Invigorated

Prologue

The party was vivid. Drinks, drugs, girls, guys. Everything was there. I could drown myself in all this. All the voices, they'd be gone. I could leave them all behind here. I moved swiftly to a group of people and decided to start my mingling from there. I held my hand out to one of the boys sitting slouched and clearly drunk on the couch. He hiccuped and held out a bent hand. Pulling me closer he kissed my hand and sat me next to him, passing me some of his unfinished drink. Smelled of tequila. My party started there.

Taking the tequila from his hand and lifting it to my lips, I took a large sip, the alcohol burning the back of my throat. I swallowed it, gulping down the rest. I turned to the drunken boy and placed a kiss on his cheek. He smirked.

"Get us another drink mates! We're having a fine time tonight."

The other people in the group smiled. One girl placed a bottle of whisky in my hands. She looked polite but the whorish outfit said otherwise. She placed one hand around mine.

"You seem like the innocent type." Her other hand moved down into her jeans pocket. She pulled at a plastic bag full of white powder.

"Coke, anyone?"

Eyes turned towards me.

"Why don't you go first?" She hands me the bag. I pour the powder out onto the table and watch as it slowly falls out.

The guy I'm sitting next to hands me a straw. I line up the straw with my nose. The voices start to scream. I hate this. So, in one swift move I snort the cocaine.

A sort of ecstasy fills my body. My sight goes kinda hazy, but I ignore it, reaching to open the fresh bottle of whisky in my hand. As the liquid pours down my throat, I hear everyone else around my bellowing "Chug, chug, chug."

I ignore the burning sensation in my throat and keep drinking and as the singular last drop touched my tongue I throw the bottle away and it lands with a smash. The glass shatters. I move to get up but my feet start to wobble and I fall straight to the ground. I take time to breathe, then get up once more. This time, I find a lighter in my hand. It was funny. I hadn't been holding this before. As I turned on the lighter the fire flickered with a red, orange glow and excited by the warming colours, I moved it around to show everyone.
Big mistake. I stepped on the broken glass bottle shards and fell to the ground. "Fucking bullshit..." I mumbled to myself. Blood dripped down my arm. It hurt but this pain was soon overcome by another burning sensation. The lighter had slipped out of my hand when I fell. The carpet was flammable. I was on the carpet. I screamed.
I woke up in a hospital bed. The horrid noise of the heart rate monitor beeping slowly. Beep. Beep. Beep. It was what one could call annoying. The light of the room was blinding at first but as my eyes adjusted, eventually. I look up to see my two parents. One sobbing their heart out, the other, solemn and still. It was clear they were very, very disappointed."You're seeing an exorcist soon." One said. "We were so nice to you... In what way did we deserve this?" Their face turned from mine. "I don't even think you're our child anymore." A single tear rolled down their left cheek.
"I'm sorry."
They both left the room.
That very next morning, the verbatim came to pass. The exorcist, pale, vampire-like skin and a long weary face came by the hospital. Dressed in all black, he seemed like the human embodiment of the word nightmare. My parents followed in after him. I did not want to see him. My parents' faces were solemn as they looked away from me. The exorcist only moved closer.
"Be freed from your demons. Get up child."
His eyes were pale and unloving. I got up from the bed. All sense of warmth left my body at that moment. My legs felt like a sort of jelly. Wobbly and weak.
"Kneel."
I knelt and looked up at my parents. They still faced away. The exorcist placed his hands on my head. The bible in his hand remained unmoving. It didn't twitch in the slightest. My parents stood behind him. My eyes widened as the exorcist started muttering. It was clear to me that it was some sort of prayer but after the party of what seemed to be moons ago, I was so hungover everything seemed to be screaming at me. As a reaction I used my hands to cover my ears and screamed. The exorcist just got louder, and louder, and louder. It wasn't meant to be like this. I felt my body numb. I could even hear my own screaming. I seemed to be falling into the hole that was my own illness, not the work of some demon, some ex-convict out to destroy my parents life. It was all me. I knew it. The falling stopped.