This story has no happy ending. Neither does it have a sad one. Not a victorious ending, a bittersweet, traumatizing, glorifying, apocalyptic. It's just the way the world works. Just a day night cycle. The story will never really end, the writing does.
Apocalypse Studios presents;
Town.
I remember, a boy from my school, his family, gone. His hope still remained. His brother, killed in a drunk driving accident and his parents, just packed up and left. Every day after school, I remember, he’d sit, sit right on a boulder, legs swinging, smiling like he had no idea, waiting for his parents to come by with his brother, holding some treat for him. He’d sit patiently for an hour, same position, waiting. Then, when the custodian said he needed to walk home, he’d leave campus and sit right up against a fence to the park’s baseball diamond.
Some kids, better than I was back then, would sit with him, offer him some lunch. Some played card games with him. I would just watch. Then my parents would pick me up and I’d go home, just like that. I would have the temptation to invite him over with me. I had some friends, my friends weren’t perfect, but they weren’t like bullies. They’d probably just treat him like anyone else, but maybe that was what he needed, just enough to escape his pain. I’ve never seen him cry, he’d never complain, as far as I knew. All I wished I’d done was made him happy, at least once. For on the last day he’d been seen alive was the one day, the one day, I’d seen him cry. They’d found his sister dead from an overdose at a party. He didn’t know he had a sister. But maybe he wouldn’t spend so much time with foster families. Maybe he wouldn’t be sent around from orphanage to orphanage. One day, I followed him to the field. I wanted to talk with him. Make him feel like he was actually seen. As I walked. He sat at the fence. He unzipped his backpack and pulled out a small bag of candy. He unwrapped a piece. I walked towards him and cleared my throat. But right before he noticed me; a car swerved, lost control, bumped into the curb, flipped and then, CRASH!
