Stolen Pills
I stole some pills tonight. Snatched them off my dad’s nightstand. He didn’t notice. He’s too drunk to notice anything shy of a plane crashing in our back yard. I don’t know why I stole the pills. I don’t know why I stole those loathsome pills. It felt good to steal something I guess, felt good to take something that wasn’t mine. It always feels good to screw over my father, the man who gave me life, because now every day he takes my life away, one agonizing moment at a time. But for now he’s passed out in his own piss. I guess that’s why I stole those pills: I needed something intoxicating to fill these moments between the live exposures to my father’s atrophied sense of familial understanding.
My finger runs down the yellowed plastic, feeling the lack of texture against my bruised fingertips. For a moment, it’s just me and that bottle of pills; the fat cap that prevents these beautiful pieces of artificiality from falling to the floor. Now I’m shaking it, softly…harder. The insanity of the multi-rhythm beating against the ceiling and floor of the bottle, sliding along the sides back and forth; it starts to hypnotize me…and bring a flush of red to my perspiring face. Now the bottle is across the room. Now I’m next to it, looking down upon it, watching it cower beneath me as a grasshopper to a giant. I bring my foot up and back down. I missed. My foot comes up again. I’m frozen for a moment, imagining the bottle screaming in fear, begging me for mercy. The cries are ignored. Hundreds of little orange shards scatter across like cockroaches exposed to the light. Little white bugs chase after them, seeking an envious safety in the walls and corners. The next moment, I’m on my hands and knees, scrambling to pick up the stolen pills. A moment later, I’m sitting on the end of my bed with a pile of pills in my sweaty hands. I’m confused. My body is screaming for something to be done with these pills, with my body, with life, with death, with the incessant voices that beat out a rhythm inside my head. I raise my hand like a flag, my tight fist swaying slightly as I wipe perspiration from my eyes with my other hand. Slowly lowering my hand to my pocket, I secret the pale candies and practically leap out the door, dragging a jacket behind me.
There’s snow on the ground, and the ice makes me fall. Sliding my way past street lamps and empty houses, I check my six for unwanted guests before ducking into the woods adjacent to my street. Now I’m just running. What am I running from? I’m a psychologists’s dream (do they dream about terrible cases?) as it could be any number of things, mostly consisting of an inattentive father, but joined by a myriad of colorful attendees of any assorted condition ranging from insomnia and depression, to suicidal tendencies and schizophrenia. Branches are scratching my face…twigs are snapping beneath my feet…imagined terrors are following my fatigued footsteps; I know they’re products of fantasy, and yet I can’t shake a dread that crawls along my nervous system with bone crushing glee. This dread pounces on me as I trip and fall to the ground, filling me with an unnameable desire to end my life.
My screams fill the forest, seeming to emanate from somewhere in the ether, amusing to some parts of my brains as if being viewed by an ordinary being relaxing in front a television set with a cup of tea and a warm robe. The screams slowly peter out to a faint whistle with my face contorting to a death mask. I can see myself getting up and limping the last few steps to the edge of the water. I feel the cold warping my flesh as I remove my clothes and walk onto the frozen lake. I underestimate the debilitating power of depression as I reach into my pocket and pull out the pills, carefully placing the entire collection into my mouth and with some effort, swallowing.
Huddling into a ball on the frozen mass of water, I can feel sleep lulling me away from reality, coaxing me with promises of…well…an end. An end to everything. My eyes close, my thoughts spiral, my heart stops. And…everything ends.
