Prologue:
This is the End...
*****Kyle*****
A small smile crossed Kyle’s face as the wind whipped past him, blowing away his troubled thoughts. He felt weightless, almost like he was flying. He opened his eyes and took in his favorite sight: the night sky.
“I’d forgotten what peace feels like,” Kyle thought, trying to burn the image into his mind. He pulled his eyes away from the sight he so loved and forced them to the object he was hurtling toward. Laid out before him was the gray, intertwining strips of asphalt that made up the city below his apartment. His contentedness was shattered as he witnessed the device of his eminent demise. Memories flooded his mind despite his best efforts to suppress them.
Kyle sat on the bed and held his mother as she cried, gently rocking her back and forth. He tried to hold back his tears but failed when he felt warm drops hit his arms. Everything crumbled around him as the sorrow and guilt crushed him under its weight. “How cou-could this happe-en, how could s-she…” she stuttered out before she was cut off by a fresh wave of sobs. “How can s-she be dead? She was only ten! H-how can she be dead?”
Kyle didn’t know how to answer that so he just held her tighter. He looked over at his brother. He was trying to hold it together, but the sorrow proved to be too much as tears streamed down his face. It tore him up inside. There was nothing he could do, short of bringing her back to life, to stop the pain. Pain that he caused, yet no one blamed him and it just hurt more.
He forced his eyes closed trying to push the past from his mind but to no avail. The memories continued to flood past his mind’s eye.
Kyle sat in the waiting room of the hospital his mom worked at. He got here as fast as he could when he received the phone call, but he had been sitting here for the last hour with no news. He scrutinized the tile floor, trying to distract himself from the horrible truth that was lying somewhere behind those doors. Movement drew his eyes as the doctor walked through the doors and headed straight toward him. Fear settled over his heart like steel bands in a vice. It only tightened when he saw the doctor's face.
“I’m sorry. There was nothing we could do,” the doctor said, sorrow filling his voice.
Kyle couldn't accept the doctor’s words. He had to be lying. There was no way that he could be telling the truth.
“No, that can’t be right they… I just spoke… There has to be something you can do!” The words flooded from his lips. His mind was in complete turmoil. He just couldn’t understand how they could be dead. He was talking and laughing with them just a few hours ago. How could this happen! First his sister, now his mom and brother dead in just a few short years. There was just no way. “NO, NO! You have to go back in there! You missed something! You had to have missed... They can’t be…” The words caught in his throat as he fell to his knees.
He wept. The tears were ripped from his eyes just like everything else dear to him. The pain was overwhelming. Kyle quietly thanked the one who pushed him from the window for ending his suffering. No! No, he wouldn’t allow himself to think like that! Terice wouldn’t want that and would have killed him again if she knew he was thinking that way. Though this was the end, he would not let himself succumb to his pain. If there was an afterlife, he would look her in the eyes and say that he kept his promise!
“Ashly, it seems I am going to see you sooner than either of us had hoped,” Kyle whispered.