• Published 22nd Aug 2017
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It's The End Of The World As We Know It - Samey90



It's the final year in school for Indigo and her friends. There are still a lot of challenges to face and she's prepared for all of them... except maybe finding love.

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25. Ghosts of the Past

“I must admit…” Muffins chuckled. “That wasn’t my best idea…”

Her clothes were stained with some dark red liquid which, upon closer inspection, turned out to be blackcurrant wine. Bulk and Sandalwood were glaring at her askew; Sandalwood was sitting on the couch, looking at a large bruise on his arm. Next to him, Juniper was covering her face in a bloodied tissue; she still wore a dirty, old-fashioned dress.

“Well, that did get out of hand,” Bulk said eventually.

“Out of hand?” Sandalwood muttered. “You were running away so fast you pushed me down the stairs, you beefcake. And you…” He turned to Indigo, who was standing next to Muffins, with a matching sheepish grin on her face.

“What?” Indigo asked.

“When normal people see a ghost who just murdered someone, they run,” Sandalwood said.

“So? I ran.” Indigo shrugged.

“Run away, not charge at the ghost to headbutt them while yelling like a baboon!” Sandalwood exclaimed. “Besides, headbutts don’t work on ghosts.”

“This one worked.” Indigo pointed at Juniper, whose nose kept bleeding profusely. “Also, she should be happy I have a broken finger or else we’d be looking for her teeth in the attic now.”

Juniper looked at the tissue and winced. “But admit that I was pretty convincing as a ghost,” she muttered.

“Well, running around in my late grandma’s dress aside,” Sandalwood said. “I didn’t exactly have time to watch before Bulk rammed me. Whose idea was that, anyway?”

“Mine, after I accidentally broke that old flask,” Muffins replied. “But pretending to be a ghost was her idea.”

Sandalwood shook his head, but before he could comment on that, Sugarcoat walked out of the kitchen.

“If you’re done busting ghosts, the supper is ready,” she said, looking at their injuries with a condescending smirk.

As it was to be expected, the atmosphere at the table was rather tense. Sunset’s stare kept wandering from quiet Juniper, to Bulk and Sandalwood who were ostensibly avoiding looking at each other. Next to her, Flash was just munching on his shepherd’s pie. Only Muffins didn’t seem to care, smiling at Sugarcoat, who met her exuberance with a cold, Sphinx-like stare.

“It’s pretty tasty, you know?” Sunset jammed a fork into her pie. Everybody glared at her.

“You’re trying to get us to talk to each other, aren’t you?” Sugarcoat asked.

“It’s better than what’s going on now,” Sunset replied, staring at Indigo.

“So…” Indigo turned to Juniper. “I’m sorry for hitting you…”

“It’s fine,” Juniper said. “That was a dumb idea.”

“Hey!” Muffins exclaimed.

“Chill out, Muffins,” Flash muttered. “Same goes for you two.”

Bulk sighed. “I’m sorry, Sandalwood.”

“Same.” Sandalwood rolled his eyes. “So, can we go back to the usual themes, such as movies, memes, dead baby jokes, and how hot my cousin is?”

“Shut up, Sandalwood.” Juniper blushed.

“Exactly,” Sugarcoat said. “The fact that Flash keeps following Sunset with his gaze despite being with Muffins doesn’t mean that you can do the same.”

“Now you started shit…” Indigo’s voice quickly drowned in the sound of chairs being moved back, coupled with at least one “what?”. She grabbed the fork and started to eat faster, just in case someone flipped the table.

Sugarcoat only smiled and leaned back in her seat.


Sunny Flare rolled out of her bed and landed on the floor. She opened her eyes and looked at one of the three screens of her wrist devices she could see. It was Saturday, three o’clock. After a while, Sunny determined that it was three PM.

A look in the mirror revealed that she was still wearing her school uniform. Dirty and torn, it couldn’t be saved; she threw it out right after switching for her pajamas.

She tried to recall what exactly happened. Her parents were getting divorced, though she wasn’t sure of any details. She remembered running away from the court during one of the breaks and spent some time wondering where she could get alcohol, while simultaneously reminding herself that she was supposed to stop drinking it. Judging from her state, she’d lost that fight.

After a while, when Sunny pulled herself back into the bed, she remembered that, in fact, she didn’t drink after all. This didn’t make her any happier, though. She recalled that, cold and angry, she finally got back home and locked herself in her inspiration room. From the bottom of her closet, she took a bottle with several pills. The girl who’d given them to her in the club instructed her to take five to have a trip of her life.

Sunny checked out the bottle and found out that she only took two, resulting in sleeping for twenty hours and dreams she wished she hadn’t remembered. Some of them probably weren’t dreams; she recalled waking up in the middle of the night, gasping for air while her diaphragm didn’t seem to work properly.

Still trembling in the afterglow, made worse by dehydration and hunger, she started to wonder what’d happen if she took five pills. Perhaps the trip of her life wouldn’t be the best, but most definitely the last.

Her legs didn’t exactly want to listen to her, but she forced herself out of the bed anyway. She began to wonder why, after sleeping for twenty hours in the locked room, paramedics hadn’t busted through her door yet. Sunny’s mother had some problems, but she’d notice her disappearance, sooner or later.

The creak of the opened door nearly caused Sunny’s head to explode. Hissing in pain, she sneaked past the corridor and went downstairs, barely making her way to the kitchen. She poured herself a glass of water and dropped on the chair, breathing laboriously.

One of the lights on her wrist device kept blinking. Sunny furrowed her eyebrows, nearly hearing the dry skin on her forehead breaking. She tapped the screen and saw that she had gotten two messages. The first one, from Friday evening was from Indigo.

sugarcoat and sandalwood are havin an argument lol flash and muffins too pass me popcorn

Sunny groaned, trying to break through layers of Indigo’s unexplained prejudice against commas and capital letters. She decided that details could wait until she was in a better shape and opened the second message, sent on Saturday, few minutes after ten.

Hello. Can we talk somewhere in private? It’s urgent.
~Suri.

“Blow me, cunt sponge,” Sunny whispered. “Talk? Why talk when you have phones and social media?”

Even with autocorrect, it took her a while to type a slightly more diplomatic version of this uttering and send it to Suri. She didn’t have to wait long for the reply.

I don’t trust electronics. Too many people watching.
~Suri.

Sunny rolled her eyes and, without any attempts at diplomacy this time, she advised Suri to go and try to improve her sex life by using waffles. Just like she hoped, Suri didn’t reply to that. Proud of herself, Sunny finished her glass of water and got up to look for her mother.

It didn’t take her long to find her. As it turned out, Lens Flare was spending her time in her bedroom, lying in the bed with a bottle of wine. Not the first one, as Sunny noted.

“Are you drinking since yesterday?” she asked.

“No…” Sunny’s mother hiccuped, trying to focus her gaze on her daughter. “I slept for a while.”

“Dammit, mom,” Sunny muttered. “You need to get out of here.”

“Why?” Sunny’s mother asked. “He left and wants to take you away…”

“Fat chance,” Sunny replied. “I’m an adult.”

“He says I have a bad influence on you.” Sunny’s mother shuddered. “And that I should go to the rehab.”

“You’re not helping your case right now,” Sunny deadpanned.

Sunny’s mother raised on her bed, aiming a half-empty wine bottle at Sunny. “Are… Are you agreeing with him?”

“He’s a wanker whom I only see, like, once a year,” Sunny muttered. “But I realised I could’ve died tonight and you’d never notice. That was an eye-opening experience…”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Sunny’s mother asked.

Sunny sighed, turning away and closing the bedroom door. “I wish I knew…”


Sweeten Sour swung the baton around her body. She closed her eyes, focusing on the marching band song coming from her phone, connected to a speaker. She turned around, finishing the routine and looked at Sour Sweet, who was lying on her bed, reading something.

“How was it?” Sweeten Sour asked.

“Do I look like I care?” Sour Sweet shrugged. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I don’t know anything about majorettes, marching bands, and all that stuff. So I can’t exactly tell whether it was good or bad.”

Sweeten Sour sighed. “I don’t know anything about archery, but I know you’re good.”

“That’s because in archery you immediately know who has better aim,” Sour Sweet muttered. “The one that hits the middle more often.”

Sweeten Sour furrowed her eyebrows, but before she could reply, she heard a doorbell ringing. She swung in place, facing the door of their room. “I’ll be right back,” she said.

She walked to the door and opened it. Behind it stood Sunny Flare. She was wearing a rather plain jacket and tracksuit trousers; she didn’t have any make-up and her hair, hidden under a really bizarre Scottish cap could use some combing. She also carried a large backpack.

“Sour?” she asked. “What did you do with your hair?”

“That’d be my sister,” Sweeten Sour muttered. “Sour! It’s your friend!”

“What?” Sour Sweet bursted out of their room, but stopped when she saw Sunny. “You. What are you doing here?”

“Same thing you did after Christmas,” Sunny replied. “I need to crash somewhere for a while and since you always end up in my house, I thought–”

Sour Sweet shook her head. “I have four siblings. This flat is big, but not that big. I’m almost nineteen and I have to share the room with my sister.” She pointed at Sweeten Sour, who smiled at Sunny. “Do you know what that means?”

“Umm…” Sunny shrugged. “Watching porn gets really awkward?”

“Yes… No!” Sour Sweet exclaimed. “We have no spare beds, you can’t find a place to sit in peace with no one bothering you, and my sister wails all nights because she has nightmares!”

“Not me,” Sweeten Sour muttered when Sunny looked at her. “Sweet Dreams. Sour Grapes has no such problems.”

“Then what should I do?” Sunny asked. “I’m not going back home.”

“So, you consider it a statement?” Sweeten Sour smiled at Sunny. “Sour does that too.”

Sunny sighed. “Well, my second idea was finding some tall bridge–”

“There are no bridges in this town,” Sweeten Sour informed. “Unless you count the river as a part of the town, but it’s more, like, the river surrounds it.”

“Sweeten, if you say one more word, I’m gonna break your hand.” Sour Sweet walked to her sister and patted her arm before turning to Sunny. “Two floors down there lives a girl you may know. Lemon Zest. Rings a bell?”

“Well–” Sunny raised her hand, but at the same time Sour Sweet closed the door. Sunny considered knocking again, but a muffled hiss of pain she heard from the other side convinced her that it wouldn’t be a good idea. She sighed and walked downstairs slowly.

“Carpet-munching lunatic,” she muttered under her breath. “Come to me one more time, you mongoloid fucktard, I’ll lend you a room… in the loony bin, complete with a free straitjacket…”

Cursing and tripping on the stairs, she reached the door of Lemon Zest’s flat and knocked much harder than she intended. After a while of waiting, when she was about to leave and try to reach Sugarcoat’s house, the door opened.

“Hello,” Lemon’s father said, looking at Sunny’s backpack. “Going for a trip at this time?”

“Nah, I need to talk with Lemon,” Sunny replied.

“She has a friend over.” Lemon’s father smirked. “Are you planning some surprise sleepover or what?”

“Maybe,” Sunny muttered and walked into the flat, heading to Lemon’s room. She began to wonder who could be visiting Lemon on that cold Saturday afternoon. It’d be nice to hear advice from someone reasonable like Sugarcoat, although Sunny wouldn’t mind even if it was Indigo. Or…

“Sweet Leaf.” Sunny entered Lemon’s room and faced the girl sitting on the floor next to Lemon’s bed. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“We were just chilling out after spending the morning in the hospice,” Lemon Zest replied. She was lying on her bed, her head hanging from it in such a way that she was seeing Sunny upside down. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, of course,” Sunny muttered. “If you don’t count the fact that my parents are divorcing, my mother is currently drunk out of her mind, I nearly overdosed on some shit, I don’t want to stay at home with my mother because I feel like I’m gonna try it again, and…” She sighed and collapsed on the floor, sobbing.

“Oh.” Sweet Leaf walked to Sunny and tried to hug her, only to be pushed away.

“That’s all you have to say?!” Sunny exclaimed. “My life collapsed and all you say is ‘oh’? You say it so often you probably don’t even mean it, you–”

“Sunny…” Lemon Zest grabbed Sunny’s hand. “Look at me, Sunny…”

Sunny lowered her head, crying. Lemon hugged her, looking at Sweet Leaf who froze in place, staring at them. After a brief exchange of stares she backed off slightly, waiting for Sunny to calm down.

Lemon helped Sunny up and walked with her to the bed, sitting there with her and letting her weep in her arm. Meanwhile, Sweet Leaf started to circle around the room, lost in her thoughts.

Suddenly, she stopped. “We need to stage an intervention,” she said. “Like, I know how to do that and we can drive to your mother right now–”

“Go fuck yourself,” Sunny muttered.

“Sweet Leaf is right,” Lemon said. “You can’t just run away while she’s drinking there…”

“Said someone who ended up sitting in a closet after her mother’s death…” Sunny replied.

“That’s not important at the moment.” Sweet Leaf stood over Sunny. “Come on, we’re going. You’re her daughter, you’ll do the talking.”

Sunny crossed her arms. “I’m not going!”


The small, electric car rolled down the street. Sunny sat in the backseat, staring at the window but barely paying attention to what was behind it. She just hoped something would happen that’d prevent them from getting to her house. The car rolling under a truck would be perfect – it was so small that the crash would kill them all immediately, without the horrible possibility of any of them ending up in a coma.

“I don’t even know what to say,” Sunny muttered. “I mean, if she didn’t even care that I could’ve died, what will make her care?”

“She’s drunk and going through a difficult time, from what you’re saying,” Sweet Leaf replied. “Just tell her what you feel when you see her drunk.”

“When I see her drunk, I usually drink with her, smartass,” Sunny said. “This time I didn’t and now I sit in the car with you two.”

“Maybe we should call your father?” Lemon asked.

“That’d only make things worse.” Sunny sighed. “Mom would be in a rehab and you’d never see me again.”

“Okay…” Sweet Leaf muttered. “Anyone else?”

“Everybody lives on the other side of the country,” Sunny replied.

“Except of Cinch,” Lemon said. “Didn’t you say she’s your maternal grandma’s second cousin or something?”

“Hmm, any relative would be fine,” Sweet Leaf muttered.

She couldn’t have switched tyres to winter ones, Sunny thought. If she braked hard, we could skid to a halt standing across the other lane, maybe even lying on the roof. An 18-wheeler would t-bone us and we’d finish this conversation on the tables in that place where they make corpses look nice before the funeral.

“You seriously want Cinch to stage an intervention with us?” Sunny asked. “Now that’d be something worth seeing.”

“You think so?” Sweet Leaf asked.

“No. That’s insane.” Sunny sighed. “Where have you been during the Friendship Games?”

“Well, I’m not really into competition,” Sweet Leaf replied. “Haven’t been paying attention that much.”

“So you missed that bit when we almost caused the apocalypse because of Cinch?” Sunny asked. “She’s most definitely not the best person to help us.”

Sweet Leaf nodded, driving into a narrow street leading to Sunny’s district. It didn't take long before they stopped in front of Sunny’s house.

“I still don’t know what to say,” Sunny said as they walked across the garden.

“Just be yourself,” Lemon replied.

“Bad idea.” Sunny unlocked the door. “Mom?”

Nobody replied. They walked around the house, but Sunny’s mother was nowhere to be found. Sunny tried to call her, only to find her phone abandoned in the bathroom. She also found her pajamas there; some of the clothes were missing, as well as her shoes.

“Maybe she’s looking for you,” Lemon said when they met back in the living room.

“In her state?” Sunny shook her head. “I may as well start looking on tabloids’ websites.”

“You’d better call your dad,” Sweet Leaf said. “He should know.”

After a brief moment of consideration, Sunny sighed. “Okay.” She tapped the screen of her wrist device. “Dad?” she muttered. “Mom’s gone… Normally, she was drinking all day, I left home and when I got back, she wasn’t there. Yeah, I’m home now… No, with Lemon. I tried to stage an intervention. Okay.”

“What’s up?” Lemon asked.

“He’ll be here soon,” Sunny replied. “Get outside and see if he’s coming.”

“Okay.” Lemon stood up from the couch and left the living room.

“You stay,” Sunny whispered when Sweet Leaf got up.

Sweet Leaf sat back down. “You want to tell me something?”

For a while, Sunny considered the possibilities. “What’s between you and Lemon?” she asked, carefully weighing each word.

Sweet Leaf raised her eyebrows. “We’re friends. That’s it. Why are you asking?”

“Watch out. Lemon falls in love faster than I’m fucking up my life.” Sunny sat next to Sweet Leaf and yanked her hair. “Especially with girls who look like her mother.”

“Oh.” Sweet Leaf shuddered. “Do you think–”

“What I think isn’t important,” Sunny said. “How about Sour Sweet?”

“She’s kinda cute,” Sweet Leaf blurted out, blushing. “I mean…”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” Sunny rolled her eyes and looked at the door. “Did you tell Lemon about Sour?”

Sweet Leaf scratched her head. “No, I don’t think so. Should I? If she really fell in love with me, I’d better not give her high hopes. But then...”

Sunny froze. “No, you most definitely shouldn’t ever mention Sour Sweet in Lemon’s presence.”

“Why?”

Because with Sour and Lemon shit will sooner or later hit the fan, and I’ll be in the middle of it, Sunny thought. “Did Lemon ever mention her weird ex-girlfriend?”

“She may have,” Sweet Leaf muttered. “How do you–”

“Well, that’d be Sour,” Sunny said. “Don’t look at me like that. You really wouldn’t like angry Sour.”

“Why are you telling me that?” Sweet Leaf asked. “I talked to Sour a few times and she seems fine.”

“And I know her since kindergarten. You’re right. She seems fine.” Sunny sighed. “The fact is, Sour and Lemon were together, and you know what Lemon thinks about Sour. Make of that what you will.”

“I’ll talk with them both,” Sweet Leaf said.

“You’ll get us both killed…” Sunny whispered.

“Excuse me?”

Before Sunny could repeat her remark louder, the door opened and Lemon Zest walked in, followed by Sunny’s father, who seemed unusually quiet. “I called the police and the hospital. They’re looking for her,” he said. “I’m going to search for her too.”

Sunny nodded, shuddering. “I’ll go with you.”

“Me too.” Lemon looked at Sweet Leaf, who seemed lost in her thoughts. “How about you?”

Sweet Leaf shrugged. “I have to go,” she replied, throwing a brief glance at Sunny. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

Author's Note:

According to my calculations, Flash and Muffins were together for exactly three weeks, from December 23rd to January 6th. It's kinda long for a relationship that started with her KO'ing him. Don't worry, though, they should be cool.
Meanwhile, Sunny Flare also lasted about three weeks without getting wasted in any way. This is rather less cool.

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