Green Light
Prologue
Two Years Ago
T he pungent odor of vomit violently assaults my nose, seeping its way into my consciousness. I thought I’d lost all sense of self, but in a flash, awareness smacks me dead in the face.
Fuck, I'm still here.
My mouth tastes like rusted steel, and my shirt sticks to the skin of my chest. I'm hoisted up, my legs like jelly beneath me, as I feel my arm drape around something hard and warm.
In the dull black vacuum, sensations are void. Feelings are invalid. Unrequited love—effectively destroyed. But here, I’m trapped in a living nightmare.
“Should we take him in?” a distant voice echoes.
“Well, we can't leave him here,” another responds.
My body slumps into the warmth beside me, working to absorb all I can.
“He needs a doctor.”
“He needs to get the hell away from the store!”
I try with all my strength to open my heavy lids, attempting to put some faces to these detached voices, but my vision is hazy as the sharp pains in the back of my head give way, allowing my surroundings to take shape.
The sensation of needles jab into my left foot, but not my right. Peering down, I see I've lost a shoe and am currently balancing on some sort of mosaic blue walkway.
But it's not a walkway.
Further clearing of my blurred vision determines its clouds. Sharp clouds.
Shooting pain slices through the ball of my foot. I squint, seeing I'm standing in a pile of shattered glass, reflecting the sky from the storefront I'm planted in front of.
I must have been lying in the street again.
“Call the police, Jean!”
Yeah, not happening. I can’t get caught up again. Not after last time.
Using my free hand, I check for my wallet in the back pocket of my jeans, but my hand can’t bend. Pain shoots up my wrist. Wallet’s gone.
Fuck.
I find my feet under me and stumble out of the grasp that’s holding my body up. I make it a few steps before I fall shoulder-first into a brick wall, my cheek scraping against the ragged surface and my fingers attempting to grip their minuscule ledges for stability. How did I get here?
Last I remember, Josiah and Wheeter were trying to get me to head home from the stool I was so firmly planted on at the bar. The bar, where after a few too many beers, a few too many lines, and a few Vicodin sold to me by a guy in the bathroom, I saw the ghost of her through the crowded dance floor. A flash of pain had struck me in the chest. Dark hair, chocolate eyes, and a smile only the devil could own.
But it wasn’t her. It’s never her. She doesn’t even exist.
The one who destroyed me.
The one who stripped me of my livelihood, disrupted my peace, and left me with nothing.
The one I expressed my deepest and darkest secrets to. The kind I’d only wished to die alone with.
The one who promised to make me whole again, yet ripped any chance of a promising future from my grasp.
The one who awakened me to a heaven I’d never known could exist, only to force me into the cages of my own nightmarish hell. The catalyst to my downfall.
I’m done trying to find her in all the wrong people, wishing like hell she’d come back to me and that my realization of the demon she became was simply a fever dream. I’m done trying to find a small thread of that disgusting emotion that took control of my life, imprisoning me like a hostage to her venom. Drowning me in her affection like the most beautiful, unassuming toxin.
But friends in low places caught me again, ready to help erase these memories, this broken heart, eager to help me tap into the closest form of ecstasy that rivals the love I’d lost through a needle and syringe, a pill, or whatever flammable liquid I could find to consume.
The surrounding light fades fast, and my inability to stay conscious is probably because humans are actually required to eat to survive. I don’t think I’ve tasted food in days, and I’m sure my sunken eyes and hollowed face showcases that to the world.
My body is functioning purely off of illegal substances and a history of trauma. Any hope I had left for humanity was gone the minute that girl emptied our accounts, destroyed what future I had, and left me with a blank screen, void of identity. She stripped me of everything I am and, in a day, ruined all the good parts left of me that she alone had nurtured.
Promises of forever were a cruel joke. As convincing as she was and as cold as she’d left, existence in this world without her felt like an irreversible spiral. It still does. Down the drain I went, never to escape this torture.
That dark reality was a place I couldn't survive anymore. I didn't want to.
I crack open my only working eye, feeling the cool cement against my cheek now. Maybe I walked here. Maybe someone offered help and I had an entire conversation with them I can't remember. Maybe I told them everything about her and the tragedies of my life. Either way, I guess I’m back on the street again, no voices nearby this time, and by the way the sun is burning my flesh, I’d guess I was amidst the hustle and bustle of the lunchtime rush.
Just another junkie gone to the world. That's what they think as they drive past me, walking amongst themselves, entering and exiting businesses, brushing past each other in their suits and skirts as I lie here in my crusted blood, filth, and the pain of my own idiocy.
But people are unreliable at best, and hope is a fleeting thought left for dreamers. This life holds the promise of heaven for those naive enough not to realize we were subjected to hell long ago. So I stay planted against the chill of this dirty cement, littered with half-eaten rotting food, rat feces, and an overabundance of sludge and trash of yesterday’s demise. I lie here with my half-open eye, studying the patrons stuck in traffic at the stoplight as they work hard to pretend I don't exist in the same space as them.
True to form, the red light flips to green, giving the opportunity for a new set of pretenders to pull up and convince themselves they’re not only happy, but honorable.