Before I Wake

Chapter One

The tiny bottle full of tinier pills felt heavy in my sweaty palms, an unnatural dryness forming in the back of my throat as my eyes took in the warning labels. I knew what the capsules could do. They could seriously hurt someone if they were taken irresponsbily and incorrectly. My gaze shifted to the bottle of wine, accurately named Bleeding Heart Blend. Clenching my hands tighter, a small crack appeared in the alcohol's container. My resolve was weakening, much like my shaking knees. I shook my head, recounting the horrid events of the day. Rocks had been thrown, names were called, and an innocence stolen. My innocence. The lump on my head ached, the foreign pain in my pelvic region hardening and steeling my knuckles. Blood seeped through my fingers with the wine as I held it a bit too tightly, my green eyes squeezing shut as I pressed the broken bottle to my parched lips. My throat ached from crying and screaming, now radiating with a chill from the liquid I willingly took in and with the knowledge of what would seen transpire by my own doing. Opening the pill bottle with one hand was difficult, but not impossible. I pressed the opening of their prisoner to my mouth and attempted to swallow, choking and coughing up a tasteless mixture of cheap wine and nonprescription medication. I felt a burning sensation in my stomach and dutifully ignored it. I wouldn't be feeling it soon, wouldn't be feeling at all soon enough.

Distraught, I grabbed another bottle of either and lauched them down my throat. Fueled by an unseen force, I snatched up a few of the pills that were now submerged on the sage green tiles of my kitchen and brought them to my mouth. A foul taste erupted inside my now closed lips, but I swallowed the thick substance that I knew to be vomit. My work was not yet finished as I sought out a new type of pill, one that was prescribed to me. Trazodone, and a year's supply at that. Ninety pills went into my stomach in groups of five, which took a few tries. It was as if my body was rejecting my brain's commands, defying my heart's burning desire. I wouldn't let it, though. Determination quaked within my veins, tainting them. As I felt my hold on the already shattered wine bottle tighten, I brought the crushed and jagged new opening to my lips and welcomed the poison along with the broken fragments of glass.

The urge to vomit was powerful, but I felt a darkness creeping into my psyche with a certain lithe grace. I closed my eyes a moment, lost in the haze of everything I had just accomplished. When I opened my eyes, it was for only a matter of seconds. In that brief and torturous slot of time, my friend's horrified expression flooded through my opticals. I couldn't apologise to her for being so weak and scared, so I simply shut my eyes and let the darkness take me.

I found nothing poetic or beautiful in the marred lines on my limbs, nor did I sense any sensual about the way that death felt as it claimed me. Only one thing struck me as unusual, though I hesitate even now to call it special. My heart wasn't beating, nor was I breathing, but I could see and feel. In fact, all of my senses remained intact. Some people reported having an 'out of body' experience which I had always discredited until that moment. Very distinctly, I saw her throw herself at me as tears flew with her. I felt the moisture that they left in their wake as she hefted me up into her lap and struggled to carry me to her father's cherry red Charger. It was highly unusual.

Then again, so were my friend and I.