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June 26th, 2021
Katelyn Graves was going to die.
That was a fact that she was intimately familiar with, something she had known from an age that most would still believe themselves to be invincible. She couldn't imagine that her peers thought about their own demise as much as she did. Both she and they were, after all, still quite young. For the vast majority of them, they likely had many decades more life left to live. The naked truth was, though, that be it today, tomorrow, or next century, entropy would get them.
She knew that better than anyone.
Chaos takes everything, big and small. Stars collapse, buildings crumble, and bodies fail. There was no fate more essential to the nature of the universe than that. Her body like all others would fail, and her mind--everything that was essentially her--would be taken with it, returning to oblivion from whence it came. There would be no avoiding the inevitable cessation of her existence, no second life after death. Her mind, as real and special and unassailable as it felt to her, needed her body like a fungus needed soil. The mind was an integral part of and just as fallible as the body; one need only look at those suffering from late stage dementia to understand that essential truth.
These were the thoughts that occupied Katelyn's mind as she stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She simply couldn't help it, standing there, mentally tracing the faded scars that served as permanent reminders of that day all those years ago that had changed her life for the worse forever.
Five years ago on this day, chaos had nearly taken her like it had taken her parents. On two other occasions, she herself had foolishly tried to help chaos along. Yet, she still persisted, because no matter what she did chaos would one day win, just as it won with everyone and everything else that was ever born. Embracing it or not, it didn't make a difference. If she wanted to die, all she had to do was wait.
There was fear to be found there, but she did not fear the end itself. She had nearly died enough times to know that her own death was not scary. She did not fear the cessation of thought and feeling, for that was simply a return to the time before she was born, and she had effortlessly persevered through however many billions of years of that.
No, what scared her about death was what would happen after, and how her life would ultimately impact the world.
There were worlds that she had built in her head, all on her lonesome, over days and days of idle daydreaming in class and at home. Full of colorful people and wonderful vistas, of lurking monsters and the heroes that would ultimately slay them. She didn't know just how many she had built at this point, but she was just now coming to the stark realization that she had shared so few of them with others. She was afraid of their input, afraid that they would judge her for her creations. Or even worse, tear her beloved worlds apart, piece by bitter piece.
Except, if she never shared them, somehow or someway, they would be lost. Thrown into oblivion with her, never allowed to grace someone else's inner world in the same way they graced hers. The very thought terrified her. All the worlds that she had built felt so real to her, and so much bigger than her. She felt like they deserved better than being chained to the mind of one battered, ailing girl. Yet, there simply would never be enough time for her to share them in the way they deserved. She would have to pick and choose which ones she wanted to share, if she ever shared any of them at all.
She wished that was her only concern. If only it could be so simple.
There was also the matter of her legacy. They say that you actually die twice, once when you cease to be, and again when somebody mentions your name for the last time. She didn't care so much about the specifics of when her first death would come, but she wanted to make sure that her second death, the one that really mattered, would be forestalled for as long as possible. How else would her terrible, misery-filled life mean anything? If all she did was exist, be sad, and die, only to be forgotten just as quickly, would her suffering have mattered? Would it have amounted to anything in the end?
Her life had to mean something, it had to. She would make sure that it meant something, that her existence would be important to the world. Enough so that she could finally feel like she wasn't just screaming into the void, desperate for someone, somewhere to notice her, and remember her. She didn't know how she would accomplish that yet, but she was still young, and she still had some time to figure that out.
But, what if she didn't? Chaos could take her at any time. It wasn't like she had climbed into that car on that day five years ago and realized that was the last time she would ever see her mother and father alive. Just like that, they were gone, and she was left trying to pick up the pieces every day since.
She worried that one day she would be the one that others would be cleaning up after. Mourning her loss in the way she still mourned her parents, unable to forgive themselves for not saying the right thing, for not being there when it really mattered. Blaming themselves for what happened, even if they did nothing wrong. She didn't want any of her friends to feel that way about her. That was the cruelest part of her suicide attempts. She hadn't been thinking about how her death would have affected them. The pain had just become too great, and all she could think about was just wanting it to stop.
What kind of mess would she have left behind for them if she had actually succeeded? What kind of mess would she leave behind now if something were to happen?
That thought terrified her the most.
Katelyn looked away from the mirror, and the predatory eyes that stared back at her from within. It was time for her to stop pontificating at her reflection and go. Ash was waiting on her so they could pay their respects, and she knew better than to keep her older sister waiting.
Perhaps by this time next year she could finally make sense of it all.
