𝐴𝑁𝐷 𝑇𝐻𝐸𝑅𝐸'𝑆 𝑁𝑂 𝑅𝐸𝑀𝐸𝐷𝑌 𝐹𝑂𝑅 𝑀𝐸𝑀𝑂𝑅𝑌, 𝑌𝑂𝑈𝑅 𝐹𝐴𝐶𝐸 𝐼𝑆 𝐿𝐼𝐾𝐸 𝐴 𝑀𝐸𝐿𝑂𝐷𝑌

𝐼𝑇 𝑊𝑂𝑁'𝑇 𝐿𝐸𝐴𝑉𝐸 𝑀𝑌 𝐻𝐸𝐴𝐷

𝑌𝑂𝑈𝑅 𝑆𝑂𝑈𝐿 𝐼𝑆 𝐻𝐴𝑈𝑁𝑇𝐼𝑁𝐺 𝑀𝐸 𝐴𝑁𝐷 𝑇𝐸𝐿𝐿𝐼𝑁𝐺 𝑀𝐸 𝑇𝐻𝐴𝑇 𝐸𝑉𝐸𝑅𝑌𝑇𝐻𝐼𝑁𝐺 𝐼𝑆 𝐹𝐼𝑁𝐸

𝐵𝑈𝑇 𝐼 𝑊𝐼𝑆𝐻 𝐼 𝑊𝐴𝑆 𝐷𝐸𝐴𝐷

- 𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑎 𝑑𝑒𝑙 𝑟𝑒𝑦, 𝑑𝑎𝑟𝑘 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑒

◦•●◉✿✿◉●•◦

MELANIE gradually wore a slight smile on her lips and it was combined with an expressiveness that it could only be genuine. She exchanged a quick glance with Thomas before continuing to run.

"Wait!," he trotted hurriedly after her, "Where are you going?"

"Can't you see, it's raining," she replied briefly, but hadn't bothered to turn around so that he could perhaps hear her more clearly.

She even ran the remaining meters to the center of the Glade. Thomas could just about keep up with her, even though he wasn't an untrained guy.

Large drops were already splashing from the saturated clouds onto the lush grass on the ground. The rushing and crackling sound was incredibly soothing, and the girl enjoyed the fresh smell that rain always carried with her. Without thinking, but knowing, she lay down on the wet grass, put her arms under her head and closed her eyes. Just as rain was a cleansing process for nature, she compared it to tears. According to Melanie, it was important to cry and thereby cleanse. To wash away things that would otherwise just stick to you like dark chunks in order to drain your life energy.

To process and no longer retain what someone who was hurt was doing.

From a little further away, standing under an embankment, the brown-haired man watched her with a smile. He was horrified that it was just a simplicity like rain, where before he had been a little worried that she had discovered something threatening. Now he watched from the drying area as her clothes were completely soaked in such a short time and he had never seen her so ... content.

He almost thought she couldn't possibly feel such sensations. As she dreamed, Melanie enjoyed how peaceful everything was at that moment, listening to her breathing and the rain that seemed to drown out everything. And he seemed to not only be watering the grass or cleaning whatever objects were outside, but also making her alien thoughts disappear and replacing them with feelings so light as a feather.

This meant that it was irrelevant to her whether she would catch a cold or something like that. For the moment, everything could only be taken half as seriously.

"This is beautiful," a voice said unexpectedly next to her, making her jump slightly and raise her palm to her eyes to squint and then see whose presence was disturbing her. But it was no one more ordinary than the blonde Newt.

His honey blonde hair was plastered wetly to his forehead, looking so much darker. Unnoticed, she eyed him slightly before closing her eyes again, sighing.

"So much more than just beautiful," she said dreamily, until her thoughts snapped to alarm, bright as burning lights. So obvious.

Voices screaming for help could be heard and her pulse automatically increased. With a gasp, she opened her eyes again. There was no longer any trace of the previous rain, and where there was still day, there was now silent night around them. The stars shone completely unevenly in the sky.

Melanie spun in all directions as she was dragged along by someone she couldn't identify. There was so much hustle and bustle that she was hardly present. "Run! Don’t turn around!,” they shouted at her. However, as stubborn as she was, she still did it.

Behind her crawled these spider-like, metallic creatures that made a clicking sound whenever their pointy legs touched the ground. They were called Grievers. After all, it had to be the animals that could be heard from the Glade on a bad day. And now, now there was one behind her so immediately, what seemed to be chasing her in a race against time.

In disbelief, she let the boy next to her pull her along, helping to quicken her own pace. When he arrived at one of the huts, the boy let go of Melanie. Suddenly he began to make a sound that was not far from a laugh, just as she was leaning forward and resting her arms on her thighs, panting deeply.

“Now it’s time,” he said, almost reproachfully. "I'll grant you the easier death now, Mel. Don't scream, okay?"

Completely taken aback by the chaos, she narrowed her green eyes and no longer understood the dark world with so much danger, that once was so small and filled with love.

She watched, despite her limited vision of the night, as he pulled a knife out of his side pocket. Meanwhile, screams and collapsing sounds echoed across the Glade. It looked like everyone was far too busy saving their own lives to do it for her, as if out of hope on their part.

Maybe that's it. A moment added so suddenly that brings death upon you.

“Who are you anyway?” A question that Melanie asked with such incredulous doubt, but she still didn’t back away from the silver blade that flashed beautifully fleetingly in the moonlight.

Perhaps that was her downfall, because all too quickly, she felt the associated cold of the knife on her neck and her own throbbing heartbeat recede against it. No matter how courteously she had landed there, she was swept away again.

"What's this, you shank,?" another boy shouted. This time he was behind her, and she took a step back so she could keep an eye on both of them at the same time. At first she thought everything would come to an end and then rescue came at the last second.

What the fuck was going on here?

Keeping herself in the background, the brown-haired woman observed what was happening between the two boys. The one who had probably protected her was a lot bigger than her. The other had an ordinary build. So it was easy for him to incapacitate this defenseless creature by first dodging it and then grabbing the blade.

It happened so quickly that Melanie gasped and watched in disbelief as the tormentor's skull was split in two, as his own blade was instantly resting in it.

First he collapsed to his knees before falling dully onto the grass. Dead.

Every clock instinct in Melanie screamed to run or be unable to fight for her life. But none of her moved an inch. “What have you done?,” she uttered, her lips completely dry. "You killed him."

"You don't thank me, huh? He wanted to do the same to you, girl," he said, shaking his head, manipulating her, as if Melanie had made a mistake here and not he.

Staggering, he slipped the blood-red knife off his pants and made a semicircle in her direction. When she finally gathered herself to move, they swapped positions.

However, as he stormed towards her with an angry expression, she momentarily forgot what was behind her, causing her to stumble over the Glader's corpse. The blade immediately aimed at her still-living heart.

There are so many moments when you long for death, but as soon as it's on your doorstep, you do what any human being would do; you run away from it.

But what do you do with the last seconds of your life? Hold on and wait? Expressing wishes, cultivating fears or regretting what never was but could have been?

Nothing much happens inside me. I just want it to be over. It doesn't matter whether I'm just as lost in the one option or whether I'm spared it. Maybe, maybe, something is screaming at me right now that I don't actually want to die. That we humans are supposedly born selfish and challenge others for their place on this earth.

If someone is not looking, seeing what lies are behind all the facades and facets of those who laugh the loudest and stand out the most, who are alone and trapped in a loneliness that a person without the same depth cannot even begin to understand in three lives. Then he feels betrayed when he sees how unreal a soul's desire can be, to give up his place because he doesn't want to take it.

Because they gives up because of selflessness and loss, in what is as temporary as it is permanent.

"Don't worry," he said, still showing no sign of his previous anger. "At least I helped you."

He held out his hand, put the knife away, and before she knew it, he had helped her get up. How disgusting she found it that he had touched her and how inevitably she still let him influence her.

He pushed her a little in front of him so he could control the direction in which she ran. Intimidated, she endured it and didn't fight back. Until he stopped in front of Newt unprepared.

Completely relieved, Melanie wanted to rush into his arms. A silent exchange followed between the two.

"Take care of her," he pleaded before disappearing. Barely taking a breath, she held her chest and her slowly dissolving heart.

“Are you okay, Melanie?,” the blonde asked, leaning down slightly so that she could look into her face, which she had turned so directly towards the ground. She didn't give him an answer.

"Let's go." Nodding, she received relief until a black cloud of pain that was unbearable came over her. Luckily for her, at least she was spared the sight. This knife that had dug into her back and its strap that was pulling her up. It was so unreal. So dreamed.

She gasped, not knowing how to try, even in the slightest, to save herself. Melanie was so desperately alone in her suffering.

“Did you really think we would help you?!” Goosebumps appeared on her, so disgusting that she wanted to scratch them off her skin without success.

That laughter behind her, in front of her, from corners that began to spin. Everywhere, as if it were inside her. Even the blonde seemed to be cultivating a grin.

"You were so blind that you weren't paying attention." Then she fell over, with a few images still in her mind and a blue room with white people who began to discreetly talk about dreams. Her dreams.

-'๑'-

"Melanie?," someone called out, very worried. However, it didn't really reach her, as if she was still miles away from the voice. "Hey, wake up!"

Then finally she opened her eyes hastily, almost of its own accord. Gasping, her gaze fell to Newt, who was leaning over her. Reflexively, she slipped back a little, still caught in the dilemma between dream and reality.

How can I be sure that my mind won't give me another one? Is it a prank or is everything I dream about reality?

But the more time she took for herself and her breathing, which was gradually becoming calmer again, the sooner she realized that it was raining again. And it was day. Day. Still the same or the next one?

"You screamed and then suddenly started talking nonsense," Newt suddenly began to say. With a confused expression on her face, she rubbed the bridge of her nose and then visibly made an effort to listen to him properly.

"I was sleeping ?," she asked him to be on the safe side. Because while there was a veil of fear that accompanied her, there was still a trust that she felt towards him and a seriousness that was in his voice and the nod that followed it.

It was all so real and yet so unreal. Blinking, she drifted away. "It's over," he said consolingly, to bring the truth closer to her.

"Yeah, you're right," she deliberately lied, because the girl had completely different ideas in her mind. This wasn't over just because she woke up. This was a warning to herself. Only it was a mystery to her from whom. From her subconscious? Who should be able to sneak into their dreams and control them?

The nightmares she was so obsessed with only happened at night. Not out of the blue in the middle of the day, when she closed her eyes once - and in such a disgustingly brutal way.

It seemed that it finally dawned on Melanie that this dream was just the beginning of everything that was about to come.