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The memory of her dark bambi eyes staring back at me, while a strong and invisible force pushed me back abruptly against a classroom wall replayed over and over again in my head like an old and worn out mixtape playing through static during a thunderstorm. Her screams echoing through my ears pulling out all other sound. And her last words to me rang throughout my head like a newly bought telephone. And then, in an instant, it was gone. There was no more noise. No more screams. It was just black. Whipping my head shakily back and forth made no difference, there was nothing, just me and the darkness. Alone.
Then there she was. her eyes, gleaming, dark as night but humble as a flower laying atop the grass all at the same moment. Her dress torn, her eyes swollen with tears that rained like a stream down on her cheeks that were painted a dim red. Dried blood stained directly above her mouth from her small nostrils and on her soft earlobe. Her mouth formed a small "O" shape as her eyes stood still, not blinking. They looked empty, lost, scared even, just as she did when he had first found her doused in rainwater, wandering the woods wearing nothing but an old t-shirt stained with blood.
"El?" I jumped stumbling toward her my feet catching each other, tripping myself clumsily before regaining my balance. As I looked up, eyes laced with hope she seemed to dissolve, carried away, drifting out into the blackness as the world seemed to spin swallowing Eleven as it went. I reached out my hand hopelessly trying to grasp, anything, any sort of remnant of her, any way he could save her like he couldn't before. Soon the pain invaded his body once again draining the feeling from his heart. A look of pure melancholy plastered to his face, remembering the promise he had yet to fulfill. As the color returned to his shut eyes and the world became clear he could hear but a faint and fading whisper. It was three little words that could twist all of his insides and everything that was in his now aching stomach. It made him want to scream and tear something apart violently knowing it wasn't true, that it couldn't be possible. She was gone now. She was dead. But he was sure he had heard a small helpless cry. He wanted to scream he wanted to sob until his eyes ran dry, but he wanted to be strong, for her. All he heard was-
"Mike I'm scared." as four simple walls with its suburban feel rose up above him. A plain ceiling seemed to come into focus. These were his walls, his room. She had been here once. It was kind of their first real day together. He had wanted her to leave but she wasn't so easily manipulated, something he had admired about her. He missed the way the edge of her mouth would form a small grin that knotted up his insides into many small pieces forming an awkward mischievous smirk every time he said her name, "El", a lopsided smile, or whatever it was he loved it, but now it was gone, she was gone.
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