Hey guys, look who's back! It's, like, your favorite author ever! Haha, just kidding. I've had this written for months and I thought I was gonna make you guys suffer for a while, but now I'm home from school, tragically dying of a head cold, and I really have nothing better to do with my time than post this. So yeah, here it is. Enjoy!

Warning: This is seriously fucked up

Song: Going Under by Evanescence
Oh, and sorry for the creepy-ass description, I couldn't resist

Now I will tell you what I've done for you -
50 thousand tears I've cried.
Screaming, deceiving and bleeding for you -
And you still won't hear me.
(going under)
Don't want your hand this time - I'll save myself.
Maybe I'll wake up for once (wake up for once)
Not tormented daily defeated by you
Just when I thought I'd reached the bottom

My thoughts come in rushed and jumbled in between the steady thump-thumping of blood pulsing in my ears.

Weak.

"No," I mumble, fiddling with the lock on my back door until it opens and I storm inside. "Is anyone home?" I call, even though I don't really want to talk to my family if they're here. I'm answered with silence.

I'm dying again

The pictures I see out of the corner of my eye- the ones that have hung in the hall for years- hardly register with me. The laughing blonde-haired five year old is part of someone else's past. The twelve year old posing like a gangster is some other girl trying to look cool. These memories belong to someone else. I whirl around when the stillness in the hall is interrupted by movement, then sigh when I realize it's my own shadow.

Scared.

I clap my hands over my ears as if to banish the thoughts- the ones that sound oddly like a boy I thought I'd never see again. I'm not scared. I'm recovered. I run to the TV in the family room and turn it on, hoping to distract myself. There's an unnatural girl on the screen; brown hair so perfect it couldn't exist in real life, make up she never could've done herself. No one watching would know it was the first time in days she'd left her house, let alone washed her hair. Who could tell that the make up concealed the sickliness she'd developed, the bags that were constantly under her eyes? No, she was a perfect little Barbie doll, dressed up by overgrown children and speaking the words another person told her to.

I'm going under (going under)
Drowning in you (drowning in you)
I'm falling forever (falling forever)
I've got to break through
I'm going under

"So Erin, what was the first thing you thought when you realized you were being rescued?" The overly de-aged talk show host asked.

"My mind immediately jumped to how great it would be to shower again," I had replied, and the host and I laughed. I shut the TV off, but the forced laughter rings in my ears.

Fake.

"No," I mutter again, more firmly this time. I try again to distract myself. I try to clean, but realize I no longer know where everything goes. I try to bake, but I can't figure out how to use the oven my family got while I was gone. I try to work on school work I missed, but it's hopeless because I haven't been taught any of these lessons.

Useless, pipes up the voice in my head.

Blurring and stirring - the truth and the lies.
(So I don't know what's real) So I don't know what's real and what's not (and what's not)
Always confusing the thoughts in my head
So I can't trust myself anymore

"No!" I protest once again. I run upstairs to my room where I slam the door and pace while humming a Green Day song I've long since forgotten the words to. The voice still carries on in my head. I see a flash out of the corner of my eye and pause to look in the mirror. It's not the girl from the TV I see, but what lay beneath the flashy grins and layers of concealer. It's the gaunt face and dead eyes that greeted me that day on the ship. It's the pale skin that was once black and blue and caked in blood. It's the bare bones that hid beneath chubby cheeks and one-dimpled smiles onlly a year ago. And when I look into the tired eyes, the voice becomes memory on top of memory.

I'm dying again

"Nighty night," he whispers in an eerily soft, calm voice.

Brown hair that hung in his face, covering the eyes that were so filled with hatred.

"Shut the hell up Shitbrains. Do you honestly think I care if one of the surplus brats drowns?"

Black-brown eyes that showed the darkness of his soul as he and Jack circled me like sharks, scanning me, appraising me, deciding my worth.

"Don't worry. We're all going to have tons of fun."

Fang-like canines that embedded themselves in my skin, my lips, my neck.

"Don't worry sweetheart, it's gonna be fun."

Roger McAllistor, the boy who never got caught.

I'm going under (going under)
Drowning in you (drowning in you)
I'm falling forever (falling forever)
I've got to break through

I'm...

It's his voice I hear, his voice that taunts me the way it always taunted me. It's him that lives in my every nightmare, every horrible waking thought of every horrible waking hour. It's him that I can just almost imagine in front of me speaking the words that no one says but I hear anyway.

Weak.

Scared.

Fake.

So go on and scream
Scream at me I'm so far away (so far away)
I won't be broken again (again)
I've got to breathe - I can't keep going under

I'm dying again

Useless. Roger's voice echoes in my mind, each word it's own separate curse. Weak. Scared. Fake. Useless. The words come at me faster. Weak, scared, fake, useless. Weakscaredfakeuseless, weakscaredfake-

"Shut up!" I scream suddenly.

I don't think when I pick up my brush. I don't move when it shatters the mirror. I just stand there and embrace the familiar stabbing pain lake an old friend as the shards fly at me. I almost smile as the warm stickiness oozes down my skin.

It all stops when the door swings open behind me and my sister screams, "Erin!"

It's then that the agonizing pain registers with me. I cry out and collapse, rocking back and forth and squeezing my butchered arms. My sister runs up with toilet paper she took from the bathroom and begins wrapping my cuts with it.

"Alaina," I whisper between sobs.

"Shh," she whispers back reassuringly. "It's going to be okay."

I'm going under (going under)
Drowning in you (drowning in you)
I'm falling forever (falling forever)
I've got to break through

I'm going under (going under)
I'm going under (drowning in you)
I'm going under

There was a time when her words were all I'd need, when I would've believed anything Alaina said. But now her words lack the promise of truth I once found in them. Lies, just like the ones I tell every day, every hour, every minute. Fake, just like the person I pretend to be.

What's happening to me?

I deeply apologize for what I have done to my poor character. You know how, in Teenagers, she was always going through some kind of physical torture? Well, since none of the guys can do that now that they're back to civilization, they pretty much fuck with her mind for this whole story. And...her sanity's kinda gone with the wind...you'll get used to it. She does get progressively better though, so you have that to look forward to! Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it despite Erin's issues, so please review!