Her blood seeping into my clothes.
“Julia is dead. Will she come back to life in the next cycle?”
“There is no next cycle Sunday,” Tripp growls. “She isn’t meant to live. But you are. You just need to remember. Need to see. Use your goddamn eyes!”
They may not physically be visible, but his voice is loud, grating. Metal scratching on paper.Painful. My hands come up on their own to cover my ears.
One hundred lifetimes.
Nothing makes any sense, but even so,I listen to him.
Widening my eyes as much as I possibly can, I stare down at my corpse.
Even in this ethereal state, I find the need to blink, but I refrain. My vision slowly blurs, but I don’t pay it any mind.
“Don’t think about anything. Focus on your connection. Concentrate on what brings you together. On what keeps you apart. Sunday, your soul is marred. You aren’t meant to die but that doesn’t take away from the fact that you have.” Auggie’s whisper wraps around me in a soothing embrace. “You are connected to each of these deaths by a physical thread. Each cycle, you were drawn towards a comfortable path. You were tugged by the whispers of destiny. You couldn’t see it, so you didn’t have a chance. Couldn’t fight it.”
“But why now?” I ask as I continue to stare down at my body, my eyes tracing a line between us. For a moment, I see something shimmer, but just as quickly, it dissipates. “Why are you telling menow?”
“This isn’t the first time, but we are hoping it will finally stick. You made it out of your cycle. You escaped your finite timeline. But you aren’t done yet.”
This time, the shimmer solidifies. It is unmistakable–a red glowing line that pulsates between me and my dead self. The strand is thin between us, but when I focus on it, on where it touches her body, I watch as it expands.
She–my corpse–is wrapped in thousands of glowing crimson strings. They cover her in a bloody shroud. They pulsate, as if they’re alive. Literal tentacles of death slowly digesting her whole.
I screw my eyes shut. “What is that? What the fuck is that?” My voice cracks, and I fall to my knees.
“Fate, Sunday. It’s fucking fate. Or whatever you want to call it. It’s what has been driving you along. Deciding when you will die,” Tripp mutters. “When you made a wish. When my brothers made a wish. When L–” He stops mid sentence, a jolting silence echoes before he continues. “When you die, your memories trap themselves in your prior self. Your wish is fulfilled, buttheirs aren’t. You all created a paradox. An endless loop. An infinite realm of possibilities, but all with the same outcome.”
Unease settles in my gut. My memories whip through my mind in rapid succession. Of the choices I made. The stupid fucking choices. To chase after murderers, to follow Julia, to go to parties, to walk along a river bend alone.
At the time, I chalked it up to my own devastating grief, but what if…what if it was something else entirely?
“Was I even making my own choices? Or was everything predetermined for me?”
“Sunflower, little sis, if everything was predetermined, your loop would have ended at the lightning strike every time, but it didn’t. You would make it further, you would live just a bit longer, give us all hope, but then you would die. Over and over again. And Tripp and I were forced to watch it all. Unseen, unheard, but we did it…for you. For his brothers. We both love you–all of you–but it’s time, Sunday. You have to end this. Once and for all. Make this your final cycle. Fulfill the wishes.Allof them. Make your own destiny, your own decisions. Follow the strands, your intuition, but be careful. Don’t be a fucking idiot. And for the love of God, trust the fucking brothers! You aren’t alone as long as they are with you. They will keep you safe.”
All of them?
I can almost feel his arms tugging me up to my feet, almost see his eyes in front of me, narrowed in a healthy dose of love and annoyance.
“I’m sorry,” I say. Because I still don’t understand; I still feel so lost and confused. But my grief, which once seemed so tangible, is fading. It is still present, but not nearly as visceral as it had been moments ago. Some fundamental part of myself is changing.
“Tripp and I died. That happened, and no matter what you do, it won’t change anything. We have been dead for years now. It is time for you to moveon, time for you to live. Please little sis, I’m begging you. I can’t watch you die again.” Auggie’s voice cracks.
“Sunflower, I love you, I always will, but you need to carry on. Take care of my brothers, they love you. They need you.” Tripp’s words brush against my ear, followed by the phantom sensation of his arms wrapping around me from behind. “Use your eyes, your sixth sense. You are going to be okay, you’re going to be happy.”
“Where are you going?” My heart is breaking all over again.
But this time they don’t answer. The puddle on the ground has seeped into the floor below and shouting comes from outside the room.
“Sunday?! Sunday!” Darius screams as he kicks the door down. “Oh god, no! Not again. Please.” He collapses, landing on his knees at the edge of the bathtub, he gathers my corpse in his arms.
My eyes blink rapidly at the sight, and I watch as the red disperses into the air.
Darius is physically shaking away my fate. He is changing it.
I want to scream, to shout, to yell, to get his attention, but then the other two brothers are joining him.
