Waking up every morning, I could only remember a harsh hammering in my head. I could always recall going to bed, praying that slumber quickly came, plunging me into a deep sleep that I wouldn't come out of. There were the darker days where I would quickly slip a pill between my arid lips as I shut my eyes and there were other days I would lay awake, intently focused on my ceiling.

You see, I always had an odd relationship with life. I hated living it.


Years of stress, hatred and accumulating pain lead me to become one of the fabled runaways of America. I decided one day that I was through with my so-called life and all the desolation it brought me. I packed up small trinkets of little or no value, just so I could call them mine and left my perfect, suburban life, trading it in for a lesser, bohemian one.

It was there, on the squalid streets of New York that I met Derek. He told me about this one place that accepted everyone, claiming that it was the very essence of the word salvation. The one part he neglected to inform me of, was the fact the price of salvation was far greater than I had ever expected. He offered me a trip to heaven, only if I got through hell first.

Once I had passed through the sweeping arcs of the mansion, conveniently located on the side of a hill, I knew I was placing a stamp on my freedom. My belief was later confirmed once I saw the padlocks they placed on the thick lacquered wooden doors.

Days passed as if they were nothing. People here had no concept of time. What seemed like hundreds of people, just swarmed around, doing nothing. Some sat on plush, silk covered seats as they casually smoked joints, some preferred to lounge in the halls, injecting their arms with brightly colored poisons. Then there was the minority group that just sat in their rooms and cried.

More than anything, I was one of them. What I thought to be my freedom was really a prison, disguised as a golden cage. During one of those sleepless nights I was plagued with, I began to wander the stone building. The floors were freezing, chilling me straight to the bone. As the further I got, the brighter the light I saw seemed to become. Once I approached the door, I silently I peered in, and I saw Derek. He was sitting at the bar, clumsily pouring himself a glass of alcohol. The rich brown liquid hit his glass and without even saying a word, he beckoned me in.

"Derek…" I began questioningly, looking at the taller blonde. He was staring off into the distance, an empty glass of liquor in his trembling grasp. His expression was somber, lost, yet most importantly, worn. There were lines on his face I hadn't remembered seeing before.

"You should get out of here Noel."

“What!?" I exclaimed, mostly out of shock.

"This place changes you; for the worse. They take you in and they give you everything you could possibly want," he chuckled bitterly, placing the crystal glass to his frosted lips as he drank sparingly. "They give some their definitive fear and others their only lifeline… they give you ultimate freedom…"

"What are you taking about?" I asked, sitting down beside him. It was then I saw he was idly fiddling with a long, slim piece of cylindrical metal. He began tapping it on the ebony marble top rhythmically, looking up almost nervously as he reached behind the bar we were sitting at and grabbed a flat, jaggedly cut mirror.

"You ever wonder why everything here is made of mirrors?" I shook my head as he continued. "It's so you can see yourself. They make sure you can see what you've become here," he spat disgustedly as he reached in his back pocket, yanking out a diminutive pouch. As he began speaking, he gently tapped at the bag, allowing translucent powder to tumble, letting it drop on the mirror in scattered dust clouds. Carefully, he began separating the powder into neat columns, not one larger than the other. Too much could kill you, you know.

"Derek…"

"Don't bother. I know. My ex girlfriend was the only one that ever came close to making me stop. She did everything in her power to make sure she got me out of this place. But in the end, I didn't matter. I ended up destroying her world by pulling her into mine."

It was then he stopped speaking, only long enough to place the metal strip on top of the powder and he inhaled sharply. He coughed once, right before going onto the other rows, making short work of them. On some level, I was utterly amazed. He didn't care if he got hurt, he didn't care if his parents knew. He just didn't care. He could do everything and anything he wanted and there was no one to tell him no, to slap his hand away. In some odd way, even though we were trapped in this gothic house of doom and mystery, he was free.

Then, there was the other part of me that stared at him, almost in envy. Throughout my life, I never had a story to tell. I was just the rich boy that no one wanted to hang out with. I wasn't like Derek. But I wanted to be… at this point I wanted to be him so badly. I felt as if I was offered everything on a silver platter, but I could only smack it away. It was like being on the outside, looking in. You could see everything the people were doing, but you couldn't participate. Even though that was me in this place, I just couldn't bring myself to succumb to their type of 'fun' their methods of 'ailing'.

To put it lightly, it was like organized suicide. In the few days I had been here, I had witnessed misery beyond my years. The people here were morbid, fascinated with the one thing they believed would bring meaning to their life: death. People here didn't care that with a few simple sniffs, a miscalculated dosage, even a simple slip of a razor could end their life.

They welcomed pain, embraced anguish. They sold their souls long before they even fully realized they possessed them. And all for what; a bag of white death, which initiated a lethal game of Russian roulette? A temporary release on reality? I couldn't even begin to fathom what was going through their heads. And I didn't want to know either.

I let his words sink in and realized on my own I was better than this place. He gave me one of his knowing looks as nodded solemnly. Even I knew it was too late to try and save him. He had lived in this false nirvana far too long to be pull out. He depended on the life they had given him and no matter what anyone did, there would be no hope in pulling him from the blackened ocean he was drowning in.

I ran out, leaving everything I had behind. Quickly, I began to run until the adrenaline in my body died away. Panting, I collapsed against a wall, just as it began to rain that night, letting the putrid smell of death and destruction wash away with me. The innocence of rain seamed to cleanse my infected body.

Blindly, I picked up my pace again and in the confusion and haze of the pouring liquid, I was reminded of my mother. She was the one that believed rain was the crystallized tears of weeping angels. And as I began thinking about it, I thought that at least a million angels must have been sobbing that night for the lost souls of that building.

Yet, the further I got from my old prison, the more liberated I felt. My soul took off and the sensation was better than any drug I could have possibly come across. Soon, I fell limply on the ground, beyond exhausted. I made my way to a wooden bench in the park and curled up in a fetal position. My eye drifted shut and for the first time in my life, I slept.

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