Hello!

Okay, so I basically have no clue as to what I am doing on this website so anyone feel free to correct me on what I'm doing wrong. As you may already gather, this is my first attempt at creating some unspeakable form of literature due to a plot that has laid siege in my mind, and therefore I apologize for agonizing syntax and diction.

Feedback for this story is much appreciated, I need outside opinions~

Disclaimer: Oh my golly gosh, if only I owned Naruto instead of Kishimoto

Warning: This material contains sensitive topics on the subject of suicide, substance abuse, and death. Slow build-up.

Starts out slow but just wait I promise it'll get and make more sense in the second chapter.

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For as long as I can remember I've never really been a skeptic, especially whenever faith was involved.

I just found it unbelievably easy to believe; to accept without evidence or proof the existence of a greater entity without a blink hesitance.

Even since I was a child not once did I doubt the existence of the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus, and once I was a teenager horoscopes and astrology were purely scientific in my mind. I myself am a Capricorn.

(Was)

The fact is, I've always considered myself to be a devoted believer. The type of person to never question the logic behind any religion or superstition no matter the shortage of evidence. That's just how I am.

(How I was)

Though I suppose that has something to do with my upbringing. I guess I have my family to thank for that. My family was quite the holy-eccentric family if there ever was one. To start off both of my parents were devoted pastors to the local Catholic Church so it was to no one's surprise that my brother and I attended and preformed services at the Church on a regular and practically everyday basis.

Not at all that shocking.

Nor was it unbelievable that everyone in the family sported biblical names or the fact that my brother and I were enrolled in the same private Catholic school that demanded plain, but modest uniforms and had the peculiar absence of a sex ed. class.

No no, what came as a shock to most people was my rather indiscreet title as a heroin addict.

Thats right I'm a needle junkie.

(Was)

Despite how protected I had seemed within my family's religious faith, evil had still managed to corrupt me in the form of a highly analgesic drug. And I wasn't able to resist the temptation of such a forbidden fruit...

It wasn't like becoming addicted was the plan. I was just a stupid teenager when it first started. A stupid, stupid, stupid,naive, seventeen-year-old Church mouse who'd just gotten caught up with the wrong crowd. It wasn't like I wanted to be an addict. It wasn't like I wanted to disappoint my family, to disappoint God. It wasn't like I purposely wanted to drop out of school that same year at the young, impressionable age of sixteen. Like I purposely wanted to end up dead in some alleyway barely another two years later. Like I wanted to become the example that parents would reference to when lecturing their children on the horrors of failing to live up to the set standards of society.

'If you keep getting these grades you'll be looking like that one girl, you know, her.'

'Keep hanging around that crowd and you're going end up sick like that girl, don't become like that witch!.'

It was always 'That girl' this and 'Don't be like her' that. It made me sick and for a while I tried to pretend that those words didn't hurt me, that it was just sticks and stones. I tried my damnedest to ignore the backlash of my addiction and how it reflected on my reputation and for a while it worked.

Only for a little while.

You see, I could put up with the name calling, the threats, the disappointed stares, the pathetic, pitying looks. All that was nothing new. These people were strangers to me and I couldn't give them the satisfaction of showing how they affected me. But then my family was brought into the picture and the moment they became slandered with my reputation was the moment I began to doubt my worth. It only multiplied ten fold when my family practically disowned me. Soon they would become the very strangers to look down on me, if not away from my direction.

Such a pity I was too late to stop it. I often thought to myself what might have changed if I had gotten help, what might have happened differently if I hadn't messed up so bad, if I hadn't gotten addicted, if I hadn't even existed.

But that didn't matter anymore, none of it did. I was practically a breathing corpse. I was anything but living at this point, and there was no way I could do anything to make it better. The damage was already done. I was just oh so very done. It was tiring and just so so frustrating to fight for a life that was right now so meaningless.

I didn't hesitate for one second as I injected the syringe into my forearm.

Thoughts of my family relapsed briefly for a couple moments and with it came the stinging realization of what I had just done.

But it didn't matter anymore; not much mattered anymore anyways.

I was already too far gone, and to save my body from the toxic overdose would have been damn near impossible.

As my last seconds of consciousness ticked away I felt something that I hadn't felt in a really long time: I felt relief. And let me tell you, it felt better than any high that the needle could give. At that moment I had already accepted my fate. I was ready to leave my past far, far behind me and I was ready to have my sins acknowledged by a greater entity.

Whether I went to Heaven or Hell, I hadn't the slightest clue. Understandably, my previous actions could have accounted for either of the two. But that didn't mean I didn't deserve to go to Heaven. Then again, I probably deserved Hell.

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The corners of my eyes started to shadow my vision, and my eyelids felt like bricks.

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Sure, I did some really, really bad and unforgivable things⎯ but I put practically all my life in the Church so that had to count for something too, Right?

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Right?

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Everything below my neck went numb.

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The weight of my thoughts(and my legs) soon gave away and I welcomed darkness blissfully.

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And I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And I had waited in this dark abyss for what seemed like forever and half.

I was confused but I was also angry. Scratch that, I was definitely angry. Actually I was furious.

What happened to those hours, no, years(seventeen fucking years)spent worshipping, praying, pouring my heart out to my faith, my Catholic faith, the faith that would and should allow me to pass on peacefully through towards the gates of Heaven, or so be it, throw me into the fiery pits of Hell. So then where was I exactly? Purgatory? Sure didn't feel like it. Not that I would know exactly what is was supposed to feel like.

Perhaps this was hell? But I didn't see fire.

Actually, I didn't see much of anything, it was too dark to see.

Clearly this wasn't Heaven and I wasn't so sure this was Hell either, or even Purgatory. Otherwise I'm pretty sure I would have at least recognized it somehow, or been in pain, or on fire, or on deserted island, or something.

'Then where the fuck was I exactly?'

The confusion accompanied by my anger and the panic of not knowing where the hell I was caused my nerves to go into overdrive. Thoughts that fueled that panic within me slithered themselves into my mind with the dreaded thoughts and possibilities of 'what if's'.

'What if I wasn't completely dead? Just braindead? Would anyone have found me by now? And if they had what had they done with my body?'

I had the decency to hide my sorry behind in an isolated alleyway but thats not to say the bottom feeders of the city didn't go there...Oh Lord, what if I woke up in some pervert's basement?

'God, what the hell is going on?!'

Frankly, God didn't have anything to say for himself.

Meanwhile my panicking had caused something to start. I couldn't describe it in words if I could because I simply couldn't comprehend it, but somehow I felt it, Physically. Dead people didn't feel things, at least I hoped not.

'So then what just happened?' I let curiosity overpower my fear, just for a moment. But that moment, was enough that it allowed for my agitation to subside, and just like that I let my mind fade to silent observation.

There.

I had heard, no, felt, I had felt the unmistakable rapid thumps of a heartbeat.

My heartbeat.

❖. ❖ . ❖ . ❖

Minutes turned into hours, hours shifted into days, and days melded into weeks, and weeks then blended into months until finally, I was introduced to some other form of life that wasn't my own. (Not that I knew for sure that I was alive, but the heartbeat didn't exactly mean I was dead did it?)

Actually, I wasn't sure how many months I spent floating around in the void, completely weightless. Frankly, I didn't even know if it had been months that had passed. Indeed time was very fickle thing to take into account when you didn't have any use for it or any means of measuring it. Not to mention that there was no concept of time in this place, wherever it was. And again, what was the point of measuring time if you didn't have any use for it?

The only way time did present itself was when I counted the heartbeats(for which I had lost count and recounted many times) and to be truthfully honest it was quite refreshing in a way.

I would float around falling in and out of consciousness, yet, never truly awake nor asleep. No words came to mind if I had to describe the feeling of drifting into different states of consciousness, nor is there such a word to truly describe the experience of feeling your own heartbeat. It was strange but it wasn't uncomfortable. Unfortunately, I had no feel for the rest of my body, which I reasoned had to exist if my heart did and the heart in turn could't function without a body. For the moment however I wasn't all that bothered with not knowing.

I was in my own world and in that world I only knew the darkness and my beating heart.

But sometime during my conscious-less slumber, a presence made itself known.

It's hard to explain specifically what it felt like. At first, it appeared as a flickering candlelight in the far corners of my mind, however I still saw nothing but darkness, or more like I couldn't see at all. But I had felt it, yet at the same time I could not physically feel anything; anything but that pitter-patter heartbeat that was actually starting to get annoying. No, I had definitely sensed something.

Just as quickly as it had appeared this thing, this Presence, had disappeared.

And I was alone in the dark once again.

But I wasn't. Not all the time at least. What I had formally dubbed as 'The Presence' made an appearance every now and then, sometimes being too far away so that I actually had no idea if it was just my imagination or a mental hallucination(bound to be a side-effect of being left alone for so long or my past drug abuse, possibly a mix of the two) and other times, being so close I felt as if we would merge.

In a sense it was somewhat comforting to have The Presence around.

Granted it didn't feel friendly in the least. If I had to describe The Presence in one word it would be cold. But I couldn't care less. I was alone, confused, blind, numb, immobile, scared, isolated, and essentially helpless. Lord, I didn't even know completely if I was human anymore. Having something to keep my mind occupied with anything other than that thought and the dark was a blessing from Christ himself. Visits from The Presence were very, very fascinating to me.

Somewhere around the forty-seventh visit from The Presence something happened.

It was just like any other time spent in the eternal oblivion: dark. My heartbeat, which I was actually starting to get used to, pitter-pattered inside me with an almost comforting rhythm that I knew would never leave me whether I was conscious or not, which actually, was a very hard thing to determine. But as soon as I felt the glimmer of that familiar phantom I knew I must have been somewhat awake.

I felt that whatever this Presence was, holy or not, it garnered my complete attention. Partly due to the fact that The Presence itself may or may not have been a divine entity and my insufferably deprived self craved the attention, the actual recognition, of a greater power.

The other part due to the fact that however bloody pathetic it may be, The Presence was the only other thing that existed that I knew of and that I held some sort of semblance to familiarity(The dark didn't count). As sad as it was, I felt that I had a special bond with The Presence, whether it was one-sided on my part, it didn't matter that much. There was no one else and I just didn't want to be left alone in the dark again for the rest of my pitiful lifetime. If this even was life.

I just really, really, really, really didn't want to be alone again.

Much to my chagrin, I felt the faint thumping in my chest double-time as the aforementioned Presence appeared once again. What once was a flickering candlelight turned into a steady bonfire as it neared ever-so-slowly. I was so painfully excited it hurt. But I didn't care. Now that I was so close I could get a better feel as to what The Presence really was. Only being so close to it a handful of times made it really hard to get a better feel for my enigma of a neighbor.

From what I could already gather, The Presence was cold. But like, it wasn't only cold; it was precise and most of all, it was controlled. If I had to compare it to something like a material object I'd say The Presence's existence it felt like, well, a very sharp blade or just something extremely sharp-edged. I don't know how or why it did, but it just did. Perhaps I'd get answers as to why I could understand something that I couldn't even see. For now though, I just basked in its attention.

After what seemed like only a few minutes my basking was short lived when The Presence, apparently becoming bored with me, sauntered off into the dark. However content I had been feeling just moments ago vanished and was replaced with something much less appealing. I became overwhelmed with despair unlike any other I had felt in a long, long time. I remained helpless as I had been and felt The Presence, my only other source of life in this dark Hell and the only other thing that felt alive(alive like me) fade away. It left me alone in the dark and I had no say in it.

'It just left me again..just like how I left them...'

I felt the metaphorical bomb drop, obliterating my walls of self-preservation. It all made sense now. I was being abandoned just as I abandoned those who relied on me a long, long time ago. Oh what spectacular timing does this thing called Karma have. But like Hell I was going to let that bitch bite my ass and get away with it. No. I was not going to be left alone again. Not ever again and I swore to that many heartbeats ago. I had learned my Goddamned lesson and I didn't need a reminder. No.

'No. No. No no no no nononono,DAMNIT NO COMEBACK!'

I put my heart and soul into whatever will power I had left because I had to stop it.

I had to bring it back because no, I did not want tobealoneagain.

My already rapid heart rate thrummed erratically and I felt something shift. I must have been in a much more pathetic state than I had previously realized because I was utterly exhausted after my little fit and had no choice but to submit to instinct and stay still as to conserve energy. Not a second after my little tantrum it stopped. The Presence stopped in mid-saunter and it..turned around? It turned and it came back to me and it freaking came back to me it-

The Presence was surrounded by exactly thirty other presences and for one moment the flicker of life that each presence held was frozen in time. The next moment my world shook with the force of explosions and something shattered and oh my God I can hear-

Whatever had shattered had latched onto me just as my body, that I realized that I indeed had, hit something solid.

And for the first time in this Hell, I felt pain. I was gobsmacked. I felt pain, actually hurt, like I really hurt a lot-

Whatever pain I had felt tripled when my warm realm of warm darkness was drained away from me and I was hit with a new freezing cold darkness. I barely even noticed that the presences had stopped along with my thirst for air and the foreign use of lungs. I hadn't even registered that The Presence itself was now missing among the other...twenty-seven?

But the one thing I did notice besides the burning pain was that ridiculously obnoxious screaming I couldn't pinpoint. I sympathized with them, I knew exactly how that felt at the moment.

I could barely bring myself to care when I sensed one of the presences tower over me. But then it did something of significance that distracted me from my intense pain, even if it was just for a couple of seconds. It wrapped me in some sort of soft, and most importantly, warm thing and lifted me from what I assume was a hard surface of some sort. In my moment of distraction I didn't notice that the God-awful screaming had subsided into pained sniffs.

And then the dark abyss welcomed me once again.

❖ .❖ . ❖ . ❖

Alright that was the first but mostly pilot chapter of Overdose and just to clear some things up:

1) This chapter is meant to be confusing. It's my attempt of first person point of view that means that the main character has no idea what's going on so that in turn means that the reader will have no idea whats going on.

2) I plan on writing first person with the occasional third person inserts if I decide to change it up a little bit.

3) It is quite a slow buildup but the plot requires that extra detail and time go into it.

4) I plan for the main character to forgo major character development so personality will likely change drastically.

5) Updates are undeterminable, sorry

P.S. - If anyone wants to be a beta feel free. I'm not even sure what they do.