Up From Hell

Chapter 3

Halbred had never quite purposed to turn out the way she did. After her parents divorced, she turned to her friends to find the love and guidance she felt she couldn't find at home. The only problem with that was Halbred's friends were just as emotionally unstable as she was. Before she turned 14, Halbred had already found comfort in addictive substances. Halbred was an alcoholic by the time she was 17. She had a consistent on and off relationship with her addictions, mostly because she knew deep down that she didn't like the person she became when her addictions ran her life. Several times she had "come clean," only to fall back into the rut in which her life seemed to be stuck.

In fact, the only reason she was living in her grandparents' cabin was because she was sober. Or at least she was supposed to be sober. She has just finally broken it off with her boyfriend of three years and fellow addict, and she had convinced her grandparents that she had left her addictions behind with her ex. And she almost had. She had managed to sober up for several months, only to run across a bottle of alcohol and fall back into her alcoholic addictions. At least I'm not doing drugs anymore, she reasoned. Lots of people like alcohol a little too much. I'm not really that bad. I could stop whenever I wanted to, I just don't want to. And so she told herself over and over again, filling herself with fake sensations of pride for only being addicted to alcohol.

There Halbred sat on her bed drinking whiskey straight from the bottle. She didn't really like the taste, but it got her drunk faster than other alcohols. And she really needed to be drunk right now. Halbred could feel the darkness slowly creeping up on her and threatening to shroud her completely with sadness. She didn't like feeling that way. She hated how those voices in her head would tell her how pathetic she was  and how much of a drain on the world she was. The air you breathe can be better used elsewhere, the voices would say. Even though she hated what the voices had to say, she would sometimes admit to herself that they were right. The world would not miss her presence because she was more of a hinderance than anything else. She was riddled with addictions and nowhere near functional enough to offer anything positive to the world. Her death would be the best gift she could give.

Halbred sighed and set the bottle down on the small table next to her cot. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall and ignored all the hateful voices as best she could. Instead, she searched for the one voice that alway promised her she could be different, that her life was not over and could still turn into something beautiful. It was at dark times like these that her one positive voice in her head kept her spirit high enough to ensure she didn't do something drastic. She sighed again, only to be startled into awareness by a loud thump next to her. Halbred looked to her small bedside table and realized that the noise she heard was the bottle of whiskey hitting the floor. Somehow it had managed to fall off the table, though she wasn't quite sure how that could happen since she had originally set the bottle safely in the middle of the table. Sluggishly, she bent over the edge of her bed to collect her bottle and restore it to its place on her table. As she reached down, something bright pink peeking out from under her bed caught her eye. Halbred, out of curiosity, reached for the pink instead.