"Don't forget your bedtime prayer, my child."
"Little that would do, angles can't even protect me anymore." I whisper under my breath. The lights go out and the door closes behind my clueless mother. I wish I could be a better fourteen year old son for her. I really wish I could.
She doesn't know anything.
My eyelids grow heavy as slumber calls out to me. I drift off into a blank sleep, ignoring my ink stained conscious just as I always have to.
A large handful of hours pass, I know they do. Though for some reason the air lacks a single particle of light as I reawaken, my head throbbing and my breathing snarling almost as that of a wild animal. I can't control the heaving, I can only lie there and feel my chest as it repetitively rises and falls.
I wait. I wait for my sight to adjust to the dark atmosphere, but my ability seems to fall short. I then try to grab my phone off the nightstand, but my arm becomes limp.
I don't think I'm laying in my bed anymore, for the supporting platform is solid and my temple rests up against its side. Instead of the comfort of my silky sheets surrounding my body, what I make out to be a thousand small packages weigh down my limbs and restrict any movement. I can feel the box like objects with my quivering fingertips. They're cold. I'm very cold.
Where am I?
"Hell. Your very own hell." A voice answers back to my questioning thoughts.
My heart skips a beat as the tone slips into my ears. I'm not alone.
"Lukas...Lukas...", it breathes.
Suddenly a whistling tune rings out of the darkness, some sort of wicked venom practically dripping into the song's melody. A figure emerges, almost instantly swallowed back up again by shadows. But I had already seen too much of it, and I could feel it's crippled form close to me.
"Don't hurt me." I squeak, my throat feeling as though I had just swallowed a bucket of hot sand.
It cackles. A laugh so maniacal it sends every nerve in my system into a tingling flurry, and my spine cradles a weaving shiver, "Oh, so now you're worried about people getting hurt? What are you sitting in there, boy?"
"I-I don't know."
I can almost feel his twisted grin like a slap across my cheek, "It's a bathtub, you idiot. You're being bathed in your own secrets."
I began to argue against any understanding, but then my mind clicked. I knew exactly what was contained in each and every one of these little packages, "How did you get this?" I ask, fear nipping at my stale tongue.
"You mean all of these drugs? You know very well how I got them, the same way you always do."
"I've never done drugs," I say through clenched teeth.
"Maybe you haven't. But all of the other guys have. Two of them overdosed and you didn't even go to their funerals. You never told anyone."
"Just let me go!" I yell, my skin now burning with the same rage I've always had trouble controlling.
"Be my guest," It snickers.
I muster enough willpower to climb out of the tub and release my body from under the extreme weight. Every part of my being feels weak and I sway now that I'm on my feet. My shaking knees crumble and I fall against a chilled wall, smearing a thick liquid that handprints against the shadowed surface.
Blood.
I avert down to see a deep red pooling and overflowing from out of my mangled palm. I hadn't even cut it, yet the wound was right there, gushing.
"Look familiar?" It speaks again, it's voice now coming from the opposite side of me and it's hot breath blasting against the back of my neck, "The guys wanted something good for your initiation. The poor kid never knew what was coming."
My breathing hadn't eased in the least as I grasped my bleeding hand, identical to the one I had left Jonny Meyers with that night.
"Look. There he is now."
A dusty curtain was instantly pulled back, revealing a window I had never known was here in this mysterious place. I look out into the night abandoned streets. Horror gashes at my stomach as all life drains from my expression. I see Jonny curled up on the pavement, being kicked and beaten by a dozen other beings around him.
Stinging tears map their way down my cheeks, "No! Make them stop!" I hopelessly scream, "I never wanted any of this!"
At that moment, the heads of the beings all turn towards me. I'm gone. They all begin sprinting towards me, and within seconds the window is smashed in, sending a million tiny shards of glass into my tasseled hair. I could run, but it would be no use. These are my demons. I had done this to myself.
They knock me to the floor and their ice cold fingertips psychotically tickle my throat. Their whispering my name only grows obnoxiously louder until it consumes my head entirely.
"Oh, God. Forgive me!" I cry out with the last ounce of strength I own.
Consequently, a bright, almost blinding light finally claims victory over the darkness.
I'm not sure if I'm dead or alive.
All I know is that I was on a breaking point, and I completely shattered.
I can't live with my secrets anymore.
