Prologue – The End

Spend all your time waiting

For that second chance,

For a break that would make it okay.

There's always some reason

To feel not good enough,

And it's hard at the end of the day.

I need some distraction,

Oh, a beautiful release.

Memories seep from my veins.

Let me be empty,

Oh, and weightless and maybe,

I'll find some peace tonight.

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I lay on my back on the floor of my rundown studio apartment. The cracked plaster ceiling above me was growing darker with each passing minute. The evidence of what I'd done pooled around me, warming the dirty concrete beneath me, but leaving me colder the farther it spread.

I wondered how long it would take. How long before the pain was over? How long before the images of the past finally disappeared forever? I had nothing left, nothing to want anymore. It wasn't for lack of trying; I'd tried to exist, to go on to school, to live a normal life. But I was haunted, each and every day. It was my fault. I could have saved them. I could have prevented the whole thing. And now I was going to pay.

I could feel my life draining from my body, seeping out into the cold apartment. It wouldn't be long now. The ceiling was almost completely obscured in black, and the darkness crept ever closer to the middle, threatening to claim the off-white plaster for itself. I silently encouraged it. I wished it could be faster, that I'd cut a little deeper.

I could feel myself becoming slightly impatient with death. I scolded myself for not having the courage to choose a quicker method. Or at least one that knocked me out faster. I just wanted it to be over. I wanted to hide from the pain, from the nothingness I felt every time I took a breath, knowing they would never breathe again.

I wanted so badly to go back, to change my decisions, to at least listen before I made up my mind. But I couldn't. What was done was done, and now people were dead because of it. Because of me. They were rotting away six feet under, while I lived and breathed, my heart beat, blood pumped through my veins. Every day my memories took me back to them, saw them lying in pools of their own blood, and it was because of this that I hadn't chosen a more peaceful means to my own demise. Why I hadn't just swallowed a bottle of pills. I needed to feel what they felt as their lives crept from their veins, soaking the sheets, the floor. I deserved this slow, torturous death.

My fingertips were numb long ago. Then went my arms, my feet and legs. The numbness was soothing to me. It gave me just a small taste of happiness, that I had found an escape. As I stared at the ceiling, a maniacal, twisted grin came across my face. I had won. I had beaten the eternal pain of loss I was doomed to in the waking world.

Then suddenly, finally, the plaster ceiling was no more. It had been consumed by black.

And then there was nothing. Nothing but blackness, and my thoughts swirled around me like dust in the wind. All was silent, except for the pounding of my own dying heart. I wasn't dead yet, but at least I wasn't conscious anymore. The beat of my heart grew fainter and fainter, until it stopped, and I knew no more.

I had found peace at last.

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More to come soon. You will find out who it is in the next chapter. Please review, as I like hearing back from my readers!