Chapter 8: *Ahem* THE FINAL CHAPTER!

Tyler spent a little over four months in the ICU.

Those four months were filled with nightmares detailing Tyler's childhood.

Those four months would have been enough to drive him insane, if he'd been awake through them.

He'd wake up every few days, with dark bits of his nightmares embedded in his thoughts like fragments of a grenade that'd gone off in his mind.

But finally, those long months came to an end.

Those long years had come to an end.

Tyler was finally free from his nightmares.

***

Karly was at the funeral. There weren't many people there. A few kids who probably went to college with Tyler. They obviously wanted to be somewhere else. A man who looked like a college professor. He was hardly paying attention to the procession; his eyes drifted from here to there. An aging couple, maybe Tyler's aunt and uncle. Neither even had tears in their eyes. And Karly.

Karly had barely known Tyler, but she felt much closer to him than anyone else at the funeral. After all, he'd helped save her life. He'd died a little more than four months after the day they'd met. He'd been trapped in the gang member's car after it had flipped over. Then, he was seriously injured when the car was rammed into by a cement truck. Ouch.

And after four months in the hospital, he died.

Karly sat in a park for hours after the funeral, thinking. His professor was most likely going through papers in the privacy of his own home. His aunt and uncle were probably already asleep. The gang member was rotting in a prison cell. Tyler's "friends" were in a bar somewhere, drowning their sorrows. And Karly was drowning in her thoughts.

And Everyone Lived Happily Ever After (Except For Tyler, Of Course)!

~Nixx