Chapter Twenty - bonus chapter

It felt hard to move. It felt hard to want to. Jenna sat on her bed, not able to do much else. Were things always this hard? She didn't think they were, but they certainly hadn't ever been easy.

The problem was that there were many problems weighing her down. It was funny, and kind of terrible, how one thing could happen, and it can change your life forever. She regretted a lot and she felt the pain weigh deep in her soul. It was almost physical, the sadness leaked into the bones in her chest and arms. Like a dull ache reminding her of all the things that had gone wrong.

She was sure she used to be nicer, too. She used to smile brighter and feel more love. She used to love freely and boundlessly. The problem with that, though, is that there are nasty people in the world who see the beauty in free love, and they take it. They take all the love you have to give, and they ruin it. Jenna was mad about the things that had happened to her. She was mad about the people in her life that had used her. She wasn't a stranger to emotional abuse, but that wasn't to say it was something she was accustomed to.

Her life wasn't all bad, she reminded herself.It just wasn't good either. Finding the beauty in things becomes exhausting when everything turns out to be ugly and terrible. It was hard to find a reason to continue. Nothing was satisfying to her, nothing mattered anymore. Everything she worked for, everything she created, everything she ever loved turned to shit in one way or another.

And she hated it. She hated herself. She was tired, tired, so tired. The room was dusty, her laundry was dirty, and dirty dishes were strewn around the room in the untidiest fashion. She felt like she was nothing better than the filth she was born in. Why should she continue? How could she continue? She didn't want to. She wasn't going to.

She wanted to erase everything bad that happened to her. If she wasn't there to remember, and no one else knew or cared, then it didn't really happen, right? She looked in the mirror. She hated what she saw. Some tired girl was staring back at her.

She was on the roof of her apartment complex. It was too cold, really. Too cold for anything. The stars were dimmed by the city lights, but she could still see a few, shimmering, watching. She began crying. It was an ugly cry full of sniffles and blotchy skin. If she jumped or if she... fell, she'd land right by the dumpsters. It was kind of funny, really. She stared at the ground, she imagined her laying there.

She imagined peace. The idea of absence from the cruel world she lived in. Would it be a crime to leave? Who cares, really. The minute you realize that all things in life are arbitrary, it gets very difficult to want to continue. It was an absurd existence. Somehow, human beings evolved into creatures that exist for no reason, suffer for no reason, love for no reason, and yet, here we all. Just going through the motions. She felt alone in this mess. She looked at the dumpster. She jumped.

There were no flutes of heaven nor drums of hell, just the same bitter silence that always greeted her in times like these. She rested.

.x x x.

She opened her eyes to a room she wasn't familiar with. Where was she? The last thing she remembered, she had just gotten fired at work and she was driving home. She felt sad about that. But where was she now? There were two others, a man and a woman, who looked to be about her age.

"Sorry, I know this may seem absurd, but can either of you tell me where I am?" the girl spoke first.

"I was going to ask you if you knew," the scruffy man replied. Without a good answer, the girl turned to Jenna.

"And why would I know?" Jenna scoffed internally before replying, "I don't know anything either. Let's try and figure out together. My name is Jenna." She didn't mean to snap, she just sort of did. Something in Jenna's stomach felt sick as if something was really wrong with this picture. Was getting fired from work really the last thing she could remember? She searched her brain rigorously before giving up. She could picture... stars for some reason, but only a few. There's no telling where that memory came from, though. For now, she just needed to know what was going on.

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