008

Sutton Hetti had always been quite the peculiar girl, but it was not until the great flood of 008 that the fact became a little too hard to ignore. Both her parents died in the flood in the effort to save her life. Even the very essence of her had changed since then. Her eyes were empty and void of life, her cheeks had turned too hollow, her voice was always hoarse, and she stumbled around from day to day like a zombie—without cause and without thought.

Aegean wasn't by all means the most well-behaved young man in the world. Heck, one might even call him cocky or self-absorbed; and they wouldn't necessarily be wrong. Born of old money and looks to rival that of Adonis himself, there wasn't much that could move him. So imagine the shock and confusion, when the city's golden boy suddenly staked claim over the city's reject. No one could comprehend Aegean's strange protectiveness over Sutton no matter how much they tried.

Now the genesis of this story really began on one fine morning when the sun shone brightly in the blue sky, the flowers were in full bloom, and breeze was soothing and refreshing. Sutton had woken up to the sound of the door bell. Initially she thought it was her Grandmother—the old lady went for morning walks and usually forgot the code to get back into the house. However the unusual sight of a small brown paper box at the doorstep had her confused for a minute.

Kneeling down, she reached towards the box and—

"Sutton! Is that you out there?" The sound of her Grandmother's voice unexpectedly cutting in caused her to jump back in shock, recoiling back into the house. Her tiny body shook in panic.

"I-it's me," she croaked out, even though she was more than positive that it was barely above a whisper.

That was another issue she had—talking. The ability to push out her voice past a certain decibel seemed a bit too much of a task for her vocal chords. One can only imagine how awkward life was with this kind of impediment.

"Why are you out by yourself this early in the morning? Come back inside."

Her grandmother's frail hand took her by her even frailer hand, and dragged her inside without giving her much of an option. Curious eyes cast outside back to the doorstep, but the tiny brown box was no longer there.

That afternoon, Aegean had come over with a bag of clementines. They sat out on the back porch in silence, peeling the clementines; once in a while Aegean would feed one to her. Sutton liked Aegean because he was so natural with her. He wasn't a push over...he didn't force her to talk when she didn't want to. Which was all the time, but she appreciated it because he just understood without her needing to.

All was going well, truly, until she caught sight of the tiny brown box sitting by Aegean's left foot.

"I-it was you?" She forced out, surprised but less anxious now about the curious package.

"Hmm? I what?" Aegean looked up from his half peeled clementine, face still scrunched in concentration, "what did I do?"

"The box. You put it on my doorstep and then took it back." She explained. Her voice started to rise which startled Aegean because she had never ever raised her voice. Not at him, not at anyone. He didn't even know she knew how to.

"It w-wasn't funny. It's been making me anxious since I found—" Sutton continued to ramble, berating him for the prank he'd pulled and he listened in confusion. When she finally stopped, he took in a deep breath and apologized. For the first time in about 3 years, this was the closest he had seen her come to being angry. But even so, she sounded more upset and hurt than angry.

Aegean didn't mean for her to get upset. He would never ever do such a horrid thing on purpose. Hurt his Sutton? He'd much sooner smash his head into a solid brick wall.

The truth was, though, that Sutton was in fact hurt. So hurt that she didn't care to ask what was in the box. There was too much going on inside her head. There was always too much going on inside her head. The diabolical voices, the grotesque images, the darkness—goodness, how she hated the darkness. Before she realized, she was on the verge of a panic attack. Head turned to the side in the hopes of getting more oxygen, she pushed herself of the chaise and successfully wobbled her way back into the brightly lit house.

The tiny wave of panic she was experiencing, suddenly swooshed within her system at its highest zenith, when right there on their wooden dining table, sat the same brown paper box...that damn box!

Waves of shudders flooded her body, and her tear ducts seemed to have been screwed open. She began to sink towards the floor, the vision suddenly becoming too blurry. Strong arms encased her before she could hit the ground, slowly settling them both on the wooden floor.

“Sutton, I need you to breathe.” Aegean instructed, making sure to hold her tight but not too tight that he was restricting her air flow. In times like these, he knew that she was too overwhelmed to think straight, she easily forgot to breathe, which made everything much worse than it needed to be.

“T-the box—”

“Shh...Just breathe, Sutton.” Aegean held her closer to his body, heart clenching painfully in his chest as he looked at the table.

He could do nothing else but comfort her. He was speechless. Because he couldn’t see the brown box. In fact, no one could see the brown box. In fact, there was no brown box at all.