Writers' Games - Free Falling {CLOSED}

Noelle Jenkins' POV (Water)

Death is a strange thing.
It isn't straight or twisting. It isn't happy or sad. It isn't woeful or joyful.
It just is.
I myself have never been dead, but I might as well have been. My life has been confusing and self-hating and full of doubt. But mostly it's just been numb. My whole life I've been completely and utterly numb. Unable to feel, unable to speak, unable to do anything except sit there like a ragdoll, and let my parents control my every move.

I remember when I was little, before my parents locked me up, and every Saturday I would walk down the hill near our home, holding hands with each of my parents, and we would go to see the local puppet show. Every week at 1pm, like clockwork. The puppets were never very good, we couldn't afford good quality ones, but it would always keep the kids quiet whilst the older children and the adults went to work in the fields. My father would go off with the other workers, whilst my mother would stay with me and watch the show.

I remember sitting on her lap whilst she patted down my wild blonde hair, and watching the puppets as they spoke their silly words. They only had about 3 different stories, so it rotated every week. I practically knew every story by heart. The only puppets they had were a cow, a cat and a rabbit. The rabbit was missing an ear, the cat only had one eye, and half of the cow's snout was ripped off, but I didn't care at the time. To me, the puppets were still lovable despite their physical flaws, and I genuinely thought of them as my close friends whom I loved. One day, when watching the puppets interact with each other in silly ways, I turned to my mother and asked,
"Mummy, why they always do the same things all the time?"
And then my mother smiled, and said, "Because the puppeteers are controlling the puppets. The puppets have to do what the puppeteers want them to."
"What if the puppets don't want to do what the ...puppet-eeers... want them to?"
"They have to. There's no other choice for them."
And I never spoke about the puppets again. A week after that, I was locked in the attic. That was the last puppet show I ever saw. Now, 9 years later, I finally realized something.

I was nothing more than a puppet. I was the puppet, and my parents were the puppeteers, the ones holding the strings and forcing me to conform to their every whim.
And I was sick of it.

I stood on the very precipice of death, my toes curled over the edge of the island. With a woeful sigh I stared out at the black abyss beneath me. My hands were holding onto two trees on either side of me, and I leaned forward and over the endless chasm, my eyes scanning the arena, but constantly flitting back down to the drop beneath me. It was so tempting to jump. I wasn't even sure if I wanted this anymore. What would I achieve if I was victor? I would go back to my crazy abusive parents. I would go back to my room in the attic. Again.
Crack.
A large crack suddenly appeared in the dirt below my feet, the sound echoing eerily around the trees. I stumbled as another crack appeared, larger this time. It looked like a gash had been torn into the earth. The ground beneath my feet began to shake horrendously, and I grabbed onto a nearby tree for support, a shriek of fright escaping my lips. Something was wrong. Something was about to happen.
Of course. It was the finale.

Suddenly, the earth beneath my feet stopped trembling. The wind stopped whipping the hair about my face. The whole arena seemed to die down, becoming nothing more than a silent, motionless, single tone. Nothing and everything at the same time. The birds stopped chirping, the leaves stopped rustling, and the animals stopped scurrying. I felt like I was underwater. I saw the leaves rustling, I saw the animals scurrying around, but I didn't hear a single thing. I felt like I was going deaf. Or insane. For a few moments, there was nothing but dead silence.

Then, all of a sudden, the noise returned in an explosion of sound. I felt all my sensations rushing back, and my ears felt like erupting from the sudden noise. If all panic and fear could be contained in a single noise, it would be the noise that suddenly boomed throughout the arena at that moment. I heard trees snapping and crashing behind me. The wind picked up once more, roaring and howling around the arena. I spun around, my eyes wide, and saw something I had been dreading ever since I had set foot in the arena.
The islands were falling.