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The day the drum-beat stopped
He was walking along the beach, his thoughts running wild. He stopped when he saw her.
She was standing there, breathtaking and beautiful in the soft moonlight by the ocean. It was peaceful, a clear and calm night. When he saw that she was crying, his heart wrenched in pain for the angel that was hurting. She had broken wings, to match her broken heart. He wanted to hold her, comfort her. He could have reached out and grabbed her tattered dreams and tried to fix what was left of her. The bruises on her body were hidden cleverly by clothes and a well-practiced smile. The cuts on her arms and legs and feet were unnoticed, the makeup on her flawless face was a perfect diversion for what really goes on in her seemingly glamorous life. She used to be happy, she had a mother and a father who loved and cared for her more than anything in the world. Her life was wholesome, complete. Until they stopped caring for each other. Her moms sickness was too much for her dad to take anymore. The weight of the sadness and pain was too much for her her mom, and the disease overtook her frail body quickly, easily. The night it won the brave battle was the night that the girls' drum beat was weakened, almost stopped completely. That's when she cut for the first time. She wanted a release, a way to be in control for once. Sometimes she just wanted to feel something different than agony, because the pain was still less than of losing her mother. She felt that she deserved to suffer, no one wanted her. If she had thought that even one person cared about her, she might have held on to the light at the end of the tunnel. She might have faced Hell with a stronger drum, and kept going, kept pushing. There was not one person who could look deeper into her soft chocolate-colored eyes and see the pain. She was scared and alone. No one noticed that she didn't talk or eat or participate in school. While he sat and watched her cry, her thin, pale face twisted with memories, her frail body somehow seemed hollow. As if she was a shell, an empty testament to what used to be. The happy, smiling girl with the bouncing curls and sparkling eyes was a distant and fast fading memory. He wanted to approach her and ask her what was wrong, to try to make it better for her. What he didn't know was that she was there to end the torment her own way. That's exactly what she did. She ended all of the fear. The doubts. The pain. That was the day that the drum beat completely ceased to exist. It was over, the soft remnants blown away by the chilly night air. The combination of the cold and the echoing shot ringing in his ears sent chills up his spine. As he hesitantly crept toward her lifeless body, tears filled his eyes and then spilled over when he saw her lips, the ones that had never cried out in pain, blue and still. As he walked away, he asked himself, 'why can't people look deeper, or notice anything at all?' It almost seemed to him like he was alone on an island of nothing, and no one wanted to take a simple boat to see him. They would rather be on cruise ships, unworried and safe. That night, he had come for the same reason that she had. He had planned it so carefully and wanted it so badly. In a way, she saved his life by ending hers. It was almost like when her drum stopped, it filled his with new power. New energy. New life. He had hope, maybe life was worth something, maybe he wasn't ready for it to end. When he grew up, he graduated and stared a company. He called it The Angels' Hope foundation. A teen suicide hot line that gave people like him and his angel a chance.
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