63-Zach
This last week has been spent locked in the van, editing footage until my vision refuses to focus.
Putting my social media on private didn’t mute the noise. If anything, it made the speculation worse. It’s easier to drown in my work than face the world. I’ve been through a lot in my life, but I’ve never experienced this kind of contempt for simply existing.
Mass hate is a different kind of cruelty.
All I want is to sneak into Kit’s arms and let him tell me everything will be okay.
But wanting him, getting close to him, is the problem.
The attention is slowly dying down, but the threatening message requests are still coming.
People telling me to ‘just fucking die.’ Every ping feels like a slap.
Neil says we could press harassment charges, but I don’t want to drag the legal system into this. I know how that goes. It’s never in the victim’s favor. And besides, this is the internet.
There’s no winning.
Today is the anniversary of the car accident.
The date always hits like a scar I forget about until it brushes against something—like a smell or lyric.
Then the ache blooms like it never healed at all.
Breathing feels like a betrayal. My throat tightens, like someone’s cinched a belt around my neck.
The girls dragged me to the Daemonium bus to celebrate Liane’s thirty-third birthday.
Someone’s strung fairy lights along the ceiling, and they flicker with every bump of bodies against the bus’s rickety suspension.
It’s packed with too many people and differing perfume.
Alyssa shoves a plastic cup of fruity virgin punch into my hand, and Louanne wraps an arm around my shoulders, pulling me into the circle like she can physically anchor me there.
Liane’s glowing, cheeks flushed, laughing so hard she snorts. The music thumps through the floor, vibrating up my legs. For a moment, I sway with it, letting myself pretend that I’m normal.
Then a Somnium song comes on, and the opening chords hit like a punch to the sternum. Kit’s voice slides through the speakers, and the air leaves my lungs in a single, sharp exhale. The golden fairy lights smear into streaks as the chatter around me warps.
I try to swallow it down. To smile. Pretend that I’m not unraveling in real time.
But grief doesn’t care about timing. Or birthdays. It doesn’t care about the people watching.
I slip out before I can ruin Liane’s night any further. My hands tremble as I dig for my cigarettes. I try to flick the lighter, but my thumb keeps slipping. The metal scrapes my skin, useless and mocking.
“Here, let me have it, love,” Louanne says softly from behind me.
She plucks the lighter from my trembling fingers and lights the cigarette for me, cupping her hand around the flame like she’s shielding something precious. I inhale the burning smoke shakily.
“Kit isn’t taking this lightly either. He’s wrecked,” Louanne says, and I nod, staring at the glowing tip of my cigarette. “You want to talk about it?”
I let out a bitter laugh, taking another drag. “Is that supposed to magically make me feel better?”
“No,” she says simply.
I open my mouth, but words don’t come. Familiar, merciless grief rises up, swallowing me whole as I fall apart.
Screeching sobs tear through me, ugly and unstoppable.
Louanne pulls me into her arms and holds me, stroking my hair with slow, steady fingers.
Her touch is warm and grounding, the kind of comfort that doesn’t demand anything in return.
But it doesn’t stop the memories or guilt—the feeling that everything I touch turns to ruin.
“It’ll pass,” she murmurs, and as her words sink in, something inside me hardens with an icy clarity.
Maybe that’s the problem.
I’m done letting hard times just pass, only to wait for the next blow.
I wander without direction, letting my feet take me away as I twirl my necklace.
All I can think about is how badly I’ve messed this up. I had one shot to do this right, and somehow I managed to light it on fire.
Real impressive. Gold star.
A car honks behind me, sharp enough to make me flinch. I blink hard, but the street goes blurry anyway. Like it’s got a personal vendetta, a pink neon sign buzzes from the storefront up ahead, its windows plastered with cheap beer posters and scratch-off ads.
My stomach drops straight through the sidewalk.
“Oh no. Nope. No, no—turn around,” I say with a thin, shaky voice, like maybe hearing it will snap me out of this. “Call Kevin.”
I should call my sponsor.
My phone is already in my hand. But the second the screen lights up, red notification bubbles stack over my social app like warning sirens. More strangers telling me I’m disgusting. Death threats. I lock the screen with a hard tap and shove the phone back into my pocket.
They shouldn’t get to me. I know they shouldn’t. Grief and anger churn in my chest, thick as mud. I can’t think straight. Or breathe right. Everything feels too close and too far away at the same time.
People laugh on the sidewalk. A bus wheezes to a stop. Someone’s blasting music from a car window. Life keeps happening while I’m trapped behind glass.
“Stop.” I reach the front of the store before I realize I’ve even moved, hand closing around the door handle. “Please, just…stop.”
But the door swings open, the bell overhead chiming bright and cheery, like it’s taunting me. The fluorescent lights buzz loud enough to rattle my teeth as my feet carry me down the aisles on autopilot, each step heavier than the last. Rows of vodka bottles catch the brightness like a fishing lure.
I don’t want to be here. But grief and self-pity are a treacherous fog, and I’m lost in them.
My fingers close around a familiar blue-capped bottle—muscle memory of old habits.
The glass is cold. Heavy. I stare at it, breath shaking.
Life piled up, and I just broke.
“That’ll be fourteen sixty—”
“Here,” I mutter, slapping a crinkled twenty onto the counter before the cashier can finish.
Her eyes go wide, caramel-brown irises swirling with a spark of life that died in me long ago. I grab the bottle and twist the shiny cap off before she can bag it. She stiffens, her narrow shoulders rigid. That naive optimism on her face snuffs out, replaced with something sharp and judgmental.
I take a swallow before I can change my mind.
The vodka hits my tongue like a slap, burning away my esophagus as it goes down.
Another swallow quickly follows. Warmth spreads through me as I take another swig, chasing that perfect, numb nothingness as I head toward the exit.
A southbound bus groans up to the curb, dragging its giant tires along like it’s exhausted from living, too.
Drink after drink, I stumble back to the arena lot.
My reflection stares back at me with each passing puddle, ragged and washed-out.
Loose gravel crunches under my shoes, loud in the quieting night.
My head swims, the world tilting just a little too far.
I wipe at my face, but stupid tears just keep coming.
By the time I make it back to the lot, I’m a complete mess.
A night guard steps out from the shadow of the gate, squinting at me beneath the yellow floodlight. “You okay, miss?”
“Yeah.” Showing him the visitor’s pass again, even though he saw me an hour ago, I wave him off. “Just a long night.”
He doesn’t look convinced, but he lets me through. Stumbling toward the van, I reach into my bag and pull out the bottle.
Empty. A whole fifth. Gone.
My knees buckle. I feel sick—physically, emotionally, all of it.
“Fuck,” I whisper, stomach lurching. “I really did it.”
After seven months dry, I relapsed.
The understanding tastes rotten. My chest caves in. I press a hand to my mouth, but a revolting howl punches out of me. I lean over, bracing myself as the ground sways in and out of focus. My pulse hammers.
The empty bottle slips from my hand and clatters onto the pavement.
“Dammit,” I choke out, bending over to grab it.
Something inside me snaps as my fingers close around the glass neck, and with a shredding scream, I hurl it.
It explodes across the pavement, shards skittering under the streetlight like tiny stars.
The sound echoes through the lot, sharp and violent, and for a second everything inside me goes silent.
I hate myself.
My breath comes in ragged bursts. The wind picks up, cold against my damp cheeks.
One shard of the thick frosted glass catches my periphery, glinting like a blade.
Shaking with the weight of everything pressing down, I hover over it, caught in the place between wanting to disappear and knowing I can’t go down that road again.
Not like this.
The teardrop-shaped vial hangs from my neck, glittering with Nicole’s ashes as I stare down at the broken glass, my drunken thoughts twisting toward a dark and familiar comfort.