• Liz’s Apartment, Kings
    December 19
    0112 hours

    She wasn’t really sure what woke her up; it wasn’t the thunder that boomed outside. One moment she was asleep, dreaming a dream that was now forgotten in the land of the conscious, then her eyes were open and she staring at her bedroom ceiling.
    She had this vague remembrance of someone shaking her awake.
    Liz sat up and slowly looked around her room, but no one was there, everything was still in it’s place. She threw off her covers and found her robe, taking a quick look in her bathroom, but there was no one there and nothing was disturbed.
    She wrapped her robe around her body and made her way into the living room where TC was supposed to be sleeping. They had decided that he was going to stay at her place on the couch, the couch was empty and the bedding was on the floor next to it.
    “TC?” She said quietly as she looked around the room, but there was no sign of her friend.
    She slowly made her way to the kitchen and stood in the doorway; TC was sitting at the table with his back to the door. She walked up to him and looked over his shoulder.
    He was sitting still with his head resting on top of his hands and staring off into nothing.
    “TC?” She said again, this time louder, but there was no response.
    “Trent?”
    TC turned his head to look over his shoulder, “Oh, hi Liz.”
    She moved around him and sat down at the table. “Are you okay?”
    He sat silently for a minute or two, Liz staring at him, before speaking. “Yeah, I’m fine,” He then rested his chin back on his hands and began staring off into nothing again.
    She looked at him for a moment longer before her eyes fell to the table to a piece of paper that was between TC’s elbows. She reached out, picked it up, and examined it; it was an old photo. There were two people in it, the one in the back was TC when he was back in high school, and the other was a girl, who the younger TC had his arms around. She had long curly red hair and hazel eyes.
    She was wearing a white button up shirt over a light green t-shirt underneath it that clashed with TC’s black trench coat and shirt. Her name was Amanda.
    “How old is this picture?” Liz asked him.
    “About nine years.”
    “And you still have it?”
    “It’d the only one I have of her.”
    Liz looked at the photo again; it would be hard to find a couple as different as these too. She was from a well to do family, was popular, played basketball, and had a promising future in front of her. While TC was from the streets, hung out with the so called Goths, freaks, punks, and skaters, and he was what you would call lower-class.
    But you could never find a happier couple.
    Her parents forbid her from seeing him, but she didn’t listen. Her “friends” quit associating themselves with her, but he was always right there with her.
    “She’s gone Trent,” Liz said to him.
    “I’ll see her again.”
    “You need to let her go.”
    “I might as well just quit breathing too, right.”
    “Don’t say that.”
    “That’s pretty much what you’re telling me.”
    “I’m just say that you need to mov…” her eyes had fallen to an object on the other side of TC’s arm that she had missed earlier, “TC, what is that?”
    “What?” He said looking at her, then seeing her staring at something he followed her gaze, “Oh this?’ He asked as he picked up his pistol and held it in front of him.
    “Don’t do it Trent.”
    “Don’t worry Liz, I can’t,” He said as he laid the fire arm back on the table and stood up, “No matter how many times that it’s crossed my mind, I can’t.”
    He moved to the door and turned back to look at her. “She’s waiting for me Liz, if I do that; I’ll never see her again. I failed her once, I can never do it again,” He turned and walked out the door way, “I’m going to sleep.”
    Liz sat there for a long while staring at the pistol that TC had admitted to thinking about using on himself and wondered; if TC had been in here, who had woken her?