Fall  /fôl/

verb   1. move downward, typically rapidly and freely without control, from a higher to a lower level. "bombs could be seen falling from the planes" synonyms: drop, descend, come down, go down;   2. (of a person) lose one's balance and collapse. "she fell down at school today" synonyms: topple over, tumble over, keel over, fall down/over, go head over heels,go headlong, collapse, take a spill, pitch forward;   noun   1. an act of falling or collapsing; a sudden uncontrollable descent. "his mother had a fall, hurting her leg as she alighted from a train" synonyms: tumble, trip, spill, topple, slip; 2. a thing that falls or has fallen. "in October came the first thin fall of snow"

 

They were told Yuri had died.

It crushed them.

Crushed them.

It broke the last pieces of their happiness.

Their joy.

Xiumin became frozen.

He didn't talk anymore.

He couldn't.

His bedroom became a frozen wasteland.

A wasteland that only he could waste away in.

He didn't let anyone in.

He shut them all out.

Leaving him.

Alone.

With his thoughts.

And a name he couldn't put a face to.

Minseok.

Luhan couldn't find his cube.

He became frantic.

He became scared.

He refused to go into his room.

He wouldn't.

He was too afraid.

Nobody could find anything out of place in his room.

But he was too afraid.

He would just stop in the doorway and begin whispering something.

Over and over.

Until someone broke him away.

"There's so much blood. There's so much blood. There's so much blood."

Kris' nightmare only got worse.

The dragons had begun to attack him in his dreams.

He would wake up in the morning with scratches.

Scratches that resembled the ones he got in his dreams.

He didn't let Tao sleep with him anymore.

He didn't want Tao to get scratched.

The grotesque dragons would come into his dreams.

They would kill everyone.

They would rip them apart.

Kris couldn't stop them.

He hated the dragons.

He hated himself.

Suho began to recover.

But he would always have a cough.

A sick hacking cough.

It would never go away.

It always hurt his throat.

Sometimes he would cough up blood.

He insisted he was fine.

He had to be fine.

Someone had to stay strong for their family.

Their shredded, tattered family.

Suho's throat hurt.

It hurt a lot.

Lay stopped smiling.

He stopped laughing.

Lay lost all hope for a happy life.

The Compound had broken him.

He didn't want to be happy anymore.

He didn't want to smile anymore.

He just wanted stability.

He wanted to stop losing people.

Lay never cried.

Lay never laughed.

Lay stopped feeling.

Was he even human anymore?

Baekhyun kept talking.

The silence scared him.

He had to fill it.

The silence screamed the loudest at him.

He hated the silence.

He wouldn't listen when they told him to be quiet.

He just kept talking and talking.

Even if no one talked back.

He just couldn't have the silence.

In the silence he could hear the sounds of the beasts.

The beasts that still haunted his nightmares.

Baekhyun always filled the silence.

Chen broke.

His eyes became dull and unfocused.

He began to bump into things as he walked.

He would mumble when he talked, if he talked at all.

He was more of a shell than a human being.

He stopped giving off static electricity.

The storm clouds left his eyes.

The smile left his mouth.

He didn't play jokes with anyone now.

Chen was alone.

All of the boys and all the caretakers gave in.

They couldn't put Chen Chen together again.

Chanyeol became twitchy.

He had a nervous tick.

His hands shook.

He began to see things that weren't there.

He would laugh at random times during the day.

Random things around him would burst into flames.

He started speaking nonsense.

He claimed he saw beasts.

He claimed he was a beast.

He would say things that scared everyone.

"Hungry beasts." 

Over and over and over and over.

D.O was watchful.

He fussed over everyone.

He didn't let the caretakers near the other boys.

He grew to hate the car