Contrition
Count Your Blessings
Chapter 1: Contrition
You should be dead.
“I know.”
She’d be alive if you hadn’t called…if you hadn’t gone to that damn bar, but you just had to drink away your misery, didn’t you?
“I know. I know. What do you want from me?”
She’s dead because of you.
“I kno-”
Is that all you can say? ‘I know’?
“Yeah, actually, it is.”
Don’t you feel any guilt?
“I wouldn’t be talking to you if I didn’t.”
You can’t fix this. You’ve finally pushed it too far. He’ll never speak to you again.
“I know, I know. I screwed up.”
Screwed up? You killed someone! You killed Amber!
“What the hell do you want from me?”
He wishes you were dead instead of her. I saw it in his eyes when he came to visit you in the hospital. You saw it too.
“Can you please just shut up? I can’t deal with this.”
You can’t deal with anything. That fact is what got us into this mess. You can’t deal with the pain, so you develop a drug addiction. You can’t deal with your miserable life, so you decide to get drunk. You don’t deserve him. You never have.
“Please… I didn’t mean for any of this to happen…I didn’t ask her to come.”
But you got on the bus.
“I didn’t ask her to come.”
But she did.
“I left my cane…she came to give it back.”
Yeah…, blame it on the handicap. You killed her.
“I know…, but I tried to save her. I almost died trying to save her.”
Wilson didn’t seem to care. You still killed her.
“He does care. He’s Wilson. He always cares.”
Not anymore. He hasn’t even called.
“He cares…”
Why don’t you ask him?
“Stop this. Please, stop this.”
What exactly do you plan on doing now? Are you really going back to work? He’ll be there as a constant reminder.
“I don’t know…”
Isn’t that a first… don’t go back. Never leave this apartment.
“What are you saying?”
Remember the bus? No pain…
“Shut up. I’m not… I’m not going to kill myself.”
Why not? What’s left to live for?
“…I-I don’t know.” The truth is out in the open and all it took was an abusive little voice in my head to extract it. Actually, on a normal day, hearing a voice that sounds eerily like Wilson pressure me to kill myself would worry me, but I was far too busy to worry. How can I, when the voice is telling the truth? The voice isn’t lying or trying to achieve a hidden agenda… it’s just telling the cold, blunt truth. I have nothing to live for.
Now I know that statement comes across as a little overdramatic, but… it’s the truth. Either that or it’s the sudden onset depression that just happened to coincide with being released from the hospital after killing my best friend’s girlfriend. Actually, I’d been arguing with the voice for days now and I’d already run through all the ‘what ifs.’ She’s dead. I’ve accepted that. I just don’t know what the hell I’m going to do now.
Suddenly the voice is quiet, but I still feel the presence of its words. I know I must be hallucinating and hallucinations have always been my mind’s way of working out problems. Normally my mind creates elaborate puzzles, but this time… my mind just gives me the answer. Kill yourself. Apparently my subconscious thinks it’s the only answer and I can’t help but reluctantly agree.
I’ve considered myself many things, but never suicidal. In other words, this is new territory for me and I have no idea what to do. I don’t want to die or at least I think I don’t. I can’t really tell anymore. All I know is that my eyes are fixated on those pills and I keep thinking how easy it would be to just…
I pull back my hand, a look of genuine fear in my swollen eyes. I’ve been crying…something I never do, especially since it wasn’t even my girlfriend. I never really noticed how much I needed Wilson. I knew I’d be devastated if he finally left, but this is more than I can bear. Every time my world falls to pieces, I always have Wilson by my side. This time he hates me and… I don’t really have much to live for.
I’m suicidal and I know I need to stop myself before I lose control. My first instinct is to call Wilson…, but I’m not sure whether that would even help. First, I’m probably the last person he’d want to hear from and second… what if the voice was right?
I pressed my palms to my temples in an attempt to soothe the throbbing in my head, but to no avail. Images of killing myself filter through my mind and suddenly I decide I need to get out of this apartment, but where can I go?
The Hospital.
Next Chapter: Aversion