✽chasing stars✽

✽two✽

--Chapter 2: Lucas--

"Is the thing they see, the thing I have to be...?"

I knew I was dead from the moment I opened my eyes to the dull, blinding whiteness.

It spread out into nowhere, consuming everything in its way. The startling alabaster-coloured mist hung in the air, hurtling at me with all the force it could muster, wrapping around my wrists and neck and tightening, until it choked and suffocated me. It strangled me until I couldn't breathe and couldn't plead for help- until I was helpless in its firm and ruthless grasp. The fog rushed at me and enveloped me, its touch a deadly hypnotizing cold, as if gleaming steel blades had been frosted with the coldest ice of hell and pressed against my skin.

Even if I wasn't dead yet, this blankness, this hoariness surely would kill me. It was revenge- merciless, just revenge for all the times I hurt and harmed on impulse. All the pain I caused coming back to haunt me in the end.

For a moment my mind went completely blank. I couldn't think of what I had done to deserve such an end, or what had happened to me for me to end up here. But then it came rushing back, like a waterfall thundering down into my mind, and memories flashed across my mind one by one.

And yet I wasn't scared, nor afraid of the outcome. Maybe I had already known, had already accepted this when I snuck out of my room that night, when I walked to the countryside and stepped out in front of the blaring lights of the car.

I remembered seeing the flashing, overwhelmingly bright lights consuming my sight, then the screeching sound of friction pulling relentlessly at the tires as the sleek black vehicle came into contact with my body, the crash. I remembered the ear-piercing scream of the driver, the sudden numbness of my body as an unmatched amount of pain coursed through my body and a strange metallic taste filled my mouth. I had coughed, and I had watched the dark crimson glide and slip through my fingertips, joining the flowing river of blood gushing from my midsection, slipping and flowing away like the life draining out of me.

I drained my own life out of me.

I laughed bitterly at that thought. I must be going insane to think that.

But if this was the afterlife, then I was probably in hell, although I didn't expect hell to look so innocent, in its white misty garments and wisps of ivory smoke. It wasn't what I had imagined, with the roaring fires grasping desperately at the open, bleeding cardinal sky, the still lake of fiery lava waiting patiently to consume another 'victim'- although if you had reached hell then you probably weren't much of one- and dark atmosphere that was depicted if you searched the word 'hell' on Google images.

And yet, since this frosty mist was throttling me to death, I thought it was safe to assume that I was indeed in hell and not in some purgatory.

Just as I was thinking these words, the rough ropes of white fog loosened and evaporated, dropping me onto the ground harshly- I was so immersed in my thinking, I hadn't even noticed that I was being suspended in the air all along. The mist cleared, and although I was still in a blank space, it wasn't as bright and cold anymore.

And along with the fog, my mind also cleared and for the first time, horror struck upon me for what I had done.

Images of the people I knew and loved materialized before me, flashing by, and I recognized everyone one by one- my mother, my father, my friends from school, staring at me with frantic worry; Bianca rushing to hug me desperately, but then vanishing in a puff of smoke as I reached to hug her- oh, how I missed my little sister, the young girl with the lovely cerulean eyes as stunning as the ocean and soft blonde hair as warm as sunshine, porcelain skin as pale as fresh falling snow on winter mornings and smile as bright as day, whom I used to treasure and spoil to bits- whom I loved more than anything. Bianca's image turned into Aurora, and for a second I locked eyes with this illusion of my older sister, her kaleidoscopic eyes burning with fire, leaping and twirling with an emotion I couldn't decipher- and then the scene changed and she was gone.