Pieces of Something Broken

GASP!

With a choked scream caught in her throat, a young girl arches involuntarily on the mattress as she wakes with wide eyes.

THUMP-THUMP
THUMP-THUMP

Her frantic heart pounds in her ears.

Panting, the young woman sits up, instinctively bringing her right hand to her chest, only to be struck by the sight of a platinum-haired boy struggling to breathe in her lap.

The sharp sound of the boy's lungs slowly filling with blood makes her shudder, bringing back more details that make her grip her own shirt tightly, the same way she gripped her friend's shirt while trying to hold onto the fragile thread of life that still connected him to this world with her bare hands.

Holding her breath and squeezing her eyes shut, she breaks down.

HUFF!

She exhales sharply, now loosening her grip on her chest.

"Dan..." She murmurs, before finally startling and looking around, realizing she was in a small, comfortable—yet unfamiliar—room, darkened by thick curtains covering a modest casement window framed in black stone.

Besides her bed, barely larger than a traditional single, and the gleaming wooden floor, there was only a large—for the room's dimensions—round rug and a small table with a chair integrated into a small bookshelf built into the wall, crammed with books.

"Where am I..."

'Was that... a dream?' She stands up, walking awkwardly to the solid-looking dark wooden door, opening it to the sound of rusty hinges.

"Yes... It must have been..."

Squeak

⁂

"Oh, I see you're awake!" exclaimed Nemo, seeing Clara, who had been sleeping until then, stunned at the bedroom door, receiving the immediate greeting with a dazed expression.

"Sit here, child..." Nemo continued, gently guiding the confused Clara to a comfortable plush armchair.

With the girl seated, Nemo crouched to her height, his eyes conveying a calm that seemed impossible just moments ago. "As I told all the others, what's important now is to breathe. Just breathe..."

From my spot on the couch, I watch the scene unfold. The same routine, the same kind words Nemo used with Joseph, and before that, with me.

Unlike Nihil, he was good at this—at picking up the pieces.

But the pieces were still from something broken.

I look away. Honestly, I don't have much patience to pay attention.

I briefly lower my gaze. The weight of Helena sleeping on my lap was a real, physical comfort, more useful than any words. I closed my eyes and opened them slowly, now staring at the hypnotic vaulted ceiling while organizing my thoughts.

Not far away, Joseph, sitting in front of the office's large windows, stared fixedly at the landscape, while you could see his hands gripping his untouched mug of hot chocolate tightly.

As for Alex, well, even awake, he refuses to leave the room.

"Sigh..."

It's a lot to process.

Dan and Joh are dead.

Not half-dead or temporarily dead.

Really dead with no chance of 'resurrection,' and yes, I asked.

"C-can you bring them back? Can you bring Dan back?!" I hear Clara crying beside me.

Not even the twins can control life or death as they please, and no—

"At most a zombie or skeleton... With preparation, maybe a Lich?" Nemo ponders, looking up. "No, they're too weak for that..."

There's no chance we'd want to defile their bodies by turning them into mindless monsters.

At least that's the most the twins said they could manage.

It all feels unreal.
It hasn't sunk in yet.

On one hand, we lost our close friends, on the other—I turn to look at Joseph, who was staring at the office's panoramic window—on the other... an entire country was completely massacred in just one day.

"Young man, it's not good for you to keep watching these things..." Nihil intervenes, sitting in his armchair, lowering the book he was reading and, with a gesture, making the large curtains, previously folded and held in their support, fall, blocking the view from the large windows.

"We need to change that spell as soon as possible..." says Nemo, who had just finished talking with Clara while standing up with a light pat on his robes.

"Yes, I don't want to have a view of a massacre every time I have my tea..." Nihil agrees, taking a sip of his tea and returning his attention to the book.

"Sigh..."

Fuck...

⁂

"Woke up this morning like I always do." A feminine voice breaks through the sound of the wind gently swaying her hair.

"I still like to think that I'm new." I complete, unable to not smile at the inherent irony.

"Time just gets its way."

"Strawberries left to decaaaay." I drag out.

With a light laugh, Helena breaks the rhythm. "Have you ever thought about how a song can transport you to a specific moment in your life?"

Looking away from the spectacular view of the sea of clouds from the roof of the twins' grand tower, I turn to Helena. "In what way?"

She meets my gaze, resting in it for a brief moment before continuing. "We listened to this song all the time, ever since the album came out."

She smiles.

"Actually, we listened to this song so much that just thinking about it made us sick... hahaha" She laughs upward.

Turning to me again, but now with her whole body, she continues. "But now I can only think about what we had and what was taken from us."

The light in her eyes fades, leaving only a bitter smile as she points to her own head.

"I can't tell if I'm happy for the memories, or even sadder because of..." She pulls her legs in, crossing them.

"Everything else."

"..."

I sigh.

"Well, I haven't forgotten the song..." I murmur.

"Yeah... I noticed." I see a hint of a smile return to her face as she scoots closer, resting her head on one of the arms I kept open.

"Oliver, it could have been any of us." She grips my shirt.

"..."

I close my arm, placing my hand on her head.

"It could have been you..." She murmurs.

Yeah. Shit.

I see myself lying on a lawn, motionless.

A throbbing pain and a feeling of weakness keep me still.

In front of me, an enormous spider still making disgusting sounds was spitting green liquid from its mouth, and soon after, Dan looked up.

I couldn't see much from my head's position against the ground, but his eyes...

His eyes were afraid.

As blood ran from his mouth, his wide eyes didn't dare blink, perhaps for fear they'd never open again.

His body, completely deformed, swayed disturbingly with each heavy breath.

"Oliver..."

Helena's voice brings me back.

"I... I'm here." I answer, stroking her hair.

Yeah, it could have been me.