Standing and swaying I wait… As peaceful as an endless ocean flowing into the stretching realms of the

horizon.

At serenity with the willing resignation of a character in a novel… the denouement is premeditated.

I am in control.

Fear screams at me to RUN!

Turn back!

Flee!

Escape!

Creepily outstretching spindly detached macabre fingers deep into the recesses of my mind his talon-

like claws dig into a passing memory and thought. Steadily dragging it, drudgingly to the surface of my

attention, it disintegrates me like acid and I am back in the hospital again.

Feeling small, naïve and confused I stare glaze-eyed into the desolate room. A machine

with a red flashing light intrudes on the nightmarish stillness. And there my sister lies.

Physically weakened so that she cannot even lift her head, she just returns my blank gaze.

Desperately trying to express the worry, fear and love whilst maintaining a “together”

composure I hear my voice tentatively piercing the silence of the room.

“Rechelle, I…

Still staring back at me without any expression or hint towards her emotions she replies

in an exasperated voice:

“I’m not dying Monica.”

Even in this moment of incomprehensible mental anguish and confusion she stubbornly

holds the controls to her own mind. Fighting to keep her mind together and not allow

herself to release the emotions and pain that must be threatening to break her fortress of

strength she does not even relent to return in any way my emotional communication of

love, and I find myself adopting her methods of coping; be strong, on your own, at all

costs and never show any signs of weakness.

1
Tearing myself away from the memory and accompanying thoughts I struggle with my conscience… or

perhaps the devil...? The two are blurred and combined, no longer discernible from one another. He, like

a parasitic tumor feeds off my brain, constantly trying to gain the upper hand and force me to execute

involuntary actions of recession.

No. I refuse to fight anymore.

I must let go.

The ominous fingers twist painfully deeper and a torturous voice rebounds within my head.

“You can’t be free”

Enslaving another thought he forces it in front of my mind’s eye… blocking the escape.

I find myself sitting in the family car with my mother and father, but my sister is absent.

Instead of her company I am surrounded with a suppressing feeling of overwhelming

despair and grief for the loss of trust in life. I stare out the window into darkness as

thousands of questions blur through my mind in a synchronized dance with sentinel

reflectors that line the dark road.

Why did this happen? How could anyone... How could he do this... to me and us and

everyone… how??! To pre-plan something so.. so.. I can’t even... comprehend…. WHY?

With salty liquid rapidly building up behind my eyes impossibly increasing an already

painful pressure my tears, the evidence of my weakness, try to escape. Proclaiming their

desire to run with the natural stream and break free of my makeshift dam, they thrash

about the inside of my head as my brain is sucked into a whirlpool of emotions.

No. Dad’s already emotional enough. Mum’s at her wits end. They can’t handle any more

stress. Worrying about Shell’s mental states hard enough for them, they don’t need

another daughter to add to the ordeal. Be strong. No one can help. I must do this alone.

2
 In a whiplash the memory is snatched away to be replaced. As a quietus my already shaken sanity is

bombarded with memory after memory of horror, screams, and fright.

Chandra screams. A scream made all the more haunting as no audible sound results,

from her wide opened lips and deathly sallow facial expression. Having used up all her

tears and voice she gasps and stares up at me in horror whilst reaching out with all she has

left… arms to comfort that will never reach as I’m uncontrollably guided closer to the

scene of attack that has enveloped my sister.

Rhiannon stands shaking in the administration office, trembling and stuttering whilst

fighting to explain the unexplainable.

“Your sister, she was walking…”

Her hands shake up and down as they also fail their attempts at describing what she’d

witnessed… Her best friend shot through the chest from behind with a bolt aimed at her

heart by another student, once trusted friend, just another boy in her class.

Abstract impossible, memories flood my confused mind as it attempts to connect the

image of a boy being forced by a teacher past me in the school playground this morning,

his distinctive face and nose firmly unemotional staring straight ahead... my mind fails to

bridge the connection with images of that same distinctive face, laughing, smiling,

joking… embracing and being talked of by my sister with a careless, dreamy gaze in her

eyes… I blink back the shock as all I know of the world collapses beneath me.

Lonely and insignificant I’m guided by foreign apparently bodiless arms through the

now unfamiliar school.

3
 In an unrecognizable city with dark towers and eerie black alleyways I suspiciously

glance into every window and path only to see young faces staring back captured and

taken hostage by the same spreading fear and shock.

Unable to cope, unable to see, unable to accept and believe I begin the construction of a

fortress of peace and safety. Without windows, without doors, just high towering walls I

find myself imprisoned by the bricks carefully laid to prevent any harm or uncontrollable

emotions from pouring in. The predicament being once in, my emotions refuse to be let

out.

The memories fizzle away throughout my body causing me to uncontrollably shake. Determined not to

release me from my entrapments my eyes refuse to open.

A flame relights and awaking to consciousness I’m overtaken with the stubbornness born in me, but this

time, accompanied by something more.

Inside my mind a battle begins.

I’ve come this far, now I’m really going to do it.

You can’t you’re too afraid, what will happen?

Just got to have faith

You will fall. You’ll lose yourself!

That’s the point.

But you’re too scared! Think rationally!

Just one step…

You know you won’t. I know you won’t.

I refuse to live like this.

And then I stepped.

4
 One small step pushed my mind over the edge and I momentarily panicked before feeling the comfort

surround me. From the hidden safety of the pews, to open admittance of my weak human dependence on

something far greater than my own self I reach out.

Coming to terms with my own life and death, I watched all that I was; the confused attempted

understandings of life, the fears and thoughts, the contradictory striving fight for control, the false faith

in safety, all of me, just fall over the edge of my mind and shatter into the ground. Putting the weight,

confusion, pain and responsibilities of my world in the only hands large enough and loving enough to

hold them... and believing in something far greater and true than the fallacy this world offers me…