A Wonderful Life

Boils cover your skin. These sickly yellow bubbles with red- violet surrounding them ooze, coating the body in a sticky film of pus. Nervously scratching your scabbed forearm until blood starts to collect and slowly drip down to the concrete, you start to fidget on the park bench, darting your eyes back and forth, as thoughts race through your mind. Why is she so late? Are the cops here, hiding? She’s not coming, is she? Where is that chick? I’m gonna get caught, aren’t I? The cold morning breeze smacks you in the face, sending shivers throughout your body. A silhouette appears from a distance. She finally arrives, walking slowly, cautiously. As she comes closer and closer, she smiles, and waves, as she arrives at the usual place, the bus stop at Buckstom Street.
“Y-you got it?” you frantically ask.
“Do you have it?” she calmly replies.
You nod your head like a bobble head as she sticks her hand in her pocket, taking out a small, tan envelope the size of a bottle cap, then shows it on the palm of her hand. You stare at her with a puzzled, strained look.

“What is this stuff, man? This is not what I want! I need the other stuff, man! The other stuff!” you exclaim in a hushed whisper.

“Relax, it’s in the packet, like it always is. Now, give me the money, “ She reassuringly says.

“You sure? You not lyin’ to me?”

“Why would I lie to my most valued customer? Now, give me my money.”
You proceed to hug her as you slip the money into her hoodie. She nods at, looks confused for a moment, talks some gibberish about the wrong bus stop, waves, turns, and walks away into the morning darkness. You look around, darting your eyes back and forth like a tennis ball in a match, impatiently waiting for the bus, tapping your nails on the bench. What are you doing to yourself? You were an honors student with five scholarships. You wanted to be a doctor, helping little kids and bring smiles to their faces. Why did you take that needle from your boyfriend? Why did you want to fit in? Those little bits of consciousness whisper in your ear as you try to shake them away, refusing to allow those thoughts invade the mind.

You arrive home; there, a raggedy, disorganized, empty apartment with a mattress in the middle waits. Immediately, dragging a chair next to the bed, you frantically look for that wonderful, glorious sharp needle that chases away all of the worries. Inhale. You take the needle full of that wonder drug and pierce it in between you toes. Exhale. You laugh. You grin ear-to-ear, thinking: My life is better, clearer, and happier.

Breathing slower, you still continue to laugh, as though it was a matter of life or death. As you weave in and out of consciousness, breathing in your last bits of air, you start to sinisterly smile like the Joker. Motionless, you lay there as regrets start to flow in. Regrets like: how your family gave up on you after seven attempts of rehab. How you threw away my dreams for this measly drug. How you almost killed your own brother, Jake, when you were off the drug. Without knowing, tears form out of the corner of your eye. You hysterically laugh, gradually turning into a sob. This is the life that I wasted.

As you walk in the afterlife of Somewhere, you look at yourself. You look in the refection in the waters and see yourself- not when you was a teen, but when you were a child. An innocent child that just wanted to play with her toys and eat ice cream for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This was when you never knew of the demon fruit called drugs. This was the life you wasted because of that white drug.

You think you can beat it, but you can’t. You even dropped out of high school because you wanted more time for that useless boyfriend, thinking he was the one and only guy for you. You were a naive, and you can never go back and change the past. You will forever be known as the girl who screwed up her life and became a deadbeat druggie. You got your kid taken away from you because you decided that drugs were the necessity, not your own child. You had one chance at this game we call life, and you sacrificed it for this garbage to “relieve your stresses”. You could have been successful. You could have been living at a home with a husband and two kids, like you always dreamed of. What are you now? Where are you now? You’re dead, left on the curb, with no one to be with you in your last moments. You messed up. You really messed up.

You have nowhere else to go, no place to be except in this miserable afterlife, watching a replay of all the mistakes you made. See you then.