“You are worthless!” Shouted my mother fiercely.

    I storm out of the room and up the cold, wooden stairs. I can’t get the image of my mother's red face, shouting at me out of head. Spit flying out of her mouth out of anger. Her pitch black hair sticking to her face from sweat. I don’t even remember what the argument was about, I just know that I was confronting her on how much she drinks.    

    Her drinking habits have increased a ton since I would be moving out in two weeks. My graduation day is set to be on March 15th, and since February 2nd she has drunk every night. I asked her one night to stop her habits, because they would affect our family, but nothing has changed. She decides that, on March 1st, she will physically abuse me, and call me worthless. What a wonderful mother, and just because I don’t want to see her at all for a while I won’t be eating the new food she ordered today.

    I walk down the dimly lit hallway until I reach the red lights surrounding a door, indicating that I am at my room. I open my door very quietly, attempting to hear my mom say something bad about me, but all I can hear is her opening the box filled with the new food. Loinen’s food brand is suppose to be the new health craze everyone wants. We all want to be healthy everywhere but unfortunately our food supplies have lessend throughout the years that the law was put in. I guess this law states that anyone exceeding a certain weight will die? I am not sure anymore, I had to learn about it a long time ago but I have forgotten about it. I don't need to worry about exceeding the weight limit, because well, many people believe I am anorexic, whatever that means. Many people have asked my mom if I ate. I don't know if that should be a complement or as something bad.

     I always hear stories of how people lived before. Before there was places you can drive through and pick up food. I guess it was so fast that all it took was a maximum of 10 minutes. Eventually many people started to get really sick and eat undercooked food without even knowing it. It got to the point where all these places were closed down forever, but after that things turned out for the worse. Many people protested what the government was doing, saying that their freedom was being taken away and started to do the most ridiculous things ever imaginable. Eventually the government enforced the law and eliminated many of the people causing the issues, and ever since then, the government releases new food brands every year. And that leaves us with today.

     Today was the epic release of this brand new food that'll make everyone always healthy, and my mom had decided that since today was such a special day that she should get hammered. I honestly can't believe her sometimes, she thinks the whole world revolves around her on every holiday, but that isn't true. I can feel my anger slowly changing into the harmless feeling, being tired. I can never rant for more than a few minutes without feeling the effects of being tired dawn on me.

     I lay down on my comfy blue blanket. I have had this blanket for so long, I am surprised it hasn't died on me. My eyelids start to get heavy and gradually fall down like a dying animal, slowly at first then they are gone. That is what I am. A dying animal going to the afterlife.


     The sun is shining bright into my eyes. Everything is just a mesh of white. Where am I? I know I feel asleep in my room. I attempt to sit up but my right hand gets sliced open by a sharp object. I look at my hand to see how bad my wound is. Blood is trailing down onto the whitish green grass. I attempt to pull out a piece of grass, just to see if this place is real, but the grass pierces through my fingers. I need to get up, see what is around me. In order to do that I have to suffer though. I decide the best option is to suffer. Something could be watching me and I am unable to view the monstrosity. I force my gashed hands onto the sharp grass, allowing more blood to pour out, and allowing more tears to stream down my face.

    Once I am finally up I notice that my legs are surrounded by flowers. Each flower having a beautiful, and different vibrant color. The only way I will be able to make it out of this lethal patch of life is through either the grass of the flowers. What if the flowers are the same as the grass? I mean what could be worse? Slicing every part of my body in attempt to make it out, or see if the flowers are different. I lean forward, blood pooling out slower than before, from my weak hands.

     I hesitantly reach forward and pluck a flower. Not even a thorn touched my skin. I examine the flower more in detail, its soft purple petals gently touching my skin. I lift the delicate flower up to my nose, and breathe in its soft petals. For a moment I feel calm and at peace, I would love to sit like this forever, but towards the end of the inhale something finds its way into my nose. I drop the flower and thousands of tiny black bugs fly into the air. I watch them, amazed with horror as they spell  out END. I sit paralyzed with fear not knowing what to do next. I watch the bugs with caution and as fast as they came out, they come right back in, except inside of me. I feel them buzzing everywhere, eating me. The pain making me wail out in agony. I try to look at the sun again and everything goes black.

     My eyes flash open, a new type of light burning my eyes. I shut them and hope that this is the world that I want to be in. I know I will wake up to my family downstairs with breakfast. This has to be my world. Please.

 
   I force my eyelids to open, the light no longer hurting my eyes as much anymore. My legs raise up and land on my dusty floor. I steady myself on my bed post, bracing myself for the biggest task of the day, getting out of bed. My legs are very weak from being in bed so long. I don’t remember when I went to sleep, but I know I am glad to be awake. I had been crying so much, or at least I thought I was crying. In all reality I was fine. Nothing had appeared to be wrong, only my subconscious bawling.  

     I start to stumble toward my door. Along the way I run into my mirror which causes it to tilt. My fingers lace around the wood border as I place it back. My bright blue hair stretches from my head. As if the hair strands were hands trying to escape my body. My once bright eyes now dull from exaghistation. I have a theory that when you dream your soul is transported into a parallel universe. So in all reality when you dream, you don’t sleep at all, and that is why everyone is tired. I mean either that or I have some crazy mental illness and will live my life without sleep.

     I leave my room, ready to finally approach my mother again. Hopefully she doesn’t hate me, I mean we always have fights but this one was terrible. Maybe we will just forget about it and just eat breakfast. I know I am starving, but as I try to catch a scent of my mom’s pancakes I can’t seem to find anything. I dash over to her room in hopes to figure out that she is still asleep. I peer through her door, but her room is pitch black. Not even the sun is touching the abysse.

     I crack open her door more, and walk over to her bed. She always snores, but right now her room is silent. My father can’t even be found. Once my eyes adjust completely I go over to my mom’s bed. I shake her very gently in hopes to get her up. She is always up at this time, but she won’t budge.

    “Mom!” I whisper fiercely, “Please wake up!”

     No response.

     “Mom!” I push harder.

     No response.

     I fumble around and find her wrist. My anxiety is pulsing, and I feel like I will pass out. My fear takes over and demandes to find answers. I place my chaky fingers on her cold skin. Thoughts creeping into my mind, whispering my darkest fear into my ear.

     I push it away, and try to focus on a pulse. Nothing. Tears start to well in my eyes, but I can’t give up. I force my fingers deeper. Nothing. I move them from side to side.

     Nothing.

     I don’t want to admit it, but the truth is unbearable. I crumble to her carpeted floor.    
  Wishing for my lungs to give out on me. Wishing my life would end right now. My mother is gone, and I have nothing else to live for. My father is still here, I hope.

     I force myself to stand up, and go to my father. This is my last hope. Without one of them I am nothing. I have no purpose. My whole body is shaking by now, but I need to figure out if he is okay. My fingers wrap around his wrist and I put down two fingers. His wrist is freezing and I know he is gone before I even attempt to find his pulse. I crumble onto their floor once again. I look at their end table. My vision blurry from the amount of tears. I barely depict a picture of me and underneath it saying “We love you Achelois”.

     The time ticks by very fast. It is almost unbearable. I never told her I loved her. They never got a hug from me before they left. I wonder how bad it was for them? How is dying? The question that lingers above them all is how? How was this caused? There is no way they could have both died of natural causes, is there? I need answers. No. I want them. They will be the only thing to help keep me sane.

     After hours on the floor I reach up to their bed. I stroke it the soft red blanket. Memories filling my head. I used to sleep with them every night. Even when I started to get older I still would. I adored both of my parents, but when my mom started to drink a lot every night everything was messed up. It wasn’t bad at first. It just was a few drinks, and she always said it would do no harm. That was a lie. The first time she started to hit me was on my 10th birthday.

     The party was over and I just wanted to watch Spongebob. The T.V. show that ruined my whole childhood. That sponge knows how to soil someone's life I had walked into the kitchen where all the destroyed paper bits were. I stumbled across the mountain of food and presents to arrive at my destination. The trash can. At first I wanted to jump in and join my biological family, but then I just decided to throw away some paper. I wrap my arms around the piles of paper and shove it into the trash. I decided that my mom would probably need some help and I was there for her.

     As I scrape up the last pieces of paper I hear my mom fumbling down the stairs. At first I didn’t know what was wrong. Dad wasn’t home at the time and I thought my mom was dying. It was a really ridiculous thought, but at the time I never knew how alcohol affected the human body. I ran out of the kitchen and quickly down the hall where our stairs were. Two steps before the bottom my mother had waited. She grinned as she looked up. Not a friendly grin. It reminded me of a dark fairy at the time. The ones that take souls from children. At least that’s what my mom and dad always said.

     The grin grew larger on her face as she said, “Achelous, my precious little girl. Why are you making so much noise? You know how mommy hates a lot of noise.”

     I flinched at the sound of her voice as I mumbled, “I didn't mean to mommy. I promise. I was just trying to clean up. Weren't you supposed to come watch T.V with me?”

That is the moment I regretted saying anything to my mom. As soon as the words slipped out of my mouth I felt weak.  

     I snap back to reality. I don’t want to remember what happened that night. I I grab the red blanket and hoist myself to my feet. My legs start to shake viciously as I make my way out of their room. Refusing to turn around. I’ve finally made the decision that I can’t live life in grief.

     As I make my way down the dark hallway, with each step I hear faint noises from downstairs. It almost sounds like an amber alert, but far more intense and a lot louder. I eventually reach the hardwood staircase and make my descend down to the living room. That is the only place we keep any radios or TVs on, and knowing my parents they probably left one or both of them on.

     I turn to the left and jam my pointer fingers into my ear as the ear piercing squeal happens again, yet more intense. I approach the object making all of this hideous sound, only the T.V. is doing it. I try to focus my eyes on the words flashing on the screen. All I can make out is "deadly" "parasites" "food" "many dead". There are so many more words flashing but I can't wrap my mind around the first ones I saw. What had happened? What is going on? I look back towards the stairs and realize I never ate last night, but both my parents did. Parasites are normally found in food. Was all of this mess caused by loinen's new food that was suppose to prevent people from being overweight?

     I hurry over to the living room window and gaze outside. I would normally see kids prancing around and cars rushing around to go to work, but this morning it is different. No one is outside, no one is driving. It’s like the whole world is dead. I am the last living organism in this dead giant ball of dirt and lava. I feel my luck will soon run out like everyone else’s life, and I will be living with satan for the rest of my time on the cused planet.