quick snips - rain and reality
“You ready to talk about it?”
Jesse nodded but still didn’t speak for a good ten miles. He hadn’t been sleeping enough, the rain on the road was shimmering and making everything even harder to see. His head was aching again, like someone had driven a railroad tie through his temples.
Acknowledging it still felt wrong.
Like if he could just forget about it, maybe it’d stop being real.
“Someone took Sarah- and half a dozen other kids at least- on Halloween. All kids out alone, all from supposedly safe neighborhoods, nobody saw them, nobody heard them.” He paused, seeing a place to pull off, driving didn’t seem like a good idea with this. “The police were useless, said they were looking into it, but whoever did this knew what they were doing. They could all-” breathe, his knuckles had gone white against the steering wheel “-Sarah could be dead by the time they even get a lead...”
“Fucking perfect, isn’t it? Have a night parading the two of us around and my parents are about to lose both their kids in the same damn moment. I’d stay and help but they drive me up the wall, I can’t be around that and not go crazy...” The words left him bitter and reminded of the fact that he wasn’t even sure of his plan anymore... Not for his parents sake, but other things had come up, and with Sarah gone-
His train of thought came to an abrupt halt when he caught the look on Daniel’s face. For a second it had looked like confusion, but-
“They don’t have to,” Daniel said softly, almost as though he didn’t quite believe it “There’s another option.”
In that moment Jesse was left to wonder if Daniel felt about killing him, how Jesse felt about dying. As the words sunk in, he started to process what they meant- what it meant doing.
“Can you- is that even possible?” His voice is barely audible, and he’s shifted his whole body to look at Daniel “Would you even want-” He managed to stop himself from finishing that question. Would you even want me around forever?
He wasn’t sure he wanted an answer to that one.
Daniel wasn’t looking at him, his gaze was going right out the opposite window and when he spoke again it was with that same air of disbelief. “I know how, I remember Elice doing it... Never even crossed my mind before, hard to remember we don’t all come from-...” His words trailed off into silence “I could do it, you could find your sister, get her back home safe and then-” he stopped again
“Well, after that isn’t up to me, is it? You wouldn’t be dying anymore.”
“Would you help me find Sarah?” Jesse asked, it still wasn’t quite the question he wanted, but close enough.
“You really want this?” Daniel was looking at him now, leaning more towards the center console, still frowning a little like he was unsure. “Because it’s not-”
“Yes.” There’s no more hesitation left, more than anything it’d become a matter of dying quickly or withering away and the former seemed the better option. This? This was a new beginning, this was reset, this was taking back what he’d lost and beyond it.
“This isn’t something you can take back-”
“Neither is dying, and I was ready enough to do that the night we met.”
