Euphoria

And Salt the Earth Behind You. III

I don't remember how I had made it to the dance floor after the bathroom. But I was happy and as I twirled into some guys hands I felt like the whole world was with me. I don't think I had ever been so happy in my life. As the song ended I was spun once more and I felt the world become dizzy around me and turn into a blur, and I stumbled back suddenly not aware of where I was. A pair of hands caught me and everything around me seemed blurry except one person. Cole Anderson who looked at me with saddened eyes. 

"Jade what did you take?" Cole whispers and I know what I wanted to say to him but instead I just smiled 

"Dance with me Cole" I whisper and he tilts his head making me smile more as I lifted his hands on my waist as I started to dance and he followed but I could tell he was fighting with himself about something. Then it hit me all at once. This was the man that had helped destroy someones life and blackmailed my friend. The boy that I thought I had fallen in love with. Not that I knew what love was but if I pictured it hard enough I believed that Cole was the closest thing that I had ever been to it. And that made me sad and I felt my face drop. Cole noticed and I watched as he sighed 

"Jade" he whispers before he pulls me into a hug as the sadness overwhelmed me.

"I hate you Cole" I whisper and he placed his head on top of my hair 

"I know" he whispers 

"Why did you do it?" I whisper and I could feel him let out a breath 

"I don't know. It's just what I've always done. I've protected my siblings and Nate my whole life no matter what they did...and they did a lot" he whispers and I shook my head into his chest. They would always come first to Cole. "But there's something you don't understand Jade and I knew it from the moment I saw you in Fez's fucking shop and I knew in that second that I wanted to put you first" he whispers and a confused laugh slips past my lips 

"You were a dick the first time I saw you" I whisper and I could feel him move me a little closer to himself 

"I was scared of you Jade, I don't think I had ever been so swamped with feelings like that and it terrified the shit out of me. I grew up being told that love was weakness but as soon as you walked in that day, all I could think about was you and I realised it was making me weak" he whispers and I move slightly away from him so that I could look up at him 

"You love me?" I whisper and he nods "How do you know?" I ask and I could hear the insecurity in my own voice. 

"It was that night that Nate had told me about ShyGuy118 about Jules. But after that I couldn't stop driving. I drove for nearly 5 hours before I realised that the sun had come up and that I was in front of your house" he whispers before he kisses my head slightly "I had never felt so shit before and in that moment I realised the one person I needed to make me feel better was you" 

"Cole?" I whisper and he looks down at me too 

"Jade" he whispers 

"I think I love you too" I state and I watch as his eyes drop down a second before he smiles slightly 

"You can tell me that when you're sober" he whispers and I nod before we drift off into a slow dance.

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Almost an hour later and I had decided I wanted to go home. Cole was driving as we sat in silence in his truck. I knew where he was going it was the opposite direction to my house. He didn't say a word as he carried me towards his house and there was nothing but silence as I climbed into his bed. Cole gave me a kiss on the cheek before he walked into the bathroom and my body froze as I remembered the last events that had happened the last time Cole had gone to the bathroom while I was in his bed. I had fallen asleep almost immediately and I remember feeling arms wrapping around me and the feeling of calmness as I fell asleep that nigh. But hell. Even I was smart enough to know that there was always a calm before the storm.  

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The next morning I had awaken around 4am and Cole was still asleep beside me. I felt the anxiousness of my situation. I should hate Cole but I remember all the sweet things he had said to me last night about how he loved me. I didn't have a clear head. Even now I felt like I needed space just to go through everything that's happened. That's what sent me stumbling out of his room as quietly as I could before I rushed down the stairs and out the front door. None of the Andersons were up but then again, I could blame them. No one should be up this hour. When I finally reached my house I took a deep breath I entered the house and almost instantly I could tell something was wrong. It wasn't from the weird darkness in the house because that was honestly quite normal but it was the smell that had really made me freeze and that's when I noticed something laying on the floor. Not something but someone. Now see I knew a lot about dead bodies. I'd like to consider it one of my expertise. The main changes that occur in a dead body are stiffening, lividity, cooling, skin color, and decomposition Everyone has heard of the stiffness of a dead body, but a lot of the media gets the timing wrong. It's often used by experts in determining time of death. When a person dies, their circulatory system stops pumping blood around the body. Carbon dioxide builds up in muscle tissue and lactic acid is created which coagulates. But it isn't instantaneous. It doesn't start for at least two hours after death and comes on slowly, visible in the smaller muscles first, until the whole body is stiff. Contrary to popular belief, the lactic acid eventually dissolves and the body goes limp again. It typically lasts for 24-72 hours. Within a half-hour of death, gravity takes effect on the stagnant blood. This process is called lividity. After six to twelve hours, the blood will pool and settle in whatever position they died in. Areas with less blood will appear white while pooling areas look crimson and purple, creating a blotchy pattern. Even a corpse with most of its blood drained will still show some traces of lividity. Once the heart stops beating, the human body begins to cool almost immediately in a process known as cooling. But it doesn't happen fast. As a general rule, the human body will drop a few degrees in the first hour and cool at roughly one degree Celcius per hour after death. The body doesn't begin its major breakdown, known as decomposition until a few days after death and that's a lesson on dead bodies with Jade Ashbury. But my mind was pounding as I moved closer to the person in front of me. 

"Mom?" I whisper and I could hear how unsure I sounded in my own voice. Now trust me this wasn't the first time I had thought my mom was dead. She spent a lot of the time with her eyes shut rather than them open. She doesn't respond until suddenly I'm kneeling down beside her and that's when I noticed her eyes were wide open and that their was dried vomit covering her face. "Mom?" I breathe out again but I already knew she wasn't going to respond. She had finally killed herself. That much was clear from the vomit. She must have taken something or mixed something and fucking dead beat Debbie had choked on her own vomit. It's funny I hated Mom. She was the reason I was so fucked up but in that moment I just wanted her to laugh, to do her drunkin giggle, to say that this was all a big joke and that I was a fucking idiot for caring. No such luck. The thing lying before me was a Corpse. A corpse that was missing that soul-spark that made it a person, yet once it had been. She was gone, and I kept having to remind myself that this was not her but a corpse, the vehicle she drove around all her life, her material home upon this plane of existence no matter how much she had abused it. I touch her skin, so cold. Whilst I hated her for most of my life I had learnt at a young age to be thankful for the time we had, when a one you loved passes on you grieve no matte how horrible they were to you. No matter what they did in life. There is a time of mourning, the ancients were right about that. Healing from loss takes more time than broken bones and so i did the only thing I could think of. I picked up my phone out of my pocket before dialling a number and pressing it against my ear. 

"Hello?" the voice answered and I looked down at my mothers lifeless body one more time before I sighed 

"Listen, I need your help..."