Ending

You would think a night like that would brand itself into a scarred, permanent memory.

And it did—just not in the way I expected. Time dulled the edges, smoothing the details until what remained was easier to survive than to remember.

What remains isn’t a memory so much as a feeling—a drifting, trance-like state where thoughts never fully formed. There was no single image to hold onto. Only terror, thick and constant, pressing in from every side.

And an overwhelming urge to stay quiet. To stay hidden.

My head felt light as I stared through the trees that camouflaged me. The branches scratched my face when I moved, but I didn’t look down. I looked ahead, where bodies were being lifted off the ground and put into a car.

There was blood on them. So much that I stopped thinking of them as people. In my head, they became corpses. It felt safer than remembering their names.

They disappeared into the backseat. The door closed with a heavy sound I didn’t understand then, but I do now.

The girl beside me ran her fingers through my hair, slow and deliberate, like she was counting something. It wasn’t meant to make me feel better—only still. She told me she was leaving. I didn’t understand what that meant yet, only that she wasn’t coming back.

The stars were very bright that night. I remember thinking they were watching us, like they would remember everything if I didn’t have to.

I tilted my head back even further, looking away from the cars and the girl, and kept my eyes on them until everything else felt far away.

And so this is where the story ends—where it began, so long ago.