CHAPTER TWENTY

20

I walked to Thomas’s home which was near the rec department, just a short trip through the woods. Memories of the hundreds of trips I’d taken through these woods to get to Thomas’s trailer burned through my brain like wildfires in California, the trip to his trailer was so beautiful during the fall; the leaves on the trees were colors ranging from auburn to candid yellow, to a beautiful bright orange; Me and Thomas holding hands admiring the trees, innocent, tender, loving kisses shared between us. Those were the best moments of my life, and now . . . pain burned through my chest at those memories, tears assaulted my eyes. I blinked a couple times and the memories faded, I looked up at the trees and the ones that didn’t burn down were partly singed with empty limbs, no leaves on the trees at all, the smell of smoke and ashes filled the air. Smelling so differently from what it used to smell like.

By the time I got to Thomas’s home, I remembered that I had Olive’s watch in my back pocket. Danny wasn’t the one with the watch. I was! When the giant clock appeared out of the darkness, we set the timer on the watch to let us know how much time we had left. When I tapped on the clock app the timer showed: 2:56:37. It had only been 4 minutes? It felt like an hour had gone by. Time goes by slowly in this dimension. Good. Gives me plenty of time to find Danny and Thomas and get them out of here.

When I neared Thomas’s trailer, I paused, worrying about their big black dog coming out, barking viciously and trying to bite me. Then I looked up at his trailer. It was almost completely incinerated. Everything except the living room, where Thomas’s twin nieces used to sleep in their bunk bed, was burnt down.

When he was 17 (when we were together), his household consisted of him sharing a room with his year younger brother Johnny, (sadly, we all know how that ended), his fifteen-year older brother, Joey, and his girlfriend, Whitney, had their own room, Joey’s twin girls, Bailey and Kat, slept in their bunk bed in the living room, and Thomas’s Mom, Sonia, had her own room.

And now those memories were just that, memories. Something that was once his home, somewhere I’d been in countless times, was almost completely burnt down. 

Despite there being absolutely no walls on the sides of the house, I knocked on the door, hopeful of Whitney or Joey or one of the twins to answer the door.

I waited for a beat and heard footsteps walking towards the door, and someone answered. It was Thomas, ooh, thank god. 

“Hey, Nix!” Thomas said cheerfully and wrapped me in a bear hug. Oh, god, his scent, that cologne that I could never figure out what it was surrounded me, invading my nostrils. I groaned as he almost basically my ribs. Why was he hugging me like this? “It’s been so long since I’ve seen you, how have you been?” WHAT? I thought.

I raised my eyebrow at this, “You literally just saw me a few minutes ago.” I said in a calm tone.

He looked at me with uncertainty, “No. ‘S not possible--,” his forest green eyes were prying into mine, curious of what I meant, “I’ve been here all day,” he shoved a piece of pizza in his mouth. Where did he get pizza in this wasteland?

“B-b-but--” I stuttered, “we were literally just talking a few minutes ago.”

“Hmmm,” he hummed, “No, that must’ve been someone else.”

“Stop. Lying.” I said slowly as I rocked onto the balls of my feet. “Where’s Danny?”

His eyes widened as he stared up to the gloomy gray "sky", “Danny,” he crossed his arms and tapped his left bicep with his index finger, “you mean Daniel Michaels?”

I nodded slowly, “Yeah,” I tilted my head down but never left his eyes, “the guy that you were literally just with.”

His smile died and he looked at me with skepticism, “I haven’t seen him since high school,” he laughed, “I was so jealous of him when you and I were together, I always thought you were spending way too much time with him. It all seems so stupid and juvenile now.”

Then I remembered I was in his burnt down house, “What are you doing here?”

“What do you mean? It’s my house, I live here.”

“But--,” I eyed the sides of his house, “it’s burnt down.”

He looked at where the sides should’ve been at and shrugged, “I don’t know what you mean, it looks perfectly fine to me.” 

Was he blind? I thought angrily.

I gestured towards the sides of his house, “Your walls are incinerated!” I spat. He looked at me and rubbed the nape of his neck. I heard movement behind the couch followed by a tiny stifled snicker. My brows knitted together as I swerved my head towards the couch and stared silently. I pushed past Thomas and walked towards the singed brown couch. 

I saw movement and a little brown hair. Brown hair that I recognize all too well.

“Danny?” I moved completely behind the couch and saw him.

Both Danny and Thomas started to burst out laughing.

I pursed my lips and looked up at the burnt ceiling, trying to contain myself, “We don’t have time for this,” I said to them through gritted teeth.

They continued to laugh, slapping their thighs and doubling over, pointing and laughing saying things like, “You should’ve seen your face!” After that, I got agitated so I whipped out the smartwatch, it read: 2:40:23. My eyebrows shot to the ceiling. How did so much time go by so fast!? “We don’t have time for this!” I shouted. They quieted down a bit and looked at me, I stared daggers into their souls and they stopped laughing completely, “We only have a little over two and a half hours left,” I sighed, “do y’all wanna go out the same way Olive did?”

Danny’s eyes widened and he slowly shook his head. Thomas looked confused, “How did she ‘go out’?”

Tears stung in my eyes (stupid tear ducts) and I pressed my lips together and turned away as a tear rolled down my cheek as I thought back at at the memory of seeing her blood-splattered across the walls of Granny’s sub-basement. 

Thomas saw the tear roll and tried to take his question back, but I ended up telling him. His eyes grew big and he furrowed his brows, pure fear shown in his eyes, “H-how did you know it was hers?” He stumbled over his words.

Here’s the part I didn’t tell you (my readers), or Danny. I bet y’all are gonna gasp,  “I walked into the sauna . . .” I sounded like I was being strangled; I cleared my throat, “and there was a rope hanging from one of the beams from the ceiling . . .” I paused and looked up at the burnt ceiling of Thomas’s fake house, “and on that rope,” my voice started to break, “was Olive. She was all slashed up, her neck was bruised and her body disfigured. Limbs stuck in the flailing position like she was falling -- ”

“Wait, you never told me this!” Danny burst out, interrupting me.

“It was hard, I just saw someone that was one of the most important people in my life, dead,” I cried.

Danny shot up from his crouched position behind the couch and abruptly shot over to me. He wrapped me up in his arms and I cried into his shirt. “It was awful, D, looking at her destroyed body made me want to barf.”

He stroked my hair and looked over at Thomas, who was scowling. “What?” Danny mouthed.

Thomas shook his head and started to walk out of his door, and sat on the steps of his front porch.

* * *

Thomas tightly clenched his fist and stared at his quickly reddening hand. God, I missed her, he thought, why in the world did I ever let her go? This thought drove him crazy. He turned his head back to Danny holding Phoenix while she was crying, her shoulders shaking in grief. All he could see was her long, wavy, dirty blonde hair sticking out of Danny’s embrace. “Daniel,” he quietly snarled. He imagined a scenario where he confronted Danny and told him to get his hands off of his girl, but he remembered that Phoenix wasn’t his anymore. That they broke up years ago and there’s nothing he could do to get her back. She was with Danny now. And those thoughts were something he was going to have to keep down as long as he was around her.

* * *

“Daniel,” I sobbed and choked into his chest.

“Yes?”

“Always and forever?”

He put his chin on my head and I felt him nod, “Yes, Brownie, always and forever,” I felt his fingers intertwined with mine.

That was all the reassurance I needed.

I walked near the door to get out of the house continuing on with the mission. “We need to figure out a way out of here, we just need--”

The most gruesome thing I have ever seen faced me when I opened that door. “Hi, Phoenix.”

Oh, my god. No. It’s not possible. I stood there and gaped for a moment at what looked like the return of someone who used to be my best friend. Someone who I could’ve sworn was dead.

Olive.

Everything that Granny did to her stuck, and somehow, she got messed up even more. Her face was purple and it looked like it was partially melted. She was balancing on one leg while the other was inhumanely sticking up in the air. Left-arm bent back and clearly out of the socket. Her neck was still bruised and mangled, a purple outline on her neck of where the noose was, her once pink-flowery romper was brown from both mud and dried blood, and -- I can’t explain the look in her eyes, it was like a sadness, and yearning for something. But I couldn’t figure out what.

“Is my makeup okay?” She asked through trembling lips while touching her droopy eye with one finger. A tear rolled down her cheek as she looked at me.

SHE WAS STILL NORMAL! Her brain was still working, she just looked . . . awful.

“Oh, sweetie,” I said quietly, touched her cheek, and nodded. “It looks amazing,” I said, since she was still alive. I smiled, and happy tears rolled from my eyes. I wrapped her in a tight hug and gave her her watch. The timer was still pulled up on it.

“Thanks,” she choked quietly through tears, she knew how she looked, I couldn’t imagine what it’d be like to live in a body that’s been killed and mangled just to come back to life again.

I sighed a sigh of happiness, Olive looked disgusting, but I was more than elated that she was alive.

“We have to find Lizzy,” she said. Wait, did I tell her about that? “Didn’t have to Phe, I can read your thoughts,” she tapped her temple with her index finger.

What in the--

“ALRIGHT!” Thomas was flat out staring at Olive with a scrunched up, disgusted look on his face, “Some freaky stuff is going on here and I can’t process it right now, I’m going for a run.”

“No,” I almost whispered, but he was sprinting . . . and then, the ground just opened and swallowed him whole.

I turned around and shoved my face into Danny’s shirt for the billionth time, and I screamed to the top of my lungs, my face turned red and blood quickly flowed to my head, my screams muffled in Danny’s muscular chest. “Why did he have to run?” I shook my head in his shirt, “It’s NOT FAIR!” I screamed. I clutched Danny’s shirt and tugged harshly.

He swiftly wrapped his arms around me and just stared at where Thomas was swallowed by the darkness to who knows where. Probably never to be seen again.