. Max would be better off without me. I was worthless, I was useless, I was everything Jeb wanted me to believe I was. And so I let myself fade away.

"Ari!" A voice called out suddenly. It wasn't Jeb talking anymore, but somebody familiar. Somebody I knew. Lupo. "Ari listen to me!" She hollered, and my panic attack began to drift away little by little as I frantically searched the room for her. It was empty now. Jeb had disappeared. The scalpel had disappeared. It was just me laying on a table.

"It's not real. You need to get Fang out of there and get out." Fang. I needed to get Fang. This wasn't real.

The leather straps dissipated and the metal table I had been glued to became nothing but a faint memory as I stood in darkness. "Find Fang, Ari!" She ordered, and I blindly obeyed, reaching my arms out for Max's boyfriend. I needed to find him. he meant so much to Max. Without him I wasn't sure she could live fully. If only I could call out to him, if only he could answer.

Had he not been in as deep a trance as he was we might have been able to call him out of his trance, but it was too late. He had already submerged himself completely into the illusion, and I had gotten stuck with the job of retrieving him.

"Find Fang," I mumbled under my breath, over and over, forcing myself to stay awake, to stay alive, to forget about the painful memories and agonizing cut on my arm that I had created in my trance. It was just as deep as the one in my fear, only worse because it wasn't a clean cut. My nails had created it, clawing through flesh and muscle subconsciously. It was a torn-up mess, and I dreaded looking in a mirror to see what my ear must have looked like.

"Got you," I spoke up, my hand squeezing around Fang's forearm. It was too dark and too foggy for me to know for sure, but by the feel of the warm, sticky liquid against his flesh I guessed it was him. He had also made himself bleed somehow. He was also hurting himself. He was stuck in a world that didn't exist, that drenched him in his own blood. It must have been one hell of a nightmare he was lost in.

Brokenly, I dragged us both back towards where I believed the corner to be. Max would be waiting there, along with Lupo and Iggy. I would be safe with them. I would feel whole again with them around to remind me that I wasn't being punished. That Jeb wasn't here to call me worthless. Again.

Behind me, where I dragged Fang's stumbling form, he screamed and yelled, and tears drowned out his vision as he pleaded with whatever he was facing. I couldn't understand his words, but I got the just of what was going on. He was asking somebody to kill him. It was obvious by the desperate tone of voice, by the pull of his hand reaching up to slash his own neck. He wanted to die. He no longer felt alive enough to live, and so he settled with death, with destroying himself.

Vaguely, I remembered one other time Fang had almost killed himself. He had managed to drive a pen through his skull, and had he not been stopped he would have shut down forever. That one time was when he thought Max was dead.

When the fog that masked my vision faded into fluorescent lights and my baby sister along with our friends, I almost collapsed in relief. There they were, waiting for me, all of them. Reminding me I was not going to get hurt, or punished anymore. I had them to protect me, and I would protect them as well. We would keep each other safe as long as we were all alive and well. Never had I thought more reassuring news in my life.

"Fang!" Max squeaked out, pushing herself up only to drop back down onto the ground again.

"Max, he's kind of unstable," I gasped out, still recovering from the panic attacks I had induced while forcing myself to remember the illusion test wasn't real. If i was being honest with myself, there was still a panic attack hanging around me, and I was still breathing too hard, and thinking too quickly to be alright, but I had to push myself out of it. I didn't matter right now, I wasn't the one who could possibly have just been driven insane. I wasn't the one who followed blindly like a brain-dead zombie.

"I don't care!" She snapped, trying and failing to get to her feet again. It was heartbreaking to watch my sister fail. To know all she wanted was to look strong for everybody else, and she couldn't even do that anymore with all of her injuries. I wished I could walk over to her and hug her, to whisper in her ear a bunch of beautiful lies like I used to, but I couldn't even lie to myself anymore. Much less my own sister.

"Max," Iggy mumbled, resting a hand on her shoulder gently as he looked up at Fang, memorizing his features. "I don't think you want to hug him right now," he was right. Fang wasn't exactly Fang anymore. He had a distant look in his dark eyes and every now and then he would open his mouth to scream, but all that would come out would be a trickle of blood from yelling his throat raw. His left eye twitched every once and awhile, and he seemed incapable of any of the five senses. The most he could do at the moment was walk in a sluggish manner, as if he wasn't really alive anymore, or even dead. Just a drop of wind in everybody's way.

"That's ridiculous," Max coughed out, though I could tell she was holding back tears as she looked up at the hollow shell that was supposedly the love of her life. "Fang, Fang look at me." Her voice was softer than usual, but her tone was still demanding. She was ordering him, and he had never denied a direct order, but now he did. It made me wonder if he could hear us at all, or if he had been driven completely insane, to where all he heard were the voices that called him worthless. Over and over on one big cycle. Just like I used to hear.

His eye twitched, his mouth opened, then closed, and he just stood there blankly, a dead soul stuck in a very-alive body. "Look at me dammit!" Max shrieked, pounding her fist against the ground so roughly I heard a crack.

He didn't look at her. He was too lost in the world he thought he was in.

Oh yeah, school started for me, so I'm going to try to update on the weekends but please bear with me because I have homework that is just so annoying.

Lots of reviews equals a quicker update so let's go for 10 on this chapter please?

Thanks so much for sticking with me

Soar on

VR