She didn’t remember putting the carburetor kid in the bed at the back of the diner and going into the long since empty broken freezer, shutting the door behind her. The cerulean top was numb, everything passed by in a dream like state. One thing kept pounding the front of her soul, the wound in her leg was the pedal to the drum, and it forced the beat of pain around her heart and cracked the wilted organ in an alarming tempo. Those deep brown eyes, panicked and frantic, locked on a box in the corner. Did it mean a promise was null if the person was dead. Images flashed in her eyes, Party Poison sitting in the front of a car as she woke up in the back seat “Doin’ okay kiddo?” he smiles and looks at her. In the freezer she backs into a wall and takes a breath she knows it’s inevitable. An urge to run from the room entered her body but, you can’t escape your own mind, flickers of fear and anticipation start to lick up and down her body. These emotions are an unwanted hand feeling you up in some dark corner of the Hyper Thrust.
The few breaths she’s managed to catch as the anxiety mounts are knocked out of her with the memory of two calloused hands rapping around her arms, squeezing, there’s yelling too. “Never do that again, do you understand? You’re better than pills, I know you! You don’t need this, please. Li-Listen to us, we can’t loose you.” His voice laced with worry and hurt, things that only make her wish it had worked even more. The memory of her empty cracked voice pushes the tears down her cheeks, “I’m neon garbage, and if I die nothing would change.” She had her head down and her shoulders were high where the redhead held her up. The damage that had been done to her was so great that if he were to remove his arms she’d fall like the broken doll she is and remain on the ground next to the puddle of her vomit. Even know she could smell it; foggily remember how Party Poison had crammed his fingers down her throat because she had been careless enough to leave the bottle of pills out. It had only been a few days ago that she was thankful that they had saved her life. Now what was the use? Her arms tingled and her fingers itched for a blade, the digits flexing almost convulsingly, the knife on her boot strap would do the job. The memories weren’t through with her yet, her brow was knitted in agony as her lips made a grimace. Pressure built up inside her head even though she cried silently, her eyes were closed as the visual onslaught continued.

A thick haze was present in her brain, the burning tang of booze caked her mouth and throat and she felt on fire. The thrum of bodies with little red cups sent sparks to every nerve ending, she could deal with it in this state under the muggy air and odd lights of the house party. Being next to people and feeling happy, not a care in the world if the acrid sent of liquor wafted off in waves. A song started up in the background and when she caught the first few notes she couldn’t breathe, the breathless voice and aching guitars made in impossible for her to stay in the building any longer. The song was ages old but it described her to the last beat of sweat in her stringy hair, the outside air sobered the woman up a fraction as it cooled her sweat sticky skin. She tripped on her own feet for a beat and the iconic rattle of compressed powder against plastic rang in the silence, a pop of a lid and a few stakes, one more pop and she was better.
Her friends had seen her leave and would be coming out in a while so she had to be quick. The brown eyed woman had seen him here; she smirked with a clumsy snort. Ironically the song that had made her flee the party scene was rumored to be about the very act she’d commit. With out another thought, thoughts would only hurt her further and she was doing this to block that pain, she followed the recommended stranger into the alleyway. After the deal was struck her black denim clad knees touched the tainted snow and the other occupant of the otherwise vacant alley dropped his pants. It was winter so the chill and the sway of the concrete made her stomach lurch but maybe her conscience had more to do with it than the weather or the pills she took to counteract the booze.

Bile rose in her throat at the memory of how low she’d gotten, how low she could still be all for a high. The tidal wave of memories kept coming at her, if there was one thing she had missed about being in BLI it was that she would have been so medicated that seeing her sister’s face wouldn’t bring these memories. It was selfish but it was the only thing that kept her functioning. She reached for the box on the top shelf of one of the many in the old freezer. She opens it and digs around the paper scraps and trinkets until she find a smaller plastic container, she pulls it out and runs a finger on the pink contours of the heart shaped case. That twisting sense of urgency hits her full force and she all but rips the lid off and yanks the key from the bottom where it’s taped. Every second that passes is a new memory, the taste of blood made itself know on her tongue as she sucked on her bicep as best as she could. The cut ran deep and if she left it the blood would run to her wrists, it surprised her how unmarred they were. She never cut on them it was too obvious. By the time the bleeding had stopped her mouth tasted like the life liquid so much it made her head spin when she tried to pick up a her backpack her arm muscled complained. She picked it up over and over until she couldn’t anymore and the pain began to fade. I was better than that time she fell down a few steps and cut her back and feet up a little. Party Poison had asked when he saw the raised white ridges on her sun kissed skin, if she was still as pale as before he wouldn’t have noticed unless he searched for them or was up close. Those same muscles felt no pain as she pulled up the trapped door she found a few years back on her sporadic visits. She climbed down the stairs and instinctively flipped a switch. The yellow light spilled over a work desk dressed in scattered papers, she went for the drawers, she found what she was looking for taped to the top of a stuck shelf that had a keyhole. At first it would appear locked until you yanked just right, she dug for the baggy of uppers and for a second she just stared at it. In her minds eye she could see a man in a red jacket with ribbons of blonde tangled a top his head. The lights flickered and the man became shorter, his shoulders lightened and sharp angles became curves, the short blonde streams became pink and purple pigtails and the peach tan skin rang a toasty sand shade. Faded dropped the baggy, the once pristine beautiful medication morphed into maggots in her head, or at least she dropped them like they had.

Something akin to panic rose and ran through her blood, it froze her and closed her in. Memories and visions of BLI officials swam in the crash queen’s aching skull, the tears never stopped. She felt there hands on her, the disinfected glare of the white walls as they stripped her and tied her down. She screamed then and now she could only hold herself as a burn reminiscent of when they hosed you down and scrubbed you raw before they shoved you in a pod, how sometimes a hand would linger far too long crawled on her skin again, blunt crooked nails digging into her skin leaving angry crescents as she removed them to stop her body as it fell to its knees. That same burn personified in the angry marks that her nails left once she had fallen. The bolts of pain made a road way to chase the panic’s cold deeper into her and the voice of her first addiction called to her. “You’re worthless; you think you can leave this? You’re not worth enough for others to be burdened to hurt you.” She gritted her teeth baring them at the invisible assailant, then as if they were right next to her whispering in her ear she heard it “You’re stupid and crazy, if you’re gonna cut why don’t you do it right and kill yourself.” She heard his laugh and the woman’s mix as her heart clench before it shattered, taking her mind with it. Her left hand held a few remaining scars the others had long sense faded with the reasons that birthed them but the insults and laughs raged on. “You’re a fucking whore, a fat worthless cunt.”

Her bitter words tinged with a mother’s hurt became soulless and deeper, just as cold as the blade that had sunk into her arm years before. That soulless voice began to chuckle darkly, it was him. Korse was messing with her head, the insults she had heard from her scared mother rolling off his imaginary tongue as his ghost stood before her to cut her up inside enough for her to make the outside match. “Nothing but a useless halfwit, stupid, filthy and alone” The room spun as he laughed and smiled at her, the same smile he flashed when he thought he had ended her life when she first ran. “Slut!” the lighting flickered and she couldn’t breath, her vision felt assaulted by dozens of camera flashes. “Spread yourself for any fucker like the useless fat bitch you are.” He knelt beside her and grimaced like her couldn’t bear to be next to her, smell her, touch her. “Your mother never loved you; she thought you were just a leach and feature junky. Not too wrong now was she” he chuckles or maybe giggles in that acidly corrosive voice as he leans in to whisper “You’re just like daddy” he backs away and continues the onslaught of insults and laughs. Those burnt eyes of hers that once held warmth where dead and open wide, tears lining the lashes and streaming; her hands had made their way into her hair. It was no use covering her ears as he continued his endless rampage. “No one will ever believe that you’re not a fucked up bastard, you have NO VOICE!” Sometime along the way her eyes had scrunched together as she took the beating.

“Stop” it was barely above a whisper, it didn’t even sound like her. “Stop it” there it was again. “What ever you say mutt but you can’t hide the truth. We know you’re useless, worthless and stupid.” She had gotten to her feet as he spoke backed up against a wall as he was in her face, she could practically taste his whiskey breath with pharmaceutically sweet undertones. The ones that made her want to be sick, she pulled her hair as he moved in on her ear again; a full body grimace ran through her. “I’ll kill you and fuck you just like I did with him. You’re already dead because you have nothing to live for. Didn’t you come down to do it anyway, beat me to the punch? You’ll never do it honey, you’re so uselessly headless to get it right. You’re so pathetic you can’t even kill yourself.” She let out a strangled groan that threatened to be a scream. “You’re nothing like him. He had guts and something to keep him running, you have nothing and you are nothing. That’s all you ever will be, a stupid, worthless, stretch out useless pussy, a forgettable nothing.” He chuckled one more as the cold began to suffocate her and the sense of claustrophobic dread gripped her like the hands of a dozen rotting corpses she thrashed and screamed as he stood their and smiled that cold and twisted grin.

Her voice became a growl echoing in the sound proof basement, lighting struck her as the scream ripped through. It was like being set on fire, the maddening adrenaline and indescribability of what happens to you on stage at a rock show, and like a cold wind gusting through a room at high speed taking away the matted humidity that prickled nerves in the worse sense. Her back arched off the wall as her head tilled up mouth wide open and eyes shut and her hands formed claws in the tension at her sides bye her frozen, tightened thigh muscles as he legs remained spread in her stance; the posture was fit for the rapture it would represent normally, her eyes rolled back slightly as well. It all happened in on word that made every ghost disappear; the word that ended and began so many things that sent frenzies of electricity into her every nerve ending. It carried on in a single scream loaded with every once of energy that her throat began to feel raw, “Stop!”

Notes

This chapter was really hard to write and I hope you guys enjoyed it. Most of the things there are stuff that goes on in my head... Feeling much better now though.

Stay tuned and keep running
FE