Blue Rose

Chapter five: Something so inconspicuous

Moments of shared pain and Rose's constant company together make a long-forgotten feeling slowly return me. Hope. However, despite this, there is still another shadow in my life that haunts me more than the emptiness Christine had left behind or the memories returning with the arrival of dusk. No... there is something worse, from which I still can't free myself...

Morphine.

- - - X - - -

I'm standing alone in my room and looking with hatred at the wooden box that lies in front of me upon the table. I've been still taking morphine for all these weeks. I keep promising myself over and over that I will end this, that this one is the last dose, but when it comes down to it and a new day arrives, my hand again reaches into this damn casket.

I can't stop

I roll up my sleeve, exposing the left forearm, and I tighten the previously prepared belt above the elbow. I open the casket and look at the syringe and the transparent substance that fills it. Something so inconspicuous ... Why can it have such power over a man, why can it make him its slave? I reach into the box.

I don't even try to fight it anymore.

However, the needle never touches my skin. The syringe is torn from my hand.

I look up. How could I lose myself in the thoughts of a drug so much that I didn't even realize when Rose entered the room? The girl looks at the object she's holding, at the one, only thing I've never told her about, as if she can't believe what she's seeing. I can see the shock on her face, the horror... and then also the stern look of resolve.

She grabs the box from the table, then turns around and runs out of the room.

''Rose!'' I shout, rushing after her.

What is she planning on doing?

I get to her just in time to see her take a swing of her arm and throw both objects far ahead. Straight into the lake. The dark water swallows the offered sacrifice greedily, and a loud splash is heard throughout the cave.

Rose is looking at me, and in her violet eyes I see a firmness I have never seen there before. I don't need anything more than that look to know that every bit of morphine I bring home with me will end up like that. I open my mouth, but there is nothing I can say. I know perfectly well that she is right – it must end.

And because I couldn't make that decision myself, Rose made it for me.

And so I don't stop her when she starts searching through all the rooms one by one. Several times I even tell her where to look and wait patiently until she finishes. Only when she reaches for my wine bottles, intending to give them the same fate as morphine, do I open my mouth to protest – I have no drinking problems. However, when I see the expression on Rose's face, the disgust with which she looks at those bottles... I say nothing.

The memory of the dirty room in the poor district of the city is still fresh in my mind.

There are things that Rose needs too.

- - - X - - -

However, everything has its price – the withdrawal from the drug is no exception. I knew it wouldn't be easy, but... I didn't think it would be that bad. And yet it was only a few months... What would happen if I'd started taking morphine right after Christine left, if the addiction had really lasted two full years? I... I don't think I would survive this.

If all this was only about me, I'd probably have long ago given up and stopped the torture with the next dose. But Rose believes in me. How can I fail her?