Destiny's Betrayal

The Rapture

I knew it couldn't last forever the moment I walked through the door on the last night I would ever visit that godforsaken bar. The loud familiar music hit me like a fatal blow and I felt trapped, but I'd been trapped for a long time. I knew I couldn't do it anymore, couldn't bare the thought of hanging around in here, using money from the last time to get drunk enough I didn't feel when yet another stranger would take to me and take me home.

I ached all over, physically and emotionally, and was at a new loss. This had been my only hope for survival, it had kept me off living on the streets, gave me money, but each night was spent under a different roof, having a bed hardly did much to give me a good nights sleep, and the money, that was just stealing, but I felt like some sort of prostitute. A prostitute, and if you'd asked me even when I was first running from my family if my life could sink to this low a level, I still wouldn't have believed you.

What sort of a life was this, no matter how perfect the escape might have seemed at the beginning? It finally caught up to me, what I was doing, and I became numb to the escape. It didn't work anymore, like a drug I'd developed a resistance to. Now I only hated myself more and more each time I tried to get high. That final night, stepping through the door, being assaulted by the sounds and sights and smells I'd slowly come to hate, I knew I couldn't let myself survive like this anymore. No survival would be better than this life.

As the strangling feeling overcame me I rushed back outside, hardly noticing the rain beginning to drizzle over me as I took shelter in the dark alleyway behind the bar. This place of refuge however was a very bad idea.

I collapsed against the wall, breathing heavily and feeling my tears mix with the rain as I cried about what my life had become. I couldn't go on like this, but if I stopped I couldn't possibly survive long. I'd been trying to find a job for the past seven months with no luck; I couldn't hold out that something would come up before I starved to death. I'd only been able to get enough food to keep me going for the last few months by my deluded prostitution act. I'd run out of that initial starting fund long ago.

So there that left me, slumped against a wall outside a sleazy bar crying about everything I'd lost and everything I'd never have the chance to gain; love, happiness, a normal fucking life. This was it, I realised after a few cold minutes, this would be the end of my life. Nineteen years old and I was destined to starve to death slowly on the streets, or I figured probably get murdered first if I kept hanging around dodgy parts of town like this.

And for once I let myself cry over it, there was no point pretending I could hold back my feelings like I had before. Before I'd repressed them all in the hope something would get better or believed in the impression it would be easier if I just didn't feel at all. Now it was all too late to matter anyway so I may as well feel. It was close to the end, I wouldn't be suffering long I could see that now. Nothing was going to get better and I just had to accept that this would be it, the end of me. My life had never been destined to come to anything more, like the Universe had just decided it had made a mistake bringing me into existence in the first place, so now it was trying to get rid of me as quickly as possible. I'd fought back for a while but that was hopeless because there was no point. I knew that now. The Universe had just given me a bad hand and I had to accept that.

Over my own sobs I hardly paid any attention to the loud voices drifting round the corner through the rain to where I was hiding, but as they got louder I managed to pull myself together enough to wipe my eyes on my sleeve. As I was drying my eyes the group of rowdy men came round the corner, their voices breaking into loud jeers of triumph as they saw me.

'Aayyy,' one of them drawled, probably the leader of this little gang, the largest out of the lot. 'Here he is!' The gruff looking man exclaimed, moving forward, and with a fearful start I realised he was speaking about me. Scared I looked up, meeting the man's gaze as he'd moved within a few steps of me, and a shiver ran right the way down my spine as a wicked grin spread across the man's face.