which version is more buzzy
Option 1 (read below)
Option 2 (read below
chris only (beware of g*re and ptsd under cut)
He heard the gun go off. It woke him early on a day when he was planning to sleep in, already devastated by the news his older brother was never coming home. The first shot jolted him awake, but he didn't move immediately. He wasn't certain what he'd heard, unsure of why his heart was pounding so hard. The second shot was so loud it felt like it should've broken the glass in his windows. He bolted from his bed and sprinted up the stairs and they were gone, his parents only moments ago alive, now rendered corpses. His mother had been shot in the chest, and the blood that had seeped out had caused the bed to become wet, sagging under her weight. Life almost seemed to hold behind her eyes, but then it was gone. 17 years old, still trying to grow his first beard, he stands there in the awful stillness, wanting to look away, but not able to. Only a drip brings him out of the trance. Not a continuous drip like a faucet, a solitary one, with more of a wetness to it. Mechanically, his legs start to move. No desire to see, no desire to breathe, and yet both continue. He walks into the bathroom. The sound of the drip was his father's brains sliding off of the ceiling where the bullet had blasted them. The corpse itself is laid on its side, completely undignified, an arm slung over the toilet where his father had dropped dead against it. His face is entirely destroyed. The image never leaves him. He sees it even when he's awake sometimes.
He hadn't come home that night. Piers was dead, the big brother he'd idolized, written to every week, strove to be like even though he had no idea if he even wanted to join the army, was gone. He was trying, all night, out in the cold while smoking a cigarette, to remember Piers' face. He can do it, but it's not enough. The conversation they'd last had was over a year ago. He can't get the words right, and the face keeps blurring. And these memories, that he didn't cherish enough while they were here, are slipping from him like water in his hands. He sleeps in a hotel that night. He doesn't want to go home. He knows mom and dad will understand. I'm safe, he texts his mother after one too many concerned messages, I don't want to talk right now. "I don't want to talk right now." the last thing his mother ever sees from him. When he drags himself back home, just past 11 am in the morning after a sleepless night of crying, something is wrong when he gets home. His little brother, Nicholas, is sat in one of the guest chairs in the dining room facing the stairs up. He never sits there, and in fact, he's rarely seen sitting, always so energetic. But not now. His face is slack and tear-stained, and his eyes are held wide, as if unable to close them. Silas quickly realizes the house is too still, the air almost stale. Not enough life in it. He doesn't want to go upstairs.
