Stella Starlet

Promised

"You promised," I said, breathing heavily. 

I looked up. "You goddamn promised!" I screamed as my fist smashed against the hotel mirror, its shimmering pieces falling upon the sink and the floor. 

I was angry. I was beyond angry. I was livid. 

"God you're such a fuck up! You can't do anything right!" 

I fell to the wall, all my weight crashing upon the thick slab of concrete. I slid down it, tears cascading down my cheeks. 

I promised myself I would stop being so self destructive. Next thing I knew that night, I found myself breathing in a line of cocaine. 

I didn't even remember wanting to do it nor setting it all up. It was like a blank that I couldn't even remember. 

I was losing my mind. 

Tears. 

Lots of tears, they wouldn't stop.

God, I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. 

I was on a path of utter self destruction, fueled by absolute self hatred and a blazing anger and sadness that drove me to insanity. 

Damn Carlisle, he shouldn't have saved me. 

I didn't want to do this anymore.

For Christ's sake, Stella. Just do it and try again. Take the whole bottle of pills, you won't be saved. There isn't anyone left to save you.

My mind. It was speaking to me. I could hear it, like it was a voice in the room coming from an unidentifiable person. 

"I don't wanna be sad anymore," I croaked out to no one. 

Perpetual sadness was my curse. Sadness, melancholy, desolation; this was my undoing, this was what my life always has been. 

I wanted to be happy like those people in the movies. I wished this was all a movie, that I would hear the word "cut" and I would go back to being some happy actress playing the part of a broken young girl. 

But, as much as I fought it, I was that broken young girl. 

I couldn't even keep the simple promise of not doing anything self destructive. 

Of course you couldn't Stella. Mistake after mistake, you'll never get it right. 

"Get out of my head!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. "Get out," I begged with a weak voice, succumbing to sobbing on the floor of my hotel room. 

Not even after running away from everything I had known, I couldn't outrun myself. I could run for miles and years, but these feelings I was trying to get away from would always be four steps ahead of me. 

Why was my own mind telling me to hurt myself even further? Why was my own mind telling me that I should die by my own hand?

I looked at my shaky hands, the knuckles on my right hand were coated in blood, glinting on there like a layer of rubies. 

"I don't wanna do this anymore!" I bellowed, trying desperately to reach for the bottle of pills on the nightstand. 

_

Carter Adam's Point of View

-

I was driving down the street, headed to the general goods store when I saw an ambulance and two police cars flashing their lights outside of the hotel on main street.

I saw them trying to restrain a struggling person. I saw shoulder-length brown hair and pale skin. 

Adaline.

I pulled into the hotel parking lot in a hurry. I got out quickly, jogging over to see her eyes red and puffy, tears streaming down her face.

"Ma'am please calm down. We're trying to help you."

"Get the fuck off me!" She yelled, trying to claw at the officer. 

I went to one of the officers, who happened to be a friend of mine. 

"What the hell is happening?" I asked. 

He sighed. "Got a call from a coupe people on the floor she was on. Said she was screaming and yelling, we thought it was some sort of domestic abuse case. When we got there, it was just her, on the floor. We got there just in time, she had a handful of pills, we think she was going to take them. I think she's crazy."

I walked away from him, my eyes trained on Adaline. 

"Adaline," I called, gently. 

She immediately stopped struggling and looked at me. 

The look in her eyes was enough to bring eighty men who had seen carnage to their knees. I had never seen so much pain in someones eyes before like that. 

When I stopped two yards in front of her, I called her name gently again. 

I saw her rip the officer's grip off of her and she ran to me, engulfing me in her arms. I wrapped my arms around her and gripped her tight, pulling her to my chest. 

She sobbed. "Shh, it's ok," I whispered to her. 

"Carter, they want to take her for a psychiatric evaluation," officer Kent said, looking concerned. 

"I'll drive her. Let me just get her to calm down, ok?"

The two officers and paramedics looked skeptical but then they reluctantly left soon after. 

I led her to my car and we sat in the back seat. 

"Adaline, what's going on?" I asked gingerly. 

"I don't know what's wrong with me. Why can I hear my mind? It's like a person, telling me to do bad things."

I had to be careful. I didn't know what type of state she was in then. "Bad things how? To other people, to yourself . . . ?" 

"To myself. Mister Adams, I'm losing my mind."

"Who are you, Adaline?" I asked. She came to this small town running from something and I think her state and whatever she left behind are tied together. 

"I can't tell you. They'll hurt you. And me. I don't want you to get hurt because of me."

I had a sharp intake of breath. Someone was trying to hurt her?

"Who Adaline? Who is trying to hurt you?" 

"I can't tell you. I want to, but I can't. Something's wrong with me, I can't see," she said, her voice becoming less cohesive. With that, her head fell onto the side of the car. 

Her body began jerking rhythmically. It took me a couple of seconds to realize she was having a seizure. 

"Shit!" I yelled as I got into the front seat and sped to the hospital.