Hush.

20::Ashes

I made an important decision a few days later, when my eyes popped open in the middle of the night. A decision some might view as drastic, but one I thought necessary.

My nightmares were not receding.

I would take care of them myself.

Rolling off the couch, I pulled on some jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, tying my hair up in a sloppy bun. The night had been restless; it was the worst fitful sleep I'd had in a while. My hands shook as I grabbed my shoes and jammed them on my feet, still suffering the lingering effects of the nightmares.

They were cruel, but in one, I found inspiration. In one, I found a way out.

It could have been the craziness of three in the morning talking, but the choice sounded damn good to me. And as far as I was concerned, I was out of options.

I tugged the hood over my head as I stepped onto the bus, the only line that ran this late. Or early, I guessed, depending on how you looked at it.

There was one other person on the bus, a man sound asleep in the back who had the kind of look like he just came from Hoover's. I settled into the stiff seat, bending forward to brace my elbows on my knees. I squeezed my eyes shut, centering myself.

There was no coming back from what I was about to do.

No changing the future.

It was a one-and-done kind of deal, and I didn't even need to think too hard about it. I was so sick and tired of my past popping up to haunt me, and I only knew one way to get rid of it once and for all.

The bus screeched to a stop, and I ambled out. I shoved my hands in the kangaroo pouch of my sweatshirt, heart pounding wildly against my ribs. I felt the familiarity of Heart wrap around me like an embrace, welcoming and cautious. Don't do it, it warned.

But I couldn't be stopped.

If you've never walked around a town at three in the morning, I wouldn't recommend it. Everything was ten times creepier than normal. But I could do creepy. I could do weird, and scary, and a little unsettling. Thus was basically the storyline of my life.

It didn't take long for my old, decrepit house to loom into view. Having been away for so long, the glaring errors were even more pronounced to my eyes. The tilted foundation, missing shingles, rusted pipes. Nothing about the building spoke of residents; of a family to care for and nurture the home. The place was better gone.

Gone.

A soft breeze blew, causing the hairs on the back of my neck to stand on end. Now that I thought about it, I really didn't have any neighbors. People who had a clear-working head on their shoulders and weren't seventeen-year-olds stuck in an impossible situation knew to get out. They knew to leave the death-trap of a house behind, and get away from Jeff Herring, the perverted landlord, and start somewhere new. Somewhere fresh. Somewhere that could promise them something.

I always believed a home was a direct reflection of your life, your feelings, and the way you lived them out.

This house had been my prison for so long, and I wanted every useless board and creaking door gone.

Gone.

Forever.

I pushed through the rickety front door, stepping into the heavy darkness of my past. I felt the pain contained within the walls, pressing in on me from all sides. Threatening to break me down into that feeble girl with no sense of direction. The girl just surviving.

I didn't want to "just survive" anymore. I wanted to live. And dammit, if Annie Davis wanted to do something, she did it.

Maybe this darkness I was feeling, the black hole closing me in, maybe it had become a part of me. Maybe some desolate portion of me was sinister, and dark, and just plain angry. At the world, and my parents, and every brutal act of injustice done on an innocent soul. I wouldn't be so surprised to delve within the dustiest recesses of my mind and stumble across the scary stuff I refused to face. The shadowed reality of myself I never wanted to escape; the part of me that came alive at the most inopportune moments.