you aren't born with strength, you cultivate it

RHYS |One bullet in the chamber

Written/Published: 24 APRIL 2023

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He breathes unsteadily, eyes locked on the dash. She's not there. He reassures himself despite his increasing trembling. She's not there. He repeats, words deaf to himself as the panic sets in.

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I'm on a roll of suffering. This is bad. Uh oh. *Smiles nervously*

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"One bullet in the chamber

Breathe easy, take your aim, boy

Ain't nobody gonna save youSo what you gonna do?

All eyes on you"

"All eyes on you" | Smash Into Pieces

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TW: PTSD, implied/detailed abuse, verbal degrading, suicide goading, referenced attempted suicide, knives, guns, boiling water wounds

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His skin burns. There's a bubbling, burning fire searing through his tissue, digging for bone. He feels the aches, feels the touch of someone not there, someone with disgusting, terrifying eyes of hazel. The feeling spikes, and he swears he could smell lavender and honey. It tickled his nose and invaded his sinuses, griping him with terror and forcing him stock-still. Charcoal-brown eyes stare, unseeing, to the dash and outside the windshield. Crooked, scarred hands are curled around the steering wheel of the vehicle he inhabits. From his grip, his knuckles are bone-white, the appendages tingling and buzzing. Clenching his jaw, his shoulders tense, finding himself struggling to push oxygen through his lungs. His chest feels impossibly tight as if someone was pressing down on his ribs, trying to push the air out of his lungs. Among phantoms and visages of perfectly manicured hands and the thick aroma of lavender and honey, there's a flickering of blue in the corner of his eyes.

Rhys is stuck. He's trapped. His world is burning, reality fraying and leaving room for his mind to craft deceptive images. It forces him to feel, see, hear, and smell things he shouldn't. Deep inside, he knew it wasn't real. He recognized he was having an attack. He knew all too well how his last ended and it didn't help calm him down. When he looks at his arms, he couldn't see the tattoos that artfully displays ink. He doesn't see the ink that kept him sane and blocked his eyes from the marred skin underneath. Instead, he sees what he was covering. It's ugly, gruesome and horrifying. From burns spreading across his forearms, to deep lacerations slicing uneven gouges into skin. The burns appeared to crawl over his arms, hugging them and holding tight, not letting him move. They were the worst, the way healed skin was packed by scar tissue upon scar tissue, building a mass of pain and misery.

He's unsteady and nauseous, unable to move, unable to stir. He could feel his world spin and turn on its axis, jumbling his panicking mind. Rhys feels like he's that unsure twenty-five-year-old. That weak-willed man that endured practical torture, endured constant berating and slaps and jabs and tossed boiled water and cigarette buds searing skin and-

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The spinning comes to a screeching halt. His body's violently trembling and there's someone in the corner of his eyes. Their mouth is moving, knocking on the driver's window once again. He knows he recognizes them. There's a tickling in the back of his mind that tells him he knows this person. The campaign hat and the blue uniform, the smooth-yet-ragged features, the cool, calculating eyes. He knew this person. But, for the life of him, he couldn't pinpoint a name past whispered taunts, past whispered wishes for him to die, for him to finally succumb, for him to finish the job he failed twice.