I sighed.
‘What was the point of anything anymore?’ I wondered.
The lightning crashed again.
I had no job, no money to my name, no food in the fridge, no food in my stomach. My artwork had been stolen, and I had walked over a mile in the pouring rain because frankly, my luck had run out.
I sniffled, tears streaking down my cheeks.
“I’m sorry Ryan… You just wanted me to follow my dreams…”
“But I’m cursed… bad things happen around me constantly. My life can’t go right because there is nothing in it, because I killed my parents because I killed you the heavens are punishing me. I don’t want to live anymore. I just want to see you again.” I wailed as my heart broke, as every hurt and pain that had built up in my life since I was nine years old poured out of me.
“Why do I have to live like this? What is the point in my existence?” I asked the black empty space. Then I placed my head down in a daze, a surreal daze outside of my body.
‘What really was the point?’
‘There didn't have to be a point in this life anymore. There wasn't any point I had been brought to this world or even any point that I could see to stay in it.’
‘So why does Mark need one?’
‘Maybe it ended... Simply because it ends.’
I paused at that realization; It made sense, this was an okay answer too.
‘There doesn't have to be a happy ending.’
No one would expect a happy ending just because it’s a story, no one goes into every story with those expectations, after all, I didn’t start the story that way when I published it.
Especially since life didn't have any endings did it, life didn't end with an all your problems are solved now, so happily ever after, No. It was a series of events that occurred repeatedly until the end... until you died. So why shouldn't the story end in death, every person who was living, breathing on Earth. Their story all stopped the same way and it wasn't the true completion of someone's story until it happened.
Death…
It was maybe what I had known would happen all along. Back when I started this journey years ago, when I had lived on the night he hadn’t, I should have known my world would end in death.
The rain flashed outside my window like a lull, and inspiration buzzed through my mind, images, and flashes of what they could do. Like a vivid video I was watching, the conclusion of both our grizzly fates played through my mind like my own personal movie. So vivid I could almost taste the burning rubber, hear the screeching of the breaks.
It was so vivid I could almost convince myself it was an event I was actually experiencing for myself.
I immediately erased my dialogue box and changed it into large words that read "Ring" several times and drew lines emanating from his pocket.
The next few scenes were of the storm, I drew it as if in a trance, translating the storm as an echo to the pages, drawing a cliff I knew so well, the one outside my very own window. The entire world vibrated with electricity, rain, and darkness. I could barely tell what was real anymore, the screen almost coming to life beneath my fingertips. The cliff outside my house, slick with rain, large puddles reflecting the lightning flashes jumped from the monitor, the water so alive it felt like it was moving.
The next panel I drew, rushed, frantically, adrenaline pumped through my veins and I held my breath as both cars raced each other the dark blue one followed by a dark black sedan. The blue car’s headlights bright in the downpour illuminated the road ahead and the rain in the surrounding air. The windows were blacked out on the car behind and the next panel I copied the previous panel and simply moved the car behind next to Mark bumper, but only a sliver away. I held my breath almost sure I could hear the sounds outside. As I drew the lines streaking out and the word smash in large wavy letters I froze, as a terrible jolt to my system as a lightning bolt crashed so near I hiccuped in fear.
The next panel rolled across the entire bottom of the page, it was simple it was the edge of the road the guardrail broken, smashed through and smoke coming into the air beyond it, a flash of lightning punctuating the back. As if a sign from above the thunder outside became aggressive attacking and shaking the walls of the small one-bedroom house.
I started to draw the crash at the bottom of the hill right near the edge that led into the drop off of the canyon below, and my focus zoned out, the blood, that seeped into the dark brown muddy soil, Mark's beautiful body hanging out of the car his strong arm covered in dirt, and glistening in the rain.
I held my breath and blinked as my eyes began to burn with emotion. I had never killed someone in a comic before because it was hard to live through that pain of someone you knew so well, dying.
And I hated myself at that moment because I was killing another person I cared about on a rainy night in a car crash.
Another one...
Just like...
I swallowed the lump in my throat and even whimpered in dismay.
Tears streamed down my face from the raw emotions of what I was about to do. From the monster, I was about to become, but it didn't matter because soon all of this would be over. My miserable cursed existence would end, I would never have to hurt again, and neither would he.
And just as I started drawing the lightning bolt across the sky in my comic. A real bolt struck right on the edge of the cliff outside my window. The thunder was so close and loud it shook through the cliff and through my old creaky wood floor.
I gasped in shock, my hand too frozen to move the mouse.
Another one crashed immediately after.
This time, it felt like it had actually hit my house and like the bolts of lightning; the energy was coursing through the walls and floor and straight through to my very veins. I stared, mouth open in shock at the screen as my computer started to fritz and the screen went black. A searing pain ignited in the spot my finger had made contact with the computer that one spot a focused ebbing throb, like a shot. Strong and overwhelming.
The pressure began to build like an aching throb through every muscle, as if they all were misfiring at the same time and my body started to slump, my vision blurred and...
My world went dark.
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