"By Now"

Josh dropped down onto the couch, folded his hands behind his head and stared at the living room ceiling, still unable to sleep for the third night in a row. This was getting fucking ridiculous, but he was used to it by now. He shouldn’t have been, but after twenty years of insomnia, he didn’t know any other way. It got worse after he was able to kick his heroin addiction, but it was something he had always dealt with anyway. Seventy-two hours without sleep was enough to drive any man insane under normal circumstances, but for Josh, it sometimes blew his entire world apart. He already knew that tonight would be one of those nights when his mind would start to play games with him and create “what if?” scenarios detailing what would have happened to him had he not changed the path his life was going.
What if he hadn’t woken up and come to his senses when he was younger? What if he hadn’t given up the drugs he was so dependent on for so long? He would have died, that’s what. Josh didn’t have a doubt in his mind about that. In fact, those thoughts weren’t new to him at all. He had not only imagined what might have happened during his waking hours, it haunted his dreams as well, when he was able to sleep. Josh didn’t know what to make of all of that now that he was older and had been clean and sober for nearly a decade, but he was tired as hell of wondering about it.
When he closed his eyes, that’s when things would start to unravel. That’s when his past came back to prey on him and turn what he thought he knew into imaginary situations that would leave him shaking. Sometimes, his mind would start to make up new histories and stories with the fairytale endings he felt he deserved after everything he’d done to himself and everyone around him over the years. Josh sighed and gave in to the fictional scenes his imagination was able to create, but only because he had no other choice.

He used to be somebody else, until “her”. Then everything changed. He wanted whatever she wanted. “She” made it that way. She gave him everything he needed and it was all he could do not to want even more. “Carolina” made life possible. She wasn’t a person, she was the name of his religion, his truth, and his drug. She was those little white pills he repeatedly swallowed. She was his biggest fan and his worst nightmare. She was the dark hours between midnight and five a.m. where he found his inspiration. She was sex with anyone he chose. She was what he could count on when his head became too chaotic. She was what he could turn to when he needed a break from reality. She was courage when he had none and quiet when he was too restless. She was what was coursing through his veins at any given time. She was what was slowly killing him, but nothing else mattered because that was what he loved.

Josh shivered as he pulled his jacket tighter around his thin frame. The winter air in Vancouver, hell, in Canada, was more than just cold. It was fucking cold. His breath came out in wisps that he could see and his body trembled against the wind that seemed to cut right through him. His fingers were red and almost numb as he raised a hand to knock on the door of what used to be his former home.
It felt more than a little strange to be asking permission to enter when he still had the delicate, intricately designed skeleton key on the ring in his pocket, but he was no longer welcome there. In fact, that was the sole purpose of Josh’s visit.
He tapped two knuckles lightly against the door several times and took a step back, shoving his hands deep into his pockets in a vain effort to warm them. If he didn’t get inside soon, he would freeze to death where he stood. Rather than focusing on that, he stared down at his shoes and studied them while he waited for a response to his knock. ‘Come on, come on. Open the fucking door,’ he mentally coaxed, shifting from foot to foot.
Josh should have been nervous, but he had known that all of this was coming for a long time, nearly a year, if he wanted to admit it. It wasn’t a surprise in the least. The rest of his friends were shocked when he announced that he needed some help moving his things into a new place, but it had only been a matter of time, in his opinion. The fights were more frequent and the nights spent alone because she had walked out, or sleeping on a friend’s couch just because he wanted to avoid going home seemed to happen more often than not. In fact, he couldn’t even remember when the last time the words “I love you” were spoken.
Finally, the door pulled inward and a tall thin blonde with perfect white porcelain skin and deep brown eyes stepped into view. She still took his breath away in an innocent, angelic sort of way, and he wished he could still say she was his, but she was no longer a woman he felt he knew. Truly, she could say the same about him. Josh was different too. It was the shift in his actions that tore them apart in the end.
“Hi,” she said, quickly running her eyes over him, taking in his altered appearance. He hadn’t been doing well, and it showed.
“How’ve you been?” he asked with genuine interest in his voice.
“Better. But I’ve been worse,” she answered vaguely, shrugging her shoulders. He knew how she felt. That’s what he’d have said too, if she’d asked him the same thing, but she didn’t want to ask. He was well aware of why and little signs like that didn’t slip by him.
Even though the blonde had been expecting him, she still looked at him as if she didn’t know why he was standing in front of her.
Josh took his hands out of his pockets and pulled the zipper of his jacket a bit higher up to try to block out the breeze. “Can I come in? Just…came to get my things and then I guess I’m leaving.” He could see her mentally debate letting him into the place he used to call ‘home’. He could almost read it in her eyes that she would rather do anything but that, still, she sighed quietly and nodded, moving out of the way and allowing him to step inside.
He missed nothing when he turned to watch as she closed the heavy wooden door behind him, being careful not to accidentally lock it. Just another subtle sign that she didn’t want Josh in the apartment any longer than he needed to be. He couldn’t blame her. He wouldn’t have been trusting in her position either. Not after what he’d put her through.
He watched as she folded her arms across her chest and kept her gaze anywhere but on him. It hurt that she couldn’t look him in the face even though Josh knew that it would hurt her too, to stare into those electric blue eyes of his that held so many early positive memories, and later, so many negative ones. She appeared to be as miserable as he felt.
“Okay,” she agreed quietly. “It’s your stuff, you might as well take it.”
Josh wanted to reach out and wrap his arms around her, but he couldn’t. There was no rectifying the situation they were in. He’d tried for months and the best he was able to do was to convince her on the phone to let him come back to the place to get the rest of the belongings he had left. Instead, he opened his mouth once and closed it, unsure of how to tell her everything that was on his mind. Then he opened it a second time, leaning in close to whisper in her ear as if it was a secret. “You know, if I could say what you’d like to hear, I’d tell you this is only temporary,” he said, almost apologetically. They’d gone round and round with their arguments and they both knew things couldn’t ever go back to the way they used to be, even if Josh changed.
“You’ve said that before...” Turning away from him, she lead him further into the apartment, past the kitchen, through the hallway and into what was previously their shared bedroom. He missed the nights spent there the most. Not the sex, not the passion, but the late nights and early mornings in the dark, fingers laced together, talking about the future, even if that just meant the next day or an hour from then. He missed mindless words and funny conversations about nothing at three o’clock in the morning when he couldn’t sleep and kept her awake. He missed talking in circles about anything and everything, even if the subject was senseless. He missed it all.
Those days had been over for quite some time. Instead, they were replaced with anger and a spiderweb of lies and accusations that he couldn’t take back. All the arguments, the fights, the tear-filled hours, the apologies on bended knee, begging her to forgive him for one thing other another came back to him before he ever stepped foot back inside that familiar place.
Josh walked past her and stood in the middle of the room, glancing around at everything that was so different from the way he used to know it. She’d switched the window treatments. They were no longer the solid blinds used to keep the light out that he preferred due to the fact that he stayed up nights and slept during the day. Now they were a sheer white lace with small flowers scattered across the edges. The bedspread was new, too. It had to be, he supposed, since he’d taken his with him when he moved out. His navy blue comforter with black stripes was replaced with something similar in a soft feminine rose colour that had flowers to match the ones on the curtains. It all suited her. All of this was just another sign that his life there was over and that she was trying her hardest to move on.
“Everything is still where you left it,” she said, her voice cutting through his thoughts, startling him a little. Josh nodded his head slightly and pulled his attention back to her words. “I haven’t touched any of it. Do you want help packing it all up?”
“No, I can manage. It’s not much. I got most of it last time,” he said, gesturing around the room to the few things on display that he had decided he could do without when he walked out after their last fight. The fallout from that had been enough to make them agree that they both needed their space. They had to end things before they could no longer be civil to one another.
She nodded and pointed a finger toward the open door in the direction of the living room. “I guess I’ll be out there if you want m-…if you need me,” she amended her words.
Josh watched her leave, then turned to sit down on the bed and squeezed his eyes shut momentarily. Just fucking breathe, he directed to himself silently. Breathe and stay calm. You can’t have a fucking panic attack over this. Not here. Not now. As relatively calm as Josh was able to stay, he still couldn’t get their last fight out of his head.

“Fuck you!!” the blonde yelled and stuck her middle finger up into the air in his direction. Her hair fell across her face in tangled curls and the look in her eyes almost scared him. She was so angry, but Josh was high as a kite. The drugs and alcohol he had recently become reacquainted with around the time he met her were screwing with his mind and he couldn’t quite comprehend what she was saying or why she was so upset. His old vices may have come back into his life, but this time Josh thought everything had been going well enough lately. The two had just moved into a high-rise apartment overlooking the city and he was actually making some money doing something he loved. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. What could possibly be so bad?
“Just fuck you!” she screamed again. She grabbed a glass from the sink and threw it across the kitchen, shattering it against the wall.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Josh asked, still unsure of why everything was falling apart around him. He rested his hands on the counter in front of him and tilted his head to the side, trying his best to come up with an answer.
“You!”
Okay, him. He was what was wrong. He didn’t know what he could have done. That was his first night back to the place in several days after their previous fight. Sure, he had gone on a bit of a bender and had disappeared, becoming unreachable to her, his family, and his friends, but he came back. He always came back. “What about me?” he questioned, trying to narrow it down.
“Do you want the fucking truth, Josh?” She walked around the kitchen island and stepped in close to him, sticking her hand into his hip pocket and pulling out a small square of folded tinfoil. “This. This is what’s wrong!”
Josh stared at the packet and narrowed his eyes, then reached out and grabbed it, stuffing it back into the opposite pocket. “What about it?! You started that. You fucking got me hooked on shit again,” he accused her.
“I…what? I don’t know what you’re talking about! You can’t blame me for that.” She shook her head, confused. “But I do know that you’ve been taking me for granted. You’ve been using me. I don’t really mean anything to you and I know it. The only thing good enough for you now is that shit. “Her”. Your new mistress. “She” gives you more than I can.” The blonde stepped back and brought a hand up to her chest. “Stupid me. I really thought I fucking meant something to you, but I guess I was wrong. I loved you. I thought you’d feel the same as me.” She took a ragged breath and stared up into his eyes.
“You know that’s not true. There’s not a single fucking ounce of truth to that,” he objected, running a hand over his hair to keep it out of his face.
“Yeah, the fucking ounce is in your goddamn pocket,” she refuted, brushing him off and carefully stepping over the broken glass that littered the kitchen floor.
“That was really fucking low. I’m trying to tell you that I do love you. I’m trying to tell you that I wanna be with you! You have to listen to me. Please.” Josh followed her into the living room, pleading with her, suddenly scared that he would lose her. If he lost her, fuck, he wasn’t really sure what he’d do. Everyone around him knew that he didn’t do well on his own, and that was a point he just couldn’t argue. Hell, he couldn’t even cope well when he was surrounded by people who cared about him.
“That’s bullshit! I don’t buy that for a minute, Josh. Not one single fucking minute. If you cared, you’d be here. You wouldn’t be out there doing God-knows-what with God-knows-who. This is a give-and-take, but all you’re good for is the taking. That’s how I know you just don’t fucking care!” She shoved him out of the way with her hand and walked past him, determined to keep going until she got to the bedroom. It was another three a.m. fight and she was tired of it night after night. That was all they had been doing lately.
Josh grabbed her by the shoulders, spun her around and held her against the wall. He was inches from her, blocking her with his body. Josh was unaware that she could smell the liquor on his breath and the lingering scent of the heroin he smoked on his clothing, but he did notice the way she wrinkled her nose as he closed the gap between them even more.
“I’m sorry, okay?” he said breathily, changing his attitude and softly planting kisses against her lips, neck and shoulder. He ran his fingers lightly down her arms and held her hands. Another kiss against her lips nearly convinced her of that. Josh moved her hands against his hips and let go. Running his own hands through her hair, he nipped at her neck a second time, marking her as if she was really his to claim. “Next time, it’ll be better. I won’t disappear on you. I won’t leave without telling you where I am.”
Josh watched as she closed her eyes, and he tried to read her thoughts. He was full of empty words, and promises from him meant nothing. Not anymore. He wasn’t the man he used to be, but still, he tried. “I don’t believe you,” she eventually admitted quietly.
“Well, fuck you!” His demeanor turned on a dime once again and he slammed his hands against the wall just above her head, forcing her to open her eyes wide in alarm. She placed her hands against his chest and pushed him backwards away from her just to get a little space between them. Josh took a step back to regain his balance and then returned the favour by shoving her against the wall for the second time. “If it wasn’t for you and your shit, I wouldn’t be involved in any of this.”
Her eyes watered and she blinked several times, but didn’t stop the tears from streaming down her cheeks . Josh had never physically hurt her before, and his intent was only to get her attention, but he worried that this time he might have gone a little too far.
“How can you blame me for your addiction? How the fuck can you do that? If you don’t like it, just give it the hell up. I fucking hate it when you’re like this!” The blonde reached up to tuck her hair back behind her ears, not bothering to brush the tears from her face.
Josh took another step closer and pressed his hips to hers. He wrapped his hands around her wrists, pinning her arms against the wall as he roughly kissed her once more. “I never said I didn’t like it. This gets me through the shitstorm that is my life. You’re fucking gonna have to deal with it or you can leave.”
He knew that she had tried saying she didn’t want any part of his drug-filled life once before and she had lost track of him for two weeks. Josh took off just to prove that he could get by without her. He showed up fourteen days later looking haggard and thinner than he had before. He had been able to get along alone alright, but not well, and that was enough to tell her that he would die without someone around to watch out for him. She told Josh that she was afraid for him and that his antics had scared her enough to stay “for now.” At least she could keep an eye on him.
“At least tell your fucking friends and family,” she pleaded. “They need to know. They deserve to know why you’re acting this way.”
“No! And you won’t say a fucking word either.” Josh let go of her hands and forced another kiss against her lips, ignoring the way she tried to pull away. “Listen, if it makes you feel better,” he said, bending his head down closer to her ear and speaking quietly, “I know this shit is gonna kill me. I know that. It’s time that I come clean. Just…not now.”
She finally reached up to wipe the tears from her cheeks and took a deep breath. “Fine. Do what you want. But...then what, Josh? What happens next? What do you wanna do now? I can’t keep doing this.”
“It’ll be better later. I promise.” he repeated. “Maybe when the band takes off.”
“Or when you can stay out of a fucking rehab center for more than six months?” she questioned sarcastically, staring at his chest instead of up into his eyes.
Her words registered with him and he knew that she was right to say that to him, but he couldn’t force himself to care too much at the moment. However, the anger had slipped away and he stepped backward to gently took her hand, folding his fingers around hers. “Maybe then. But…but for now, can we just both pretend to sleep?” She was wary, but let Josh lead the way into the bedroom where the two shed their clothing then crawled under the blankets.
He laid on his back and stared at the ceiling for hours until the sun came up while the blonde lay on her side facing away from him, tears still causing her makeup to run and stain the pillowcase. Neither spoke a word for the rest of the night, both wanting to avoid the other and yet another argument. She slipped out of the room and managed to leave the apartment before Josh allowed himself to drag his body out of bed.
“Sometimes the one you want isn’t the one you need,” Matt logically said later that night as Josh told him about the latest argument, leaving out the details of what started it. Matt was the younger guitar player in Josh’s unknown band and had known Josh since they were in high school. He knew the slightly older man better than almost anyone else and never failed to tell Josh exactly how he saw things.
“Fuck that, Matt. That’s not what I wanna hear,” Josh snapped, spinning in his chair to face the younger man. Josh had called him because he needed to get out of the house, so Matt had invited him over, despite the fact that it was midnight and he had to work the next morning.
Matt shrugged his shoulders and crossed an ankle over the opposite knee as he sunk a bit further down on the couch. Even to Josh, it was obvious that Matt was uncomfortable and wanted to sidestep the argument that he felt was coming. It was no secret that Josh had been consistently on edge lately. “Sorry, man, that’s all I’ve got,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.
“Well, what the fuck good are you, dude?” Josh narrowed his eyes at the other man and shook his head. “You know what? I might as well leave. I don’t have anything left to say anyway.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s probably for the best,” Matt agreed with frustration in his voice as he stood to walk his friend to the door.
Josh grabbed his leather jacket from the coat rack before slipping his arms through the sleeves and zipping it up. “Josh,” Matt said, calling the other man by name to make absolutely sure he had his attention, “just remember. What goes around don’t come around. Dude, I don’t wanna fight about this. You’re stressed, you have a lot on your plate, you’re doing too much, you’re not sleeping, you’re fighting with your girlfriend. I get it. But, if things are shitty at home, you don’t have to turn it around and take it out on me. It’s not my fault.” With that said, Josh nodded and pulled Matt’s front door open, walking out into the cold Vancouver night, disappearing from sight as he passed under the streetlight.
Fucking fight… That night he had gone back to the apartment to try to work things out with her, only to have it blow up in his face. It was the same battle every time. The blonde was tired of promises that he didn’t keep, and telling Josh that she couldn’t live that way over and over again did nothing. He was tired of hearing it. He knew he was getting what he deserved, but he couldn’t do anything to change it.
After several hours of arguing, he decided that he should be the one to leave. It felt like the least he could do after what she’d had to endure thanks to him. Neither of them could take the fighting anymore and it was the only plan he had left, so he gathered everything he could pack into every suitcase he owned and crammed it into the car. Josh wound up sleeping in a hotel room for several weeks until he was able to find a new suitable place to live.

Josh made his way around the room and slowly filled a black travel bag with the smaller items he’d left behind when he’d walked out permanently that night. A bottle of cologne that was half full, a handful of CDs from his teenage years that had gotten him through some hard times, a notebook of song ideas he thought he had grabbed on the way out the last time, some clothing, and some photographs all went into the bag before he closed the last drawer and determined that he finally had everything back in his possession.
He tried, but he couldn’t get through that situation without a little chemical peace, so he dug a hand into his pocket and withdrew a familiar square of tinfoil that made his heart started to race again. Josh didn’t know what it was about those stupid little white pills. Just knowing that he had them in his pocket was the equivalent of finding a hundred dollar bill in a pair of pants he hadn’t worn in years.
A smile tugged at his lips as he unfolded the foil, half-worried that it would be empty and half-worried that it would be full. He couldn’t remember how many pills he had left. Josh’s fingers shook and he fumbled far too much for someone who had done this too many times in the past to recall, but eventually he pulled open the last fold and breathed a sigh of relief. There were enough pills in that packet to get him through the next week if he was careful. And he would be…right after the first two.
Josh pulled the tablets out and refolded the package, tucking it securely back into his pocket. Then he stuck the pills into his mouth, working up a bit of spit with his tongue and swallowed. He had almost gotten good enough that he couldn’t taste them anymore. Fuck, he still remembered the first time he had ever tried those things. It scared him enough to swear to himself that he’d never do it again after that, but he had no idea how very fucking wrong he’d be.

“C’mon, baby,” she purred against his neck after crawling across the bed to him. “You can have anything you want. You can have it all. I know you want it all. Money, sex, fame. I know what you like. Join me?” The brunette pulled back just enough to look into his eyes. The corners of her mouth turned up naturally giving her a perpetual smirk, but when she smiled, all hell broke loose and Josh couldn’t stop himself. A small tinfoil packet appeared in front of him and he had to admit that he was both interested and intrigued, so he reached out and took the foil, turning it over in his hand.
Unfolding it slowly, he dragged his gaze from her lips to his hands as he exposed several small white pills hidden among the folds of the metal. “What the fuck is this?” He curiously took one of the pills and placed it in the palm of his hand, staring, sure of what it might be, but not sure enough to accept it without asking first.
“Don’t worry about that, love,” she said huskily, leaning down to pepper light kisses across his collarbone, making him shudder and moan quietly. “Let’s just say…it’ll help you. You’ll like it, I promise. I know how tense you’ve been lately.” She sat up again, the tshirt she had borrowed from him riding up her hips and exposing the underwear she was wearing underneath.
Josh had to admit that it was true. He had been spending late nights and early mornings working hard to try to get his small-time band noticed. When he wasn’t hounding music labels to listen to their cassette tape demos, he was writing new lyrics or melodies and still trying to work his day job. All of that really was stressing him out. Josh hadn’t been sleeping and he was taking his frustration out on the people around him. The candle was being burned at both ends and then some, but he was never one to back down from a challenge, so he kept up the pace until his patience was nearly completely gone and he could barely concentrate. Maybe she was right. Maybe…
Josh raised his hand to his mouth and felt the small bitter pill hit the back of his tongue. He swallowed twice, unable to get the chalky taste out of his mouth at first. He flinched and swallowed a third time as he folded the rest of the pills back into the tinfoil and set it on the nightstand. “What’s this supposed to do?” he asked her several seconds later, still not quite sure that he should have taken it without finding out. He wasn’t that guy anymore.
She pulled Josh’s tshirt off over her head and dropped it to the floor beside the bed, fully revealing the barely-there pink panties she wore and nothing more. “You’ll see,” she responded, crawling closer and straddling him. She put her hands against his bare chest, gently pushing him back against the headboard and nipping at his bottom lip, then running her tongue across it. His hands went to her hips to hold her there as he leaned his head back and closed his eyes, feeling the heat of her body against him and the rush of whatever he had just taken as it went to his head.
Her knees were tight against his bare legs, nothing between them but the lace on her body. Josh instinctively lifted his hips off the bed just enough to press himself against her and she once again bent her head to kiss him and dip her tongue into his mouth, mimicking the moves she wanted him to make once their positions were reversed and what little she still wore was on the floor beside his tshirt. Josh sighed and slid his hands up her body until they were against her sides, thumbs resting against the front of her ribcage.
Though there was never a time he hadn’t enjoyed being in this situation, something about that night felt…wrong. With eyes still closed, he frowned, trying to figure out what might be causing him to feel some mental resistance, although physically, he was more than ready to continue the act.
Josh slowly opened his eyes, squinting against the soft lamp light of the room. It cast strange shadows across her face, creating dark stripes that obscured her eyes and traveled down her body making her seem almost as if she wasn’t there. The lines appeared so deep that he thought he could put a finger straight through her chest. He moved a hand, making a motion to try, but pulled it back quickly, resting it on the bed beside him once he realized how crazy that seemed. He shook his head, unable to get the strange image out of his mind.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked, sitting up straighter in a gesture that pulled the shadows away from her. Flawless pale skin and nothing more.
He frowned again, staring at her body, unable to quite understand what he had seen. “I…I can’t. Not tonight. I feel really fuckin’ strange.”
“That says otherwise,” she stated, shifting her body off of his and pointing down at his hard dick resting against his stomach.
“Yeah…but it… I…I can’t. I need some fucking sleep… I think…,” he replied. The walls around him looked like they were slowly closing in and he was very close to panicking until he shut his eyes again, blocking out the sight. He was just tired. That was it. Too much was going on in his life and it was really fucking with him.
“Oh, come on. Get over yourself. You want this as much as I do,” she mocked, leaning over him once again and running her fingertip down the center of his chest.
“I can’t fucking do it. Not tonight,” he insisted. “I really don’t feel good.” He started to sweat and his sight blurred, dark spots appearing around the edges. Josh shook his head and ran his hands over his face, hoping to clear his vision.
“You’re honestly telling me you don’t want this?” she asked, gesturing to her nearly naked body so close to his.
He dropped his hands back down to the bed and stared at her momentarily. “Fuck, you should know me better than that by now. I just…I can’t tonight.”
The brunette huffed, rolling her eyes in annoyance and frustration. She crept to the edge of the bed and reached for the tinfoil packet he had placed on the nightstand earlier. Unfolding it and sticking two of the small white pills on the tip of her tongue, she swallowed, cringing slightly at the taste she was all too familiar with. “I guess you just can’t handle it,” she taunted, folding the sheet of metal back up and dropping it into the drawer.
Shit, he wasn’t just tired, it was those fucking things she gave him. Josh didn’t know if her words were referring to sex or the drugs, but either way, she was right. He couldn’t handle Carolina. He rubbed at his eyes again and watched her wordlessly.
She stood and reached over to pick up the shirt, tugging it back on over her head and straightening her hair. “That’s too bad. You’d have been in for one hell of a wild ride, kiddo.”
She smirked at him, which, under normal circumstances was a wonderful thing. She had a dangerous appeal that he had been attracted to from the first day he saw her. She was everything Josh wanted. Now, it was as if she was a figment of his imagination, and he almost felt as if he was watching the whole scenario play out from outside his body. It was a strange experience he had never been through before and he sure as hell didn’t like it.

Josh hooked the strap of the bag over his shoulder and walked out into the living room. The blonde was perched on the couch, legs crossed. When he was several steps away, she turned her head and cocked it to the side slightly. “Find everything?” she asked quietly.
“Y…yeah,” he stuttered, not quite able to get his mouth to work as well as he’d like. “Found it all.” He knew he would have to leave the apartment soon, but he wanted to waste as much time as he could before that moment came. He missed her, he missed this. He didn’t want to have to go back to his empty place alone. He blinked hard to try to get his eyes to adjust to the new weird lighting in the room. Just the pills, he thought, it’s just the pills. Don’t freak the fuck out. You’ve been here before.
“Good. So…there’s some mail that came for you. I left it on the table,” she said pointing at the small square table in the entryway.
He nodded, glancing over at it quickly. Suddenly he was fascinated by the way the sun streamed through the glass window in the door and snaked its way up the wall. “Mail…right…” he echoed.
She stood and started to walk toward the door, barely noticing the strange way Josh was acting. He’d always been easily distracted and this seemed no different.
He followed behind slowly, grabbing the stack of envelopes from the table and jamming it into his bag without looking at it, still intently staring at the patterns the light made. Josh hesitated, but managed to pull his eyes away from the pale walls to look at her. “You…fuck…Don’t hate me, okay?” he asked cautiously when they reached the door.
“You should know me better than that by now.” Her lips pulled up in a small smile as she spoke. She took a deep breath before asking the same of him. “I should know you as well, but, you don’t hate me either, do you?”
“Of course not,” he responded truthfully. It was the first time they had spoken without arguing in months and it felt good.
Still, their talk was small, having nothing much to say to one another that hadn’t been said before during all of those fights, all of those nights spent yelling everything that was on their minds. Josh felt about seven inches tall, though, knowing that all of this was happening because he chose to revert back to something he should have left behind for certain a long time ago. “It’s good that you kept the apartment. You should. It was yours too,” he said, opening the door and stepping out into the chilly afternoon air.
She nodded slightly, looking almost guilty for being the one to stay while he had to go. “Thanks,” was all she managed to say.
Josh shoved his hand deep into his pocket to pull out the small silver key which dangled from a skull-shaped keychain he’d bought in his travels somewhere. Holding it between his fingers one last time, he studied it, raising it up to the sunlight that peeked through the clouds, and he blinked as the rays bounced off the metal nearly blinding him. Josh remembered having it made after the third time he had locked himself out at two o’clock in the morning when he was restless, couldn’t sleep, and thought a quick cigarette break might calm his thoughts.
He palmed the key, feeling the heaviness in his hand. That stupid, fucking little piece of metal represented everything that had been good in his life. It was a metaphor, it was symbolic…and now it was gone. Once he lost that, he lost everything. “So, here’s my key,” Josh said, reluctantly handing it over to the woman that used to love him.
The blonde took the key from him and wrapped her hand around it. “I changed all the bills,” she admitted, as if she wasn’t sure if she should tell Josh or not.
“Well, fuck, the place is yours now. Might as well.” He hitched his bag further up on his shoulder. “It’s fuckin’ cold out here. You should get back inside and I should…go...home...” Josh gestured backwards over his shoulder to his car.
She held her hand up in a small wave. “Take care, Josh. Be safe, okay?” the blonde requested, stepping back inside the door and resting her hand against the frame.
“Yeah…right. Safe,” he responded wryly, with a roll of his eyes that told her she was wasting her breath. Josh turned on his heel and walked back toward the small grey vehicle he had been driving since just before she came into his life several years prior. He heard the apartment door close and when the lock clicked behind him, he knew that part of his life was over. At that moment, Josh was convinced that happiness was just an illusion. Why did it feel like he was only built to spill, always left wondering where the love went?
Once he was finally safely back in the parking lot of his condo, Josh put the car in ‘park’, turned it off and leaned his head down against the steering wheel. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he said under his breath, relieved that he had made it home without any real incident. He couldn’t recall most of the drive home aside from a few close calls that shook him out of his stupor and made an impression. How fucking ironic. I could have died doing that. I can’t keep taking shit for granted. I should know better than that by now, he thought, reaching over to collect his bag and head into the house. I should know better about a lot of things by now.
He could hear Matt’s voice echoing inside his head. “What goes around don’t come around.” “Bullshit,” Josh growled. “Fucking bullshit.” He had put a lot of bad shit out there into the world and now it was coming back to bite him in the ass. He deserved it. He deserved it all.
Not that he ever needed the excuse, Josh decided that he had been through enough that day to feel justified in drowning his demons. Grabbing a bottle of whiskey from a cabinet in the kitchen, he headed into the bathroom. He pulled the foil packet from his pocket and dropped it to the floor near the bathtub. Filling the tub with water as hot as he could stand it, Josh stepped in fully clothed and sunk down until he was fully submerged. He quickly twisted the cap off the bottle and raised it to his mouth, taking several deep pulls before setting it on the floor within reach near the foil. He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, sighing quietly. “What the hell is wrong with me?” he mumbled. He could hear his heart pound in his ears and feel it in his chest. This, all of this…he couldn’t stop it.
Josh laid in the bathtub until the water turned lukewarm before opening his eyes to glance around for the bottle instead of groping for it. He reached over to grab the liquor, raising the uncapped bottle to his mouth once again and hissing as the alcohol burned in his mouth and down his throat. He rested the bottle on his knee, keeping a tight grip on the neck. “God-fucking-damnit,” he groaned, leaning his head back. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t fucking do this.”
Josh squeezed his eyes shut once again as the thoughts he tried so hard to avoid took over once more. He wasn’t at all surprised. He waited for them, expected them.

“Don’t you know me by now?” he was asking someone. No…not someone. He was looking into a mirror. His skin was more pale than usual, nearly translucent. His eyes were red-rimmed and the dark circles under them made him look as if he had been hit. Hard. Maybe he had been, he didn’t know, couldn’t remember. He had blood caked in the corner of his mouth and he watched himself as he raised a hand up to touch it, flinching when his fingers came away bloody. Had he gotten into a fight? No…it wasn’t a fight. What the fuck was happening? This was so much worse, wasn’t it? He felt like he knew the answer to that without question. He stared as his reflection turned and knelt down in front of the toilet to retch. When he stood again several minutes later, fresh dark blood coated his lips and trailed down the front of his white tshirt. Fuck…what was Carolina doing to him? “You fucking bitch,” he mumbled and reached into his pocket , pulling something out. He lifted his hand to his lips and forcibly swallowed.
Josh rested his hands against the sides of the sink and leaned in closer to the glass, studying his face once more. “Who the hell are you?” he questioned out loud with a rasp in his voice that suggested he might not have spoken for days. “I know that I remember you.” He could see the man he used to be in his eyes, but his reflection showed someone else entirely different. How did that happen? When did it happen? “I think that you remember me too. You’re still fucking in there somewhere…but where?” he asked, speaking to his former self. How was it possible for someone to become the one thing they swore they’d never be? And how did Josh not notice that it was happening to him? He lowered his head, resting his forehead against the cool glass, and took a ragged breath. He raised a hand to his chest and gripped the front of his blood-stained shirt. “How can you think that doing this fucking shit is helping you? How the fuck can you go on with this when you know that it’s killing you? How can one of us still feel blessed while the other one’s lost?”
Josh let go of the counter and turned, sliding down against the cabinet and drawing his knees up to his chest. “None of this is fucking right. Can’t keep doing this…gotta stop this…” He leaned his forehead down onto his knees. “I know you’ve got to feel the change.” By now, he was rambling just to get the thoughts out of his head. “How the fuck did it get this bad? It just gets worse when it stays the same.” He lifted his head, ran his hand through his hair and leaned his head back as the dizziness started to take over. He closed his eyes against the spiraling objects in the room. Everything good he had ever known, he willingly made the choice to throw away. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore. “So lost,” he mumbled.

How long had he been spinning out of control again? Josh tried to think back to his old life, but he could barely remember what things were like. He knew he was different then. But Josh had lost himself to sex, money, and drugs, and like good sex, quick money, and cheap thrills, he kept going back for more. He lost himself to a dream. In this dream, Carolina made him whatever he wanted to be. She gave him the power of invincibility. She twisted everything until one day he couldn’t tell where the dream ended and real life began. It really didn’t matter because either way he knew it was going to end. Life couldn’t go on like that for him forever. In fact, it should have all ended by now.
Sitting up, Josh reached out of the tub and grabbed the small foil packet, nearly dropping it into the water. “Fuck!” he swore as he tried again. “Fucking shit!” His hands were shaking for no apparent reason. He needed to get out of his head again, even though the last pills he swallowed certainly hadn’t worn off yet. He wanted those fucking pills, but he didn’t need them. Josh couldn’t remember exactly how long it had been since he’d taken the last ones, but he was too far gone to care, too far gone for it to matter anymore. He’d never taken more than two at a time before, but there was a first time for everything. He pulled three from the packet, mentally counting and realizing that only one more was left.
Josh’s body started to tremble in the now-cold bath water, but every bit of strength had been sapped from his body and he leaned back against the wall once again. He sat there shivering, several small white tablets dissolving on his tongue, as he didn’t have the energy left to swallow. He knew he wouldn’t come out of this alive. He knew this time would be the one that killed him. He wished he could have been able to change everything he thought he had known. Or maybe it wasn’t real. Maybe nothing he remembered was real. Josh stared through hazy, unblinking eyes at the last pill he held between two fingers.
Things had gone to shit in such a short time. Why had he let Carolina ruin his life? Why did he give her that power? What was it about her that he was so drawn to? And why couldn’t he walk away? He should have known better by now. Fuck, he hated what she was able to do to him.
The great “they” say that when you’re dying, that’s when things become clear. Memories that were once out of focus suddenly make sense. Fiction becomes fact and lies become truth. Josh had blamed her all along. It wasn’t her. It wasn’t her. It was the drugs. It was “Carolina”. It was him. She didn’t kill him. He did it. “She” didn’t exist. “She” was the personification of everything he had done to himself. He couldn’t get clean and he fucked himself up so badly that he couldn’t pull himself out. He started to see things that his heart couldn’t explain, so his mind made up a new history to make sense of it all, to make a new story to replace the one he lived. It focused solely on finding someone else to blame for his problems rather than having him take responsibility for his actions. The problem was, he realized it too late.
Maybe if things had been different, if he hadn’t let himself get so caught up in everything, things would have been better. But that wasn’t the story. That would never be the story. That wasn’t the fairytale ending that he deserved.
Josh reached up, stuck the last tablet on the tip of his tongue and closed his eyes. He could feel his heart rate slow and the world around him went dark as he rested his hand against his stomach. He breathing was ragged and almost painful, but he couldn’t do anything about that except ride it out. All he could do now was hope that whatever came next would allow him to sit back and say to himself, “Once upon a time, I awoke…in a strange place…”