Another drink.

The alcohol burned at my mouth an d throat. I forced it down quickly and the ache slowed.

Numb. Always numb.

It always numbed the pain; it never made it go away.

My friends Zach and Sarah were staring deeply into a poster up on the wall; something that looked like it was out of a seriously fucked up version of Alice in Wonderland. The bag of empty mushrooms lay on the floor beside us.

The acid had yet to hit me; but the Malibu, vodka and Tropicana mixture had definitely worked its way through my stressed system.

I tried, desperately, to think of anything having to do with my drinking; my drug abuse. But, at the very beginning of my drunken stupor each night, it's all I thought about.

I literally felt the shreds of my heart burning inside of me; the hole that was carved deep in my chest became an inferno as I remembered the night I had first found an escape.

I now lived with my mother and stepfather in Jacksonville, Florida. After my life and soul was ripped from me in Forks, I wanted no reminder of the happiness that had escaped me.

Renee was at her new job, a superstore across town. Phil had fallen asleep early, after he had gotten home from the hospital. He had been hit by a stray ball during practice, right on the edge of the shoulder, and had a few hairline fractures. A few sleeping pills and painkillers later, he had passed out around 7.

I'd been watching this movie about an author with depression problems and drug abuse. The character gets addicted to some kind of prescription drug.

A few hours later, 11 pm exactly, I'd been up in bed, curled into a ball as I tried, and failed, to shake off my nightmare, as I heard Phil creeping to the bathroom. An idea sprang into my head just as quickly as my body sprang up, and I half-ran into Phil's bedroom, searching frantically for his bottle of pills.

I found them by his bedside. The bottle said Oxycodone. I didn't know anything about prescription drugs, but I didn't care.

I dumped three of them into my hand, screwed the lid on the bottle, and ran from his room. I got my bedroom door shut before I heard the sink turn on in the bathroom.

I stared at the three little white pills in my hand. They were so small, I wondered how they could do anything. Absentmindedly, with tears still pouring down my cheeks, I split one in half and swallowed it with the tea next to my bed.

At first, I was pissed off. Twenty minutes rolled by, and nothing had happened. I rose from my bed to get the other half of the pill from the hiding spot I had put it in.

Then, all of a sudden, was a sudden wave of- well- there's really no way to explain it. It was like my entire body was weightless and my mind was blank, peaceful.

I loved it. I reveled in it. My tears stopped.

By this time, I was still thinking about my discovery of drugs, but my vision was clouded with strange, unfamiliar, colorful things. One looked like an elephant, only small and thin. It was purple and yellow. I reached out to touch it, but it disappeared before my fingers could feel anything.

I heard a laugh beside me. Turning, I saw Sarah's eyes on me.

"You feel it, don't you?" She asked, a smile on her face.

I laughed drunkenly. "Yep." As I watched her face, it distorted right before my eyes into a vast swirl of colors, and as she spoke, her words sounded deep and sinister. I laughed again.

It was 1 pm, and the sun shone brightly above the abandoned park. I lay across an old wooden picnic table, my newly bleached, sunkissed blonde hair hanging off the end of the wood. I stared up at the blue, cloudless sky as I took a drag off of my cigarette. Exhaling slowly, I watched the smoke curl towards the sky.

It was a school day, but unbeknownst to my mother, I hadn't gone to school in three days. I really felt no need for anything anymore: besides cigarettes, drugs, drinks.. and sex.

I never thought of myself as a sexual person; I never really had tried to pleasure myself or thought about someone else doing it. But the substances I abused had a different plan for me.

Brian, my current 'boyfriend' for the day, ran his hands along my exposed stomach. I wore nothing but a brown bikini top and worn, cut-off shorts. It was, after all, 90 degrees with the baking sun straight up in the sky.

I stared at Brian while he dumped a small amount of coke right in the middle of my stomach. He pushed it into a line before smiling at me and snorting it quickly through a black straw.

I laughed at him, and leaned forward as he dumped another line of coke onto the wooden table for me. I bent down and inhaled the harsh substance.

"We'd better make a run for some more soon, I've only got one line left," he said as I lay back on the table. I took another drag off my cigarette.

Brian pulled out his small, Ziploc-bag full of weed, and laid out a piece of rolling paper. I didn't watch the whole process, as a minute into it, I'd heard something in the palm trees.

I shifted my head to the left, where I heard the rustling, and gasped when I caught sight of a pair of golden eyes. Before I knew it, it was gone.

Wondering if it was the drugs, I sat up quickly, dumbfounded. Brian eyed me suspiciously and I just waved his questions away, putting my face in my hands.

In the trees, a figure moved from the sunlight, his melting, golden eyes burning solid as he left the park.