Alice: The Leader

by Gabriella Dennany

  I frown at the thought; it’s stupid to think of something like that. I continue walking and something moving catches my eye. It’s twitching in the dark and I can make out its body. It’s human, and male I think. I slowly walk towards the person with caution and gasp when I see his face.

  It’s Will.

  Will lies below me with bloody knuckles and dry tears on his cheeks.

  I kneel down and reach out to touch him. I pull my hand back hesitantly.

  What if he wakes up and recoils from me? What if he slaps my hand away and spits at me? I let out a sigh and curse at myself. I really have to stop with the ‘what if’s. I gently push his hair out of his face. I sit down next to him and rip two long pieces of my shirt and set them down on the ground.

  A chill goes down my spine as a cool breeze brushes through my hair. I pick up his right hand gently and I feel him stir. I hope he doesn’t wake while I wrap his knuckles. I gently wrap the black cloth around his hand and tie it up tightly. I am about to put down his hand, but he squeezes mine gently.

  “Princess?” He mumbles. His voice is slurred and his eyes are barely open. I don’t answer, just take his other hand and do the same thing that I did to the other.

  When I finish wrapping, I set his hand down on his chest. I am about to stand, but he grabs my hand again. My heart flutters at the touch, but the anger and sadness I feel about him right now blocks out the sweet feeling.

  “What do you want?” I mutter through gritted teeth.

  “There is no us now, right? I messed up,” He shutters while he speaks. A tear leaves his eye as he watches me.

  I pull my hand away and whisper, “Yeah, you’ve messed up.”

  “Do you still love me?” He cries quietly.

  I stand up abruptly and glare at him. “How dare you ask such a question when you clearly already know the answer?” I turn and run away.

  Tears fall down my face as I sprint back into the base. I don’t care if people can hear me and wake up. While running, I see Gwen go walking past. She gives me a worried look and stops walking and watches me run off. I run up the steps, and sprint into my room. I collapse on my bed, panting. I start to sob and I put my hand over my face. My shoulders shake as I lie there helplessly. I don’t know what this feeling is. Is it love? Heartbreak? If it is any of those, I haven’t ever felt any of it before.

  The grief surges with every expelled breath, always reaching higher peaks, never sufficiently soothed by my long intakes of the thick air. In this moment the sure knowledge that life would go on without him – that time will only stop for me – undoes me completely.

  All the presence of quiet coping is lost and I sink into the softness of my bed, not caring about the tears that quickly fall down my cheeks and stain the white sheets. I cast my eyes to the God. I need His love more than ever Grief. Yes, I’ve felt this before. Yet not as strong as I do now. It feels like there is emptiness in my heart, a sheet of nothingness that somehow takes over and holds my soul and just threatens to kill me entirely. It gives me this heavy feeling that’s like the weight of the world is resting on my chest and there is nothing I can do to get out from under it. It’s like a hole in my heart that is in the shape of Will.

  I cry as if my heart is being shredded from the inside. Emotional pain flows out of my every pore. From my mouth comes a cry so raw that even the eyes of strangers would suddenly be wet with tears. I grab onto the sheets under me so that my violent shaking would not cause me to roll over. From my eyes comes a thicker flow of tears than I have ever cried for even my mother when she passed. The whole world has vanished for me. Now there is only pain enough to break me, pain enough to change me beyond recognition.

  My heartache is almost like a wolf eating at my chest, tearing its way to my trembling heart. It threatens to devour me, eat me whole and leave nothing but scraps behind. But I refuse to be the scraps that Will has left. I shall rebuild myself and fight off the wolf, but right now I don’t know how. So I do my best to ignore it. But I find that the wolf has little appetite for stubbornness. I let out a cry, knowing that I shall never be able to ignore the wolf that destroys my soul. And still the wolf tears at me, showing no pity for my broken heart what so ever.

  I sit up and put my head in my hands. I fell for Will harder than a slip on ice; he was funny, always cracking jokes. He always had me in stitches every time we talked. People flock to him like he is the only light in the room, hanging on words, buying them drinks and slapping their backs. But that really isn’t Will, is it? He wouldn’t do that to someone. He makes it seem like it, then BAM! He shoots you with a gun in your heart and lets you bleed out for eternity.

  God, I miss him so much. When he shot me the first time, I knew I wanted more. But when he shot me again, I became filled with regret for wanting more. Yet now while lying here drowning in my sorrows, I wish he would shoot me again.

  I turn over in my bed and let out an exasperated sigh. My body won’t stop shaking as I pull the blanket back over me, covering every inch of my body.

  They say the pain dulls with time, and that things will get better. But how can things be better when the reason the pain isn’t as bad anymore, is because I’ve forgotten? If getting past the pain means forgetting about Will, then I choose suffering for my entire life.

  I feel empty inside, like the last drop of my love has dripped from my painful heart. I feel like my heart is like the wall of an abandoned building, cracking, infested with mould, and particles scattering from it like sand in the wind. My soul is now empty inside, quivering, frantically reaching for the surface. It is trying to escape the dark, lonely corridors that are now filling with darkness. I can feel the uncomfortable humidity here, the negative energy suffocating me, as I miserably gasp for relief.

  My heart feels like it is being squeezed as hard as the cold bare hands of the one I once loved can squeeze. Heartbreak is the only thing in the world that can possibly make me not want to have a heart anymore. I remember spending what seemed like eternity sitting with Will after training, having him hold me like I was the only thing that mattered in the world to him. His bright eyes would gaze into mine and seemed to burn into my memory forever. His dark hair fell over his face, only to be pushed away by my hands. I wish those moments could last forever.

  The feeling is one that isn’t matched; the adrenaline rush is more than if you are to jump off a thirty story building and let go of the parachute at the last minute. Love did flow through my body like the shock of touching an electrical socket. When the words are finally spoken to end the relationship, the one I had thought would be never ending, my body had a very short moment of awe when I didn’t seem to feel anything, think anything, or hear anything other than when he said on the other side of the door last night, “I love you.”

  I soon realize it is really over, and everything I had ever said ran through my head as if to taunt me. He said we’re nothing.

  Now I’m nothing.

  Were we ever really strangers? I’m not sure we were. That day I first saw him there was something even then, though I didn’t know what at that time. I wonder if there’s an element of time that allows us to feel a strong love, like an orange glow bursting over a dark horizon. It was light for our eyes only, something to carry us through this life. It was the dawn of the person I am today, the person I am destined to be.

  I will give up anything in the world for Will. I would do anything to keep him safe. I’d rather be poor in money than risk loosing his heart. I recall the day our bond was first forged. It was like being let into the warmth after a lifetime of winter. I can never wish to go back to even a day before that. He is the greatest treasure of my life, the one, and the only one.

  When I met Will I’d already lost my entire world. How can one hang on to something so incomprehensible? How can one keep pouring love into a dry abyss?

  But then there he was. There was something in those bright blue eyes that was so beautiful, so safe and warm. In just one look I was “home.” Even thou
gh he would snarl at me and make me cringe in pain, I couldn’t just leave him. I had reached out and made the connection, and like God Himself had arranged it, he fell for me just as hard.

  That first day we talked, just the two of us, I still recall the conversation – the feeling he gave. Will didn’t know it, but that day he saved me. Doesn’t time take its toll on love? Not even years, months or days! Or perhaps it isn’t time, it’s this modern life we all work for, strive for, and embrace while it destroys us. I am as much in love with Will today as I ever was and will forever be, perhaps even more so, but I have become very tired.

  I now, sit doing nothing. Turns out, I ran out of tears. I lie there, staring at the balcony, thinking about him. Even though he said those things to me, I cannot get him out of my mind. I shoot up from the bed and walk over to the balcony. The time is now 7:00 a.m. People are starting to slip out of bed and head over to breakfast, and quickly start their training. Four people are standing by Eric’s body.

  They carefully pick him up and place him in a white coffin that has roses painted on it. I turn away, now filling with anger by seeing him being put in a coffin. Eric really is dead. I kick the wall and shove the nightstand on its side. I fall to the ground and start to sob. I really do have tears left in me. I gasp for air, trying to stop crying but I can’t.

  The ache of longing to be with Eric echoes through the very marrow of my bones.

  It is a chill wind trapped in the chambers of my heart. I never thought that missing someone like this can actually take over every fiber of my body and wring me out like a wet sponge every day. It is a torment that I am unprepared for.

  The darkness seems to swirl around me and curl upwards from my grey floor, tendrils of inkling bleak reminders of my solitude. The silence echoing in my ears is the constant white noise that will never shut up. My head swarms in the fire burning inside, the only smoldering embers of a time where there had been other presences with me, around me, in me. But now, the void has been slowly filling with a cold, howling storm of fear that refuses to ever light up. I am completely and utterly alone in my mind, body, soul, and most of all, entirely alone in the world.

  How can I still be breathing when I feel like this?

  The nausea swirls unrestrained in my empty stomach. My head swarms with half formed regrets. My heart feels as if my blood is now tar as it struggles to keep a steady beat. My melancholy mood hangs over me like a black cloud, raining my personal sorrow down on me wherever I turn. My head is pounding as I whisper two words to myself over and over again.

  “I’m alone.”

  Even if Will is right about my parents actually being alive, they aren’t here. My parents aren’t crying with me. My father isn’t here to beat up Will for breaking my heart. My mother isn’t here to hold me in her arms and cry with me. I have no one anymore. I curl up in a ball in the middle of the room. My arm is throbbing again and I can feel the blood dripping down my arm. I pull my head up and a thought comes to my mind.

  Realization. I am realizing that I’m useless. Maybe, for one day I was a leader but that was luck. Now who knows what I am.

  I. Am. Nothing.

  I crawl to my bed and pull myself on top of it. I pull the blanket on top of me and scream into my pillow. My realization is clear to me. I know what has to happen now, some people might not be happy about it but it’s what I want.

  And to me, that is all that matters.

  Savior

  The clock reads 12:00 PM. The middle hour, causing the lunch bells ring all throughout the base. I have been on my bed for half the day so far, staring at the white ceiling. I had locked my door a while ago, guessing that someone might want to get in.

  My arm is pretty bloody, and there is a small pool of blood right under where my arm lay. About an hour ago, someone started knocking on my door. I waited for a while to see if the person would identify himself or herself, after a bit more of knocking, the person began to speak.

  “Alice? It’s Gwen. I saw you go running by me early this morning. I think you were crying, and I’m on my break now so if you need to talk just come down to the dining hall or the infirmary and we can talk,” Gwen didn’t make any more noise for a moment, but after a minute or so I heard her footsteps descending down the hall.

  Gwen isn’t the only one who had knocked on the door, a little bit after her I heard someone else come along to the door. The person didn’t knock for a moment. They just stood there. Soon enough, the person knocked softly. I stayed in my spot and once more waited for the person to speak. A minute passed and the person spoke.

  “Hey, thanks for bandaging me up last night,” I had shot up from my bed, wincing from my arm as I stared at the door in shock. “Alice, we’ve got to talk. I realize you might just hate me, but I told you I felt the opposite before. I’m sure that feeling hasn’t left me just yet,” I automatically heard Will’s footsteps descend down the hall right after he finished speaking. I had watched the door in shock, plastered to it, wanting to run out and go to him. But, instead I fell back to the bed.

  And here we are now.

  I try to close my eyes, but I don’t want to know what might happen. What I would see. I know what I want. I’m just taking my time to actually do it. I blink slowly and sit up. I turn around and pick up my pillow. Underneath my pillow is a silver handgun. I take it in my hand and grip the handle.

  Life isn’t my friend anymore. Death shall become my best friend. I don’t think of it as suicide. I think of it as a new beginning, a place where I can be with Eric. Where I shan’t be bothered with nightmares or with violence. I twirl the gun in my right hand and watch the light shimmer off of it.

  I clutch my stomach in pain. All this stress is taking its toll on me. I stand from the bed and glance out the balcony. I put the gun behind my back as I walk out onto the balcony and look out at the people below me. At first, it all just seemed normal – people rushing towards their destination and people walking and just enjoying themselves – enjoying their freedom. But then, I feel my heart squeeze with hurt and fume with anger.

  Sam and Red are holding hands and talking to Gwen. Will comes running up behind them nods at Sam, patted Red’s shoulder, and the worst – gives Gwen a huge hug. When the embrace finishes, Will keeps his arm around her waist and her arm stays around his neck.

  Subconsciously, my arm holding the gun moves around my back and comes to the front where my other arm is. Out of spite and anger, I slam both of my hands against the metal railing. My empty hand doesn’t make that much noise, but when the gun slams against the railing, almost everyone below looks up at me. The four of them look up at me in shock.

  Sam waves gleefully, Red smiles, Gwen giggles and waves, but Will isn't looking at me. He is looking at the gleaming and loaded gun in my hand. He looks confused, but then looks at my face. He can see my puffy eyes and, sadly the cuts on my arm.

  After a moment, they all notice the cuts.

  Sam covers his mouth, scared for some reason, Red just stares, and Gwen pulls glasses out of her pocket and put them over her eyes, while Will takes action. He sprints off into the base and I panic. I run to my door and quickly lock it.

  Knowing that he will still easily be able to still get in, I push my dresser in front of the door. I jog to the balcony and slam the doors shut in front of the opening. I lock the door and push my nightstand in front of those doors. I stand in the middle of the room, waiting for myself to do it. I jump from a pound at the door; Will must be on the other side trying to get in.

  “Alice! Listen to me!” Will calls from the other side.

  I pace the room, not knowing if I should call back. “It’s not what it looks like! I just want to be alone for a bit!” I shout.

  “Hell to that, Alice! I saw the cuts, and the gun in your hand,” He shouts back to me.

  I then, decide not to keep talking. I stop pacing and twirl the gun in my hand. I close my eyes and let out a sad sigh. Resting the point of the gun on my left temple, it almost feels like t
he world has stopped moving around me.

  A spark of joy ignites my blood and rushes through my veins. Gravity fails, and the world stops spinning for just a moment. I feel scared that the moment shall end, and joy won’t be the feeling their anymore. I quickly push the thought away and stay focused on the present. Now, I can be with Eric for eternity. I vowed that I would save him, and I failed. I feel a tear leave my eye and it makes me feel ashamed.

  My index finger is fastened on the trigger, and I feel ready. My time is now.

  Suddenly, the dresser in front of my door goes flying to the wall right above my bed. The door busts open and a furious Will comes charging in.

  I turn to him in surprise and he tackles me. I fall to the ground with him on top of me. I keep a firm grip on the gun in my hand. Will pins my arms to the ground, his hands staying clear of my cuts. He is trying to rip the gun from my hand, but I clench my teeth and try to push him off.

  “Get off of me, Will!” I manage to growl.

  He manages to rip the gun from my grip and throws it to the other side of the room. Will opens his mouth to speak, but I shove him away before he can say anything.

  I scurry to my feet and run to the gun. My objective is to get the gun and end this tragic tale before it’s too late.

  Will regains himself and hooks his arm around my ankles. I fall to the ground and use my arms to brace the fall. Will jumps on top of me and keeps me pinned.

  I thrash myself around, trying to hit him. Will sadly laughs at me and whispers in my ear, “You’re something, princess.”