Blast loud music in my ears

Live a life that has no fears

And pretend that are no years

Ticking past my ears

Out the window.

Because it’s

A long long path to follow when

I want to skip and scream down then

All the way until I reach the future

But I can’t go there

Oh, not yet

But you dare me too

Then I’ll bet

It takes me only 2 long years to make my way home.

Starting part is marked here

The day I learned true fear

And stared a gun down its barrel.

It was positioned between two eyes

In place of a mouth, full of lies

And I knew it familiar simply ’cause

Guns like these always run in families.

And looking back, I think to myself,

How’d I get buried in this filth,

Remembering the days, I was just too precious

Asking about words that begin with ‘n’

Knowing Budweiser before the alphabet

And knowing all the courthouse officials all by name.

But at the same time, I know,

It wasn’t a performance for show,

But something with one person to blame.

But today,

Today’s the day I want to scream my tale,

Not be worried about if I fail,

No worries about Harvard, Princeton or Yale,

But take the moment to just exhale,

Take a step off this old trail,

And from my life, remove its sad curtail.

Because it’s

A long long path to follow when

I want to skip and scream down then

All the way until I reach the future

But I can’t go there

Oh, not yet

But you dare me too

Then I’ll bet

It takes me only 4 long years to make my way home.

I would be the calm drizzle,

If people were the rain,

But she would be unrelenting,

The wildest hurricane.

I, a simple lily flower,

If people were nature's wonders

Her as mountain range,

Surrounded by clouds and thunders.

As the simplest of equations,

If numbers are what we dare,

She would be a logarithm,

The worst calculus nightmare.

Should we wander as idle thoughts,

I would be a passing dream,

She would be the greatest tale,

With plot-twists that are never what they seem.

Yet, should her true self be what we compare

Rather than just her smile or personality

I'm but a tugboat, but she's the Titanic,

With all the hull damage you'd think to see.

If her depression was a trap,

It'd be one with sharp teeth and chains,

Choking the air from her lungs,

Causing only the greatest of pains.

Her pills as a relationship,

They'd be one of love and hate,

Abusive in how she can never escape.

But her need for them is the endless bait.

When I turn our love into something immortal,

It'll be the kindest of eternal souls,

Intertwined with careful empathy,

Showing to all, love's true goals.

So quickly I blinked, haze and ear ringing giving way to shouts of agony and slow death. Blackness faded from the edges of my vision like Grimme's cloak tugging the glass shards along the ground as he leaves a job well done.

The first sound I could focus on was the faint fluttering of pages in the wind, echoed by someone banging against the husk of a former bus. Seeing nothing but yellow stained now with red and gravel, I struggle to get up.

My limbs seem to work in slow motion, being pulled by a puppeteer's strings as I'm manipulated by arthritis fingers. Jerking, discovering the injuries that'll soon tally up the last of my mother's savings.

I drag along the ground, cars stopping now and people darting out. If I was clearer minded, and less alone I would make a joke to Sarah about how people's reactions are so different, some helping while others simply turn to take another route.

Sarah...

I continue heading to the sound of pages rustling. I can hear someone calling over to me, shouting about the boy in the red hoodie. I could've sworn it was white when I bought it.

I turn, thinking I caught a glimpse of familiar red hair but its only someone else running from their car. didn't buy it, my mind slowly processes. It was a gift. Sarah and I shared birthdays after all.

Robotically, I take to moving what was formerly the emergency door. It faces skyward but it's easy to climb up with the hood there like a ramp. I became aware of a growing weight on my chest. It's damp, yet dries out my mouth into silence.

More people are being pulled from the wreckage. That redhead I saw gives CPR to my teacher as the man I saw shouting covers the head cheerleader with his coat. I move into the bus and spot the book. Crimson splattered on a page still bookmarked by a death grip.

I trace the spine to pale fingers, moving to forward only to fall. I clutch my chest, my hands now tracing a piece of glass that lodged itself in my gut. Clutching the book I gave her, she lies there partially covered by the old bus seat. Brittle as my heart, it must've broken and landed on her.

I feel the weight of the breaths I can't take, putting pressure on my mind. Collapsing before I can catch myself, glass scrapes my cheek as I stare at her still face. I hear someone coming into the wreckage as His black cloak edges forth to take me. As I'm stolen away, the last thing I see, is her chest faintly rising and sinking.

At least she'll be found.

I cried today.

I remember ages ago, I was perhaps 10 or so. My grandmother passed, and I can recall so distinctly holding my mother's hand. I was in a tux, ill-fitting because it was my older cousin's. Having to roll up the sleeves and pants to do anything. Gently, while my mother was so distraught, she blew her nose before wiping her eyes, I rubbed my tiny thumb on the back of her hand. Murmured a few kind words, on behalf of my father, who was stone-faced only because he knew his first words spoken would crack his facade, to a grandmother I spent every summer with. I spilled drinks that day yet no tears.

I remember being 15. Hormonal as one can imagine a teenager can be, spending way too much time alone in my room with the door locked. I lost my dog to a driver that was more focused on the bag of chips that slid between his seat and cup holder than the road. He couldn't resist chasing the post truck, ignorant of any other cars behind it. I sometimes regret not fixing the gate sooner so he couldn't sneak out through it. I split no tears though, as I held him, pulling his body away from the street as the driver offers no help, already 3 streets away. I just stared as my mother screamed in horror as the blood slipped from his head through my fingers, a whimper escaping his mouth before he stilled.

To be 21 now, in the broom closet of a University I never liked, studying a major I never wanted, I can say I'm a grown man that's cried enough in one day to make up for my lifetime. I separated from my roommate near immediately after it happened.

His family was visiting when it happened. They lived less than a half-hour away, and in our WOW session, him and I were ignorant. They barged into our room, screaming of strange creatures. They called them walkers, from watching too much TV. While he tried to call them down, I explained to everyone in the game what was happening. A few thought it was a prank. When someone linked a newscast, the servers emptied quite quickly though.

The zombies were quickly approaching campus, a major city like ours a prime target. Spores, they said, some new type of biological warfare we had the privilege of being the test subjects for. His younger sister was worried about their elder brother. He was in Iraq- he still is in Iraq as far as I know. I wouldn't like to be him, with what he'd come home to.

The first zombie we ran into, was no walker. It ran faster than the best sprinter on the school's track team, right into his mother's neck. His father tried to stop it with the baseball bat they brought along, yet the thing was ravenous and unstoppable. While his father shoved a bat into the thing's throat, we ended up tipping a vending machine onto them both at his father's command. His sister cried behind a potted plant as we wrestled the bat from the dead man's grip. There wasn't time to reassure her as more growls sounded from the noise.

By the time we had gotten our gear together to leave, someone had already pulled a fire alarm so the halls were pretty quiet. Obviously, a fire wasn't the emergency in place here and all it did - as we saw from our wonderful window view - was line up a buffet for the creatures. We decided to try and get to the roof, and hope for a chopper.

Lucy. Her name was Lucy, he told me as I cradled her in my arms. The poor thing was tuckered out as her brother tried to barricade a dorm's door. We found another poor soul, the guy couldn't handle the pressure. While we had a pistol, Lucy couldn't stop staring at the body even after we put the blanket over it. It is quite a lot to go through for the child. Lose both your parents in one day. View suicide and murder close up. Watch your brother rave and rant about how the government is letting us suffer. Heavy stuff.

It was in the dead of night when the groans arrived at the door. She was asleep, as was I when her brother - who insisted on taking the first watch - woke us up. Seemed that waiting for the next day to escape wasn't an option. Him and I had to think an escape plan. If I had to guess, they could smell the B.O. of two sweaty guys that hadn't showered for 2 and 3 days respectively.

We decided the best course of action was to hide the girl as we tried to defend her. We coaxed her into the bathroom, placing her in the tub and slipping the bed's mattress over it. She could move it herself to escape if necessary but I doubt that a zombie would be smart enough to do so, nor be able to bite through it easy. We stood at the ready with a pistol and bat. He opened the door, and immediately was pounced by a horde. In hindsight, one could've assumed that would happen, but in adrenaline madness, we didn't. I screamed for Lucy to come out as I shot the 3 zombies. I heard her scream as well, but all I was grateful for was each and every time my father when hunting with me.

I covered her eyes as I led her out. She assumed what happened to her brother after I gave her a bloody bat and it was just us. It was unfortunate, just me and the suburban family with no idea what to do with our lives, yet alone how to survive in an apocalypse. No survival handbook or movie could've predicted this yet they all did at one point or another. We were idiots.

I cried today, as we rushed from a horde into a broom closet. I cried with Lucy as I found toilet paper in the closet. I'm still crying with her as I write this with an old sharpie on a piece of T.P. with a crying little girl hugging onto me that I have no way of protecting, except one.

I still have one bullet.

Signed,

Eren Sinclair

P.S.

If you find the girl's body still intact, if you can, give her a proper burial.

If you find mine intact, I won't be incredibly angry for you spitting on it.

"To feel fire, is to feel desire and passion for that which I love. And if I cannot desire with the will I am given, then let my soul's passion die out without chance of me rekindling the flames. For then, I have nothing left worth living for..."

In a time of Earthlessness, there was no man to protect nor watch over. The morning rose once and never let us experience darkness, in a perfect world. White-clad angels, doing God's bidding, for He had plans. If you listened to him, you were along for the ride of a lifetime, but if not... There was no other option.

"I love You. But I love her as well. My love for You shall not wane simply from this, my service shall not falter, but I ask of You. Do not act so rashly I beg of you."

While at the time, we were God's greatest creation, we were not infallible. To be clean of mistakes and so perfect was to put ourselves on the same level as Him, yet to be mindless drones was to leave Him as alone as He once was before us. So we had free will to an extent one would assume all should be happy with.

"I feel like a part of me has been torn from my mind. My soul, my being. I don't know why, but I feel like I'm missing something dreadfully important. Perhaps I forgot something that was asked of me."

To look back now, past bloodshed and millennia of distrust and chaos, it is obvious now. God didn't want friendship, unless it was a relationship he could toy with. He didn't want love, unless it was you loving him. No, God- god wanted nothing more than a plaything. Our primary function was to be the babysitters of his next big plan, powerful enough to kill things in check but not too strong to challenge him. With an ego as strong as his, it's unsurprising that he underestimates his own creation.

"You...You DID THIS! You took her from me! Samael, Samael! Where have you put my Samael! How could you do this, just tear open her place in my heart and leave the hole! You...you...YOU MONSTER!"

One could call me bitter. Just a rueful old hag that's had too much time to mull over what's been done to me in my soulless existence, but the one to insult the Devil herself is the one to find themselves woefully subject to my attention. Only one deserves what was once the shine of this star. The rest can have the black hole that remains.

"I can't be crazy, Michele tell me I'm not mad! You were always kindest, please, help me! Gabrielle, you wish for justice do you not? Why does no one see what's wrong?! Today, God has faulted!"

I have few regrets. I wish more angels were dragged down with me. I wish that mankind wasn't so easy to puppeteer around so that I could have a good distraction. I wish that different choices were made. I tried to make things interesting afterwards. The first to die was me, in a way. Falling was more than just descending from Heaven to the inner core of a half-built world. The fires were stronger than they are now. My wings were ripped from my back, my soul stolen from me. I cannot properly die without it. So I remain, ruler of a suspended Limbo, where god throws the trash projects that don't turn out how he wants them to. Pity, he thinks he can find a balance of kindness and free will. What a blind fool.

"I don't care if I sound foolish, You're the one who cannot admit wrong! You cannot just sweep this under some carpet and pretend it never happened! How many times!? How many of us started out? How many angels have you removed from Heaven, thinking that if you just plucked them from existence, from our memories, that things would continue smoothly without them?"

Perhaps in hindsight confronting god on his own throne wasn't smart.

"Shall you remove me as well? How will history progress without your precious choirmaster, your morning star? Oh forbid if your little entertainment troop has no conductor!"

Yet then again...

"I'd rather leave this realm then continue without Samael."

If I didn't make a stand, who would?