It wasn't that I wanted to die. It was just that I was so sick of the shit that was happening inside my head. Things always were like that, ever since I could remember and I knew certain things that no one else knew. I had secrets, you know, secrets that made me different from everyone else. It made me feel hopeless, as if I were standing on a table in a room filled to the brim of people, just screaming, screaming, screaming, but no one even looked up. I didn't know it this was like that for everyone, if everyone felt that way, but if they did, why didn't anyone look up?

As human beings, we are so designed to be only consumed with whatever shit is going on within us, but isn't it also our job to communicate with others, even if we don't want to and it'd be easier to just ignore them. We have feelings built into us, feelings like empathy and love and care, for a reason, right? It just only seemed that I was the only one who had those feelings, the only one who looked up, the only one who screamed, the only one that was even feeling anything at all.

It was an oxy-moron, at its finest. I cared too much, yet I was a first grade sociopath.

"Get your fucking face away from me, you bitch!"

I dug my teeth into the nurse's arm, and she squealed. I let out an angry, almost infantile scream, throwing my breakfast tray away from me. I often had fits like this in the morning.

The morning always made me sad, always made me feel hopeless. Everyone always said that the morning was just a new beginning, a new time to make up for things we had done in the past and right our wrongs, but I viewed it differently. I saw it as another inenvitable fuck-up day, to further unhinge myself into this maddening world.

"Honey, please, let me just see your arm. I have to check your vitals and make sure-"

"No! Get the fuck away from me, bitch! I don't want to hear your stupid fucking voice! La, la, la, la, la!" I sang, covering my ears and remaining cross-legged on the floor.

It was a usual thing for me to have fits in the morning. My doctor didn't know why, neither did my therapist or psychiatrist or any other college trained dipshit in this place. The place known as Merryweather Clinic, an adolescent Psychiatric Ward. It was a place where the really crazy went, the hopeless teenagers that were murderers and shit. I didn't murder anyone. Yet.

"Oh, for God's sake. Esmeralda, quit biting the new nurse and get the fuck off the floor before I call in Doctor Paterson and he has his way with your skinny ass."

The only nurse I actually grew to like, sort of, was Alaina. She was this heavy black nurse from Georgia and she didn't tolerate any bullshit. The rest of the nurses here were either young, pretty little nurses out of the nurse factory who didn't know what they were doing, or the ones that were too afraid to talk to me.

That was pretty much everyone, except Alaina.

I stopped screaming, took my hands off my ears and smiled at the new nurse that was now whimpering in the corner, holding her newly scarred arm. She looked at me with so much fear that I thought she was going to admit herself into this loony bin. Alaina rolled her eyes as I stood up, turning my devilish grin to her sassy face.

"Oooooh. That sounds quite sexy, but I don't fuck old fat men." Alaina, again, let out a sigh and rolled her eyes. She always did that with me. She was the last person to take me seriously.

"Holly, go back and check on the patients in rooms five and six. I should have known better than to let you start your first day with the craziest bitch in here." She said, clucking her tongue. Holly, the new pretty, little nurse, scurried off, with tears in her pretty, little blue eyes.

"Bye, Holly!" I waved, cheerfully.

She looked back, and broke out into a sob. Classic.

"All right, she-devil, open up." I smiled, sarcastically, and opened my mouth for Alaina. She checked my throat and sighed. "You keep screaming like that, you're going to ruin that pretty little voice of yours."

I said nothing and let her take my blood pressure. I hummed to myself, which the other nurses found even more horrifying, but Alaina didn't care. Sometimes she even hummed along with me.

"Why you got to scare all my interns, Esmeralda? Holly's real sensitive too, oh good Lord. She's probably gone to quit now." I glared at her, fiercely. She sighed.

"Sorry. Emma." I stopped glaring and shrugged.

My legal name was Esmeralda Angelina Jane Rowe, but only my whore of a mother called me Esmeralda, because she named me after her and the dipshit that was my doctor insisted on calling me that as well. I wanted nothing to do with that skank, so ever since I could walk, I made everyone call me Emma. My mother found it insulting, but I found it even more insulting to name me after such a cock-sucking whore.

I shook her from my mind, knowing that road wasn't worth going down. I began to think about the scared, little nurse I just bit. Oh, God, that was fun. I giggled to myself as I rocked back and forth on my bed.

That made this morning particularly good.

"She smelled like a hooker." I commented, a very beats later. Alaina rolled her eyes again and began to take blood.

"I wouldn't be surprised. These poor girls got to come here all day, barely make anything, and then go to their shitty jobs. Gotta talk to Paterson about raising their wages, especially if they got to deal with crazies like you all day." I stuck out my tongue and watched, intently, as she drew blood.

It was my only favorite thing about the morning. When the nurses took blood from me, it was probably the only time I was silent and not making a fuss. To be honest, making a fuss was so much fun for me, to watch all those nurses go insane and Doctor Paterson to come in with his nerdy, big glasses and stained suits and ask me the same question he has been asking me for the past year: "Esmeralda, why?" I didn't know why, I didn't know why at all. It was fun, I suppose, to make people listen to me. To be the one to cause the trouble, to be remembered as the ultimate crazy in here. I mean, if you weren't going to embrace the crazy in you in a fucking mental hospital, then when? It was comical to me.

But god, when Alaina drew blood, it was so perfect the way she did it. I felt no pain at all, as the blood filled up the small, narrow tube and I wished myself to be lost in it forever. I loved blood so much, the warmth it had once it came out of your body, and how pure and real it was. Everything else in this lifetime is so full of shit, you know, so full of fake, little lies that people tell you to make their own lives seem more interesting.

But blood, blood was literally a part of you that would never be unreal. It was beautiful.

"Breakfast is ready. I, of course, get to be the lucky one to escort you down there, since you're being kicked out of the group today, once again." She gave me a look and I smiled back at her, shrugging.

"What did you do this time?"

"Mouthed off to Sherry Dipshit." Sherry was our music teacher and the corniest, energetic little pop tart shit I've ever met in my entire life. She was far too peppy and I wanted to punch her.

"Mmhmm, is that so? What did she do?"

"She was trying to make me sing along, but I refused. Long story short, I kicked her in the face."

Alaina gave me my arm back and packed away her medical weapons, as I like to call them. She gave me a really long, serious look and sighed, "If you keep scaring away everyone that tries to help you, you're going to be left with no one."

I shrugged again. I smiled. "So? I'll have me, and I love me." Alaina smiled at me, all knowing, like she did to me all the time. It was true that Alaina was wise and smart and all that shit, and she was the only one to challenge me, too. I liked her for that.

"One of these days, you're going to scare yourself, too, little girl. And then you'll have no one." She got off my bed, fixing her pale blue scrubs and looked back at me before exiting.

"I'll be right back. Remember, security is always watching." I rolled my eyes as she left the room and looked up to the camera that was in my room. They only installed it in my room, because of how many times I've tried to break out. I've lost track of how many times, but every time I did manage to get out, I always came back somehow.

I'd live on the street, homeless and cold for days, fucking any guy I could to give me enough money to get a plane ticket to sunny San Francisco. That's where my dad lived, the only one who actually cared about me. My mom, older brother, Oliver and little half sister, Tessa, all think I'm some sort of devil. Like, literally. They think I'm that freaky Exorcist girl, that my soul is just possessed by the devil. My batshit crazy mother actually tried to get a priest to throw holy water on me.

Crazy doesn't fall far from the tree.

Some undercover cop or something always arrested me. I couldn't keep my temper on the streets, especially when some guys didn't pay me nearly as much as we agreed on, or when some other whore tried to steal my corner. I've put a few of them in the hospital, but the men who I've challenged always put me in the hospital first, because I was fierce, but some dicks were just quicker. I'd always come back to this horrible place, the place that became my home for so long. It was a place where no one should actually call home, but jesus, it was mine. I haven't actually been to my house, my actual house, in three years. My mother stopped visiting a long time ago, even though Oliver visits me sometimes. I never see Tessa, not if my mother can help it. I missed her.

Whenever I thought about my mother, I always became enraged. The cocksucker was a drunk when I was born and threw my dad out, because he caught her with another man in their bed. He was going to move out anyway, but the fact that she kicked him out was something I just never forgave her for. I was only around four and Oliver was ten or so, but my mother always seemed to favor Oliver and Tessa over me.

I was the unwanted middle child, I suppose, the troubled kid that got into fights at school and never did as she was told. She sometimes beat me, used her cruel words against me, but I always prevailed. She ended up becoming sober when she met good old Harry West, a corporate lawyer/Super Jesus Freak Minister with a shitload of money. He was yuppie douchebag and couldn't see that my mother was just fucking him for the money.

We moved out of the shithole we lived in into his beautiful mansion on the most expensive part of town and that was that. A new family, a new life, I suppose, that all just screamed bullshit. They had Tessa, her new perfect, little daughter, and the rest seemed to be history. I stayed out of the house as much as I could, fucking around, doing drugs and always getting suspended in school. My mother gave up on my existence a long time ago, she said, ever since she met the dick minister.

It was comical to me that she went from being a trashy, no-good whore to a corporate, all religious housewife that had bible prayer sessions at our house with deviled eggs and tea. I want to vomit in my mouth when I think about her, what she is and how I will never be like that. I'm convinced. I want her to burn in hell, along with her new, fantasy life that was caked in bullshit.

She sent me here, after other reasons and events, and forgot all about me. It wasn't good status to have your daughter in a fucking mental hospital, I suppose. I haven't seen her in a year. Our last session was the same old thing, me calling her a classless whore that still likes to fuck around and her crying, asking Doctor Paterson why I'm like that.

She pulled the whole, "I raised you, you're my daughter!" thing on me, to which I always replied, nonchalantly, "You never gave two shits about my existence, Greta, but thanks for playing." She hated it when I called her Greta. It was her middle name and her mother's name. Yeah, my grandmother and I had one thing in common: we both hated the cocksucker.

I kept looking at the camera and just wondered if anyone else was staring back at me in the security room. Everyone on this God for saken staff knew me, knew me as the longest patient in here. People came and went, getting better, finding their own personal haven or some shit, and got to go home to better things. They moved on with their lives, or at least got better at lying to themselves that anything in this lifetime is actually real.

They moved on to their boring, average jobs and choked on their average, mediocre lifestyle while I sat here, caged, but yet freer than all of them combined. I was never in chains, never chained to any part of this life. I was the freest person I knew and if all else failed in my life, which, let's be serious, will, at least I know I'll have that.

Alaina came back and looked at me. "Are you just going to sit there looking stupid, or what?" I crossed my arms over my chest, still sitting on my bed.

"I'm not hungry."

"Emma."

"If you don't get out of here in ten seconds, I'll kill you."

"That shit don't work on me. You know that."

This was an ongoing battle with Alaina. It was her job, along with the other dipshits in here, to make sure I eat three meals a day, but they always failed.

I never felt hungry, at all in fact. I went days on end without food and my stomach wouldn't growl at all. It's always been that way with me. I was pretty underweight for a seventeen-year-old girl, weighing only about ninety-three pounds, but that didn't bother me. I didn't like food. As a kid, my mother never had dinner for me, and I always made it for myself. I had to buy my own, cook it and all that, so I guess it just never stuck with me. Sometimes, we were so poor that we couldn't afford food, so I would go on days without eating. People noticed, but I didn't care. I just didn't. Food always came up on me, anyway, and I hated throwing up. Doctor Paterson diagnosed me with anorexia last year, but he's a dipshit. I don't like food.

"Do you want me to call Doctor Paterson?" I smiled, shrugging.

"I guess that's what you'll have to do. Call Doctor Shithead, go head, but I'll remind you that it is my own right not to eat." I retorted, making that weird vein in Alaina's forehead stick out. I giggled. I love making that vein pop out.

"And I'll remind you that after five PM, on the dot, I am not on duty as a nurse no more and nothing will keep me from grabbing your raggedy ass out of that bed and force feeding you some goddamn food." I widened my grin, laying back and putting my arms out to support my head.

"I look forward to that, Alaina. Close the door on your way out." She huffed and exited my room, mumbling something about me being a crazy bitch under her breath. I began to laugh out loud, fully enjoying this, but then I heard a scream.

"NO! NO! LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE, GET THE FUCK OFF OF ME!" That was a new voice. Oh, goody.

I always enjoyed comical theater. I jumped up, going over to open my door. There, in the hallway, Alaina and a bunch of guy nurses were trying to control some crazy teenage kid. My eyes examined him.

He was quite tall, wearing a black shirt and black jeans. He wore a black hoodie over him, but it began to fall off as he thrashed around in the nurses' arms. He had shaggy, long-ish dirty blonde hair and his eyes. Fuck, as I looked into his eyes, they were the blackest I've ever seen. They were full on demonic, which was intriguing. He looked about my age, possibly older, but he was strong. He even knocked Danny, the buff male nurse, down on the ground. He held onto his head, his hands tearing at his hair that fell in his eyes.

"GET OUT OF MY HEAD, GET OUT OF MY HEAD!"

My eyes widened as Doctor Paterson rushed over, carrying a syringe and just like that, with one stick of a needle, the kid blinked a few times and fell on the floor. I watched, in awe, as the nurses took him away to the "quiet room", also known as the straightjacket room.

There really wasn't any straight jacket, but it was a room with a single, gross bed that was gross on purpose and cement walls. I've been put in there far too many times, and it really was horrifying. I've been in that for hours, even a full day, and at the end of it, your head feels as if it is going to float away with your thoughts.

After the nurses calmed all the other crazy patients and Danny got taken to the infirmary, Doctor Paterson looked at me. He was tall, but fat, and bald. He wore his huge rim glasses on the tip of his nose and had the same tone of voice.

Bored and bored.

"Esmeralda, Alaina told me you're refusing to eat."

"What the fuck was that?"

"Esmeralda."

"No, seriously. Who the fuck was that?"

Doctor Paterson sighed, used to my off-putting talent.

"He's a new patient. Now, let's-"

"Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. What's his name, why is he here?" I always wanted to know first hand whom I was dealing with. Some motherfuckers liked to think they were going to own the place. They were sadly mistaken.

"Esmeralda, you know I can't conceal that information." I rolled my eyes and smiled, stepping up to Doctor Paterson. I touched his face, caressing his cheek and bit down on my lip.

"Oh, come on, Sheldon. Be a rule breaker."

"Esmeralda! Please!" He exclaimed, all flustered and red. I laughed out loud. As if I would ever fuck him. It'd be like fucking a fat salamander.

He let out a harsh sigh and stared at me. "You know what this means. Alaina will walk you down to the cafeteria and supervise you the entire time and will make sure you eat at least two bites. Either that, or the quiet room all day." I rolled my eyes, putting my hands on my hips.

"Oh, really? Seems like Norman Bates Junior will be keeping that place occupio, Sheldon."

"Esmeralda, how many times how I told you? Do not speak to me in that familiarity, please."

"And how many times have I told you that my name is Emma and not Esmeralda?"

Doctor Paterson sighed, giving me a stern look.

"Alaina will be right back. Stay in your room."

I rolled my eyes, as he began to walk away. I didn't realize some of the other patients were looking at me. They all were deathly afraid of me, refused to talk to me or look at me. They liked to stare at me, though, like I was some freak in an exhibit. I tilted my head to the side and smiled, sweetly.

The twin girls across the hall, Julie and Olivia, were fifteen and bulimic. Julie was select mute, which really just meant she didn't talk to anyone, unless she wanted to, and was a sour bitch. I sort of liked her. She was the only one not actually afraid of me. Olivia, on the other hand, was the perfect, skinny blonde girl who fell from grace. She was always positive, always contributing in group and scribbling down notes. She was also terrified of me.

"Hey, girlfriends!" They glared at me, Julie puffing out her cigarette smoke.

A nurse came by, taking it out of her mouth. "Julie, no smoking in here!" "Get the hell out of my face, bitch!" Julie shot back and I smiled, amused.

"Oooooh. Looks like little Julie is actually speaking for once. Don't worry, Rita, at least you got her to speak." I said to the nurse and she half smiled at me, walking away.

Julie glared at me and went back into her room. Olivia stared at me, nervously, but smiled. "How are you doing today, Emma?" I smiled, sarcastically, and leaned casually on my doorframe.

"I'm fanfuckingtastic, Olivia. How are you?" She sensed my sarcasm and looked down, her smile gone. "I'm okay."

"Hmm, looks like you've been eating a bit more, huh?" Her head shot up right away, her blue eyes wide. This was too good, I couldn't resist.

"What are talking about?"

"Well, I'm just saying. You look...bigger." Words all bulimics hated to hear. She looked down at herself and blinked a few times.

"D-D-Doctor Parson said I...I only gained two pounds..."

I tsked, shrugging.

"I don't know. Seems more like five." Her eyes went to marbles as she broke down sobbing, slamming the door behind her as she did so.

As for me, I just laughed out loud. That was fun.

"All right, I'm here. Let's go," Alaina said, her tone of voice clearly annoyed. I smiled widely and took a cigarette carton out of my pocket that I told from the nurse's station. They were Alaina's one vice, and her eyes lit up and widened when she saw them. Gotcha.

"Okay, but first, a quick smoke, Lainie?" Alaina attempted to grab it away from me, but I snatched it. I knew Lainie was the pet name her boyfriend had for her. She was loud on the phone.

"Ah, ah, ah. All these cigarettes could be yours at the low, low price of keeping your mouth shut about me not eating." Alaina stared at me, then at the cigarettes, and then at me.

"Fine. Just gimme the goddamn cigs." I smiled, handing them over, but not pulling away. Alaina tugged at them, as I tugged back, screwing with her. I finally let go, still grinning wide, as she glared. She put the carton in her pocket, while I began to skip down the hallway.

"Moooooorning, Torch!" I exclaimed, skipping passed Courtney, a thirteen-year-old burned victim. The whole right side of her face was burnt off. S

he set herself on fire when she was eleven after her mother took away her kitten. I nicknamed her Torch the day she came here. She hates it, as do all the other doctors because it's technically abuse, but after a while, she just didn't protest anymore. She was a sweet kid. I guess some part of me felt badly.

"Hi, Emma. Heading down to breakfast with Alaina again?" I smiled at her angelic, sweet voice.

"Yep! Hey, I'll save you a seat!" I exclaimed, continuing to skip. I slowed down after multiple demands from Alaina, and then began to walk as if slow motion, just to piss her off.

I stopped fucking around when I heard a strangled cry come from the quiet room as we passed it. The door was slightly opened, Doctor Paterson and some other nurses inside, examining the new kid. I raised my eyebrows and stared at him, and I swear, for a moment, he looked up and stared right back at me. His eyes, they were jet black, and empty. I almost shivered. Just like mine.

"So, what's the shit on the newbie?" I asked Alaina, as we rounded the corner. She sighed. Alaina didn't like talking to me, but she loved to gossip. I always got the dish on everyone from her.

"Apparently, he tried to commit suicide, after trying to kill some of his classmates. He didn't, though. Brought the gun in and held them hostile and everything. But he had some sort of mental breakdown during it, and couldn't do it. Sign of a good person, though," Alaina said, the last part with sadness. I scoffed, rolling my eyes.

"More like sign of weakass. I would have loved to shoot up my entire school. Just burn the entire fucking place down." I shared, and Alaina nodded, slowly.

"Well, you're different." I paused and smiled, sardonically. She might as well say, Yeah, you're different, because you're not a good person. Maybe I wasn't, maybe I was. I didn't know anymore.

"Why is he in the girls' ward anyway?"

"The boys' ward is under going construction, so they're transferring the boys upstairs. They're going to have to room with you guys, because of not having enough rooms. Thank you, government funding. Oh, Jesus. That just means triple overtime," Alaina complained, as we began to walk into the cafeteria.

I smiled. I could use a good fuck.

Alaina stopped dead in her tracks as I began to walk in. She pulled me back by my shirt.

"Hey, hey, hey, Missy! I saw that smile! What the hell are you thinking?" I kept smiling and pretended to be innocent and sweet, shrugging.

"Oh, Lainie. What ever do you mean?" She kept glaring, her hands on her big hips.

"Don't screw with me, crazy girl. When those boys come upstairs, don't think for one minute that I'm going to let you go off and seduce one of them. I'll be keeping an eye on you, mmmhmmm!" She exclaimed, giving me her famous evil eye.

I shrugged, pretending to have no idea what she was inferring. "Oh, Alaina, little old me? I never get into trouble!" She growled and turned me around, pushing me toward Marta, the sweet, little old lunch lady. She was the only one I didn't fuck with. You can't fuck with old, cute people.

As I greeted Marta and gathered my cereal, I began to think more about the newbie. It actually was pretty interesting, his entire back-story. Almost shooting up his school, trying to commit suicide. That was something I knew too well. I plopped down at our table and sighed. I stared at Alaina, who had brought a magazine with her and was reading intently.

"Why do I have to eat breakfast in an empty cafeteria with you hovering over me like I'm some goddamn bird in a cage?" Alaina flipped the page, nonchalantly.

"Maybe because you don't eat." I stared down at my cereal and sighed. "Alaina?"

"Mmmhmm?"

"What's the newbie's name?" It came out of nowhere, from someone who wasn't known to care. Alaina, of course, lowered her magazine and stared at me for a full minute.

"Why you want to know?"

I shrugged. "Because I'm a mass murderer and I want to stalk him, track him down, and murder him." I paused, Alaina's face, clearly not amused.

"I don't know, I just want to know his fucking name!"

Alaina leaned back in her chair, going right back to her magazine. "Uh, I think it's Tate. Yeah, uh, Tate Langdon. He's from where you lived. In Sandchester." I scoffed a little bit.

"That's unfortunate. His name is Tate? Like, taint with the 'in'"? I chuckled. Alaina nodded. I didn't say anything and just looked down at my bowl. I began to think about this weirdo, Tate Langdon, and how he had almost murdered a few of his classmates, but he didn't.

I wondered what kind of pussy would do that, why he would even want to murder those kids to begin with, and what held him back. I know I would have, because I don't care, but it was interesting to me. It was weak, stupid, yet interesting. Not a lot of people caught my attention, but this kid did for some odd reason. I didn't know why. Maybe because his eyes were empty like me, or because he kind of looked like Kurt Cobain on a rampage. I didn't know.

But I wanted to find out.