Kids Like You Should Be Burning in Hell

[Applesintime]

Ximena invited him over to spend Thanksgiving with her and Astrid, plus whoever else from the survivor group came along. Normally Thanksgiving was a pretty quiet affair for Stephen: it was normally just him and his parents, although sometimes his uncle and aunt would visit if they had the time, although they didn't visit just so much in general now. They'd just have a quiet, reflective day, eat their Thanksgiving turkey, and then go to bed early. It was a routine they'd stuck to for years, and while he was comfortable with it, Stephen was actually kind of happy to mix it up a little.

It was pretty fun. Alan and Cecilia showed up, so it was still kinda small but it was still bigger than what his family Thanksgiving would have been. They all talked about what they'd been doing, what they wanted to do; Alan was probably gonna head back to school as well, so it wouldn't just be him and Ximena. Astrid had apparently been contacted by Rolling Stone to be on the front cover, which Stephen still didn't like but he didn't say anything about it. The picture she showed them did look pretty good, though. The teeth thing was also explained — that had been bugging him for a while. Cecilia didn't really say a lot.

Astrid definitely wasn't the monster that he'd thought she was when they'd first got out of the shitty hellhole. He did wonder how Ximena could afford this place, but maybe her family was rich or something.

[Applesintime]

His dad made a joke about how girls don't take you to Olive Garden unless they really like you.

Stephen only got what he was joking about when he was trying to sleep.

[Applesintime]

Lincoln had at some point died and apparently, it turned out he was his orb and not the body. That raised quite a lot of questions. But Lincoln had been dead for a few weeks now and Stephen would never know what it was like to be a floating orb, or question how a Gift could change someone just so radically compared to others.

It did kinda seem like it’d be a living fucking nightmare, though. Imagine not being able to text anyone or open a door by yourself? He was brittle and while his parents were still kinda wary about him, he was at least able to do stuff by himself.

[Applesintime]

His parents talked about getting a cat to keep Stephen company while they were at work and he was waiting for school to start. Eventually they decided against it, just in case it ended up skittering under his feet and made him trip and break something, which was really disappointing.

One day, Stephen went out into the garden to grab something from the shed so his dad could patch up their fence. The roof had a little hole in it that they'd never got around to fixing. Inside, someone had found their way inside; a gorgeous black and white cat.

"Meow." meowed the cat. It followed Stephen inside their house, and after looking at it his mom declared that they now had a cat as she didn't have the heart to throw their new cat out.

They initially called it Melody, but it reminded Stephen a little too much of Melodie and it was also a he so they called it Deacon instead. Well, his mom started calling their cat Deacon and from there they just accepted that he was Deacon.

[Applesintime]

People liked Deacon. He was a very photogenic cat, although he did have a bad habit of sitting on people's chests or laps and going to sleep when they needed to get up. Not that Stephen particularly minded. He sent a couple of pics to his friends. Ximena seemed very taken with him, and so he suggested that maybe he could bring Deacon over at some point, or she could come visit and see him? He was a very friendly cat as well, which was a little annoying because he tended to get tangled up in feet in the way his parents worried about, but Stephen was used to taking things slow and steady.

When he mentioned inviting Ximena over at some point to his dad — just to check that'd be fine — he gave Stephen one of those infuriating smiles like a Cheshire Cat.

[Applesintime]

It had seemed easy when it was in the distance, but now it was nearly here, the idea of going back to school was a little nervewracking. It felt like it had been months but really, it'd only been a couple of weeks, hadn't it? No Sayuna, no Yvette, no Austin. Their year was going to be awfully empty, even with all the kids who didn't want to go to a potato farm.

Stephen had nearly declined to go on the trip. It didn't seem like, interesting at all, but a bunch of his friends were going, and that was enough for him to sign his doom in the form of a permission slip. Sometimes, when it was late at night and he couldn't sleep, he'd scroll over old text messages or Discord chats. It was hard to believe the people who had typed those messages were just gone now. Not even a body for their parents to bury. He should have got them to stop and pick up Emily's body. There was room in the trunk, there was time for them to stop but they hadn't seen that because they were driving for their lives.

And now the desert had swallowed her body up without a trace, or so the government said.

Lying in bed, Stephen was alone with his thoughts before a maow and Deacon jumping up onto the bed interrupted his thoughts. "Hey, buddy." Deacon pawed at his arm, and he set down the phone to gently scratch behind Deacon's ears, who leant into the scratches with a satisfied series of purrs. He couldn't help but giggle. "I dunno what Mom and Dad were worried about, you wouldn't hurt a fly." Mrow.

Well, at least he wouldn't be alone there. Ximena was going back with him, and Alan would be there as well. Maybe there'd be a couple of other people, but he'd just have to see.

"Night, Deacon."

Meow.

[Applesintime]

It had been a while since he’d done some yoga. Stephen had kept his exercise regime pretty strictly before everything that had happened, but he’d been distracted by things like his friends dying and breaking his leg and talking to Henrietta.

But now Stephen had an hour to kill and he was sick and tired of reading weird Twitter discourse about Astrid, so it was time to stick a yoga video from YouTube on their TV and follow along. It was good for balancing the body and the mind, he’d found. There was always the worry of toppling over and breaking something, but he didn’t do that much anymore. He’d learnt the inner balance of chi, whatever the hell that meant.

Deacon sat on the sofa and watched him. Or he was napping. Normally Dad would tell him to get off because he’d be shedding hairs everywhere, and he’d get insulted and slink off while giving dad stink eye, but Dad wasn’t here and Stephen wasn’t going to disturb him when he looked so peaceful and cute. Between poses, he took a picture. Mom would love it — hell, anyone who was sane and liked pets would love it.

[Applesintime]

“Deacon, I need to use the toilet.” His chest was apparently a comfortable place for Deacon to nap. The aforementioned menace lifted his head to glare at him before setting his head back down in the space between Stephen’s arm and his body and closing his eyes again. He looked adorable, but that was just a distraction from the issue plaguing him.

Even still, he couldn’t help but giggle. They’d only had Deacon for a little while, but he’d settled in so nicely, it felt like he’d always been there.

[Applesintime]

So it turned out Austin wasn’t dead. Or, uh, he wasn’t like, dead dead. His body was dead, but here he was in Stephen’s dream seemingly. If Stephen had thought living on as an orb like Lincoln did was nightmarish, the idea of living on as a phantom who could only talk to people via dreams and never truly achieve any peace was infinitely fucking worse. It was also really fucking fascinating if this wasn’t just a really weird lucid dream, but he wasn’t going to say that to dream Austin because being stuck as a dream invader seemed to really be fucking him up.

If it was the real Austin.

Maybe it was just his brain, desperately trying to conjure up a remnant, a memory of the friend he missed. Maybe it was just one of those dreams that were inherently wacky and weird. Maybe it was as he thought; a weird lucid dream, and his brain had missed Austin enough that it just sorta conjured someone up from the blue.

Stephen didn’t know. He didn’t tell anyone about it. Not his mom, not his dad, not Henrietta. It just didn’t seem like something to tell people who probably wouldn’t get it. What ‘it’ was, Stephen didn’t know. And it was just a dream anyway, he decided.

In the dream, he comforted Austin, or what might be Austin, as best as he could. It was something he’d become used to. Comforting people. And then, well, Stephen conjured up a TV and a couple of consoles and they tried to kick each other’s asses, just like they did before the school trip killed most of their friends. Noah wouldn’t be there, though, and neither would Sayuna. No Jenelle to pop in and say weird shit while Austin was AFK.

But for what it was, Stephen enjoyed it. One last moment with a friend, even if he was just imaginary.

[Applesintime]

Day one of going back to school. Stephen wouldn’t lie, he was nervous about it. It was that sort of nervous that built up in your gut and you didn’t know how to get rid of it so you just sorta sat and bared it. Dad had told him a couple of times that if he wanted to he could just chill today and go in tomorrow, but Stephen refused.

“Alright, little baby, see you later?” Deacon looked very sad as he maoed at Stephen, and he tried to come with them in the car. Some organisation had sent him stuff on going back to school after a tragedy, but it was all mass shooting stuff so it didn’t really apply just so much to him.

It was a short drive to the school. “You sure?” His dad asked, but he already knew the answer.

“I’m sure.” Stephen opened the door, and stepped out, looking back at his dad one last time before mingling with the crowd heading inside.