CYOA Page 194

[lumy12]

Page One Hundred Ninety-Four

You're going to die. Joel is dead, and soon you will be, too. A strange peace washes over you at the thought of your body laying at the bottom of this cliff alongside Joel's for all eternity, your corpses rotting BATHING in the sun... together. ...TOGETHER. ALWAYS.

You try to jump... but it's still so fucking hard to do! You want to-- you can't live with this pain, you just can't! But your body seems to have other ideas. It's fighting you on this... fighting for its life. Your life.

Except you don't have a life now. Doesn't it realize that?

Okay... okay, Ellie, you can do this. ...One... ...Two... ...THREE... ... Three... ... ugh, just fucking DO IT ALREADY!

You can't. You can't do it.


If you've changed your mind, it's not too late! Turn to page 198.

If you haven't, keep reading below.


The only way you're going to be able to do this is to fully embrace the pain. Let the waves crash over you, unrelenting. When it's at its peak... its most overwhelming... when it reaches the height of unbearable agony, you'll be able to do it.

...but still NOT QUITE.

You force yourself to look down at Joel's poor broken, twisted body, so far away from you. Instead of letting the sight terrify you into preserving your own body from such a fate, you concentrate on the fact that when you jump, you'll be reunited with him. -No... No! I won't jump... I'll just put myself in exactly the same spot he was. Then when I let go, I'll land in his arms.

You can't reach the same jutting rock he clung to, obviously, or he'd still be alive right now... but you can more or less align yourself with it. You lower yourself very carefully into position, and your mind replays Joel's fall over, and over, and OVER again. The look of abject terror on his face... is about to be on yours, although no one's around to witness it. You're about to feel exactly the way he felt when he finally lost his grip. It hurts your hands to hold on... you feel the terrible strain on your muscles. You don't know how Joel was able to stand it for so long... but then, he wanted to live... he wanted so desperately to live, whereas you just want to die.

You let go.

You have no idea where you land, because you die the second your head smashes into the ground. ...which means you probably didn't land exactly in Joel's arms... if you had, he may have cushioned the blow enough to save you? You might have broken a bunch of bones and ended up dying of dehydration down there anyway, but it's a nice thought... Joel saving you from the beyond.

He certainly would have wanted to.


THE END



If you'd like to start another adventure, return to page 1.

Comments

Carlos

[(Anonymous)]

oh, that was another sad ending. :(