I'm rewriting the story so if you decide to reread it, there will be a few things changed Not really in this chapter, but I plan on adding a lot of dialogue that I skipped in later chapters.

Levi Pov

"This is just getting fucking ridiculous!" I growled out the last part of my exclamation a little louder than I had meant to and I glanced over my shoulder to where the door was barely parted to make sure that no one had heard and was coming over here. To my knowledge, there was no one else present at the moment; However, I had learned very quickly living with Kenny that that wasn't always correct. People, the kind that aren't exactly girl scouts, tended to gather in Kenny's house and nestle in every nook and cranny like termites in wood. You never knew exactly how many people were here.

I always hated doing this with the door creaked open, but there were no locks and my hearing was shit from all my younger years of loud music so I needed the crack to listen for footsteps. At least that's what I told myself. I didn't want to admit it was paranoia stemming from stimulant abuse. I tended to try and not think about the side effects of what I was doing. Just let me have my high and let the rest all fall to hell.

One…two…three…

I took a deep breath as I counted to ten in my head. I grabbed my cell off the couch behind me and clicked the button on my phone and checked the time. It was 4 am, so Kenny should be returning from work sometime this hour. I put it back, and twisted back around to the coffee table I was sitting under. I was cutting it very close, and I knew it. I hated it Kenny ruined my highs with his bullshit. I returned back my previously neglected task of arranging my lines of beauty across the table, working faster now, rolled up dollar bill still pressed between my lips like a cigarette.

If only I didn't feel this intense need to make my lines perfectly fine and straight I'd be done by now…

I cursed myself for my annoying quirk. I usually enjoyed my urge to clean and be neat, but now my hands were shaking with the force of my last couple rails setting in, and this was difficult and time consuming. I usually liked to have at least a 2 and half to three hour cushion to savor my high before Kenny and whomever he decided to bring home with him showed up to ruin my bliss. It wasn't that I hadn't started soon enough today; it's that for some fucking reason it wasn't fucking working.

Most of the time, I railed my lines and everything was perfect; However, recently it wasn't going as usual. I woke up feeling shitty as usual and instead of my drugs making me feel great, now they just make me feel less shitty. My dosages had climbed and climbed and climbed. I was sure that if I piled up my usage from over the last year, I would find a powdery mountain big enough for a nice ski vacation with the family I never had.

I would be lying if I said I wasn't alarmed at the change. The ritual of preparing it was still just as satisfying, but the actual snorting was no longer fun, and the high was just unreachable. I used to enjoy everything about snorting; I even thought the drip was delicious! Now the pleasure was replaced with a dull pounding in my sinuses and a heart attack waiting to happen. Before I would just comedown, now I crashed. Hard. I basically spent my time rotating between a death from one cause or another.

Even now as I made these lines I knew what was going to happen. I was going to snort them, enjoy a rush for 3 seconds and it would fall flat, and I would feel this same, never ending ughhhhhhhh. The exact same I feeling was in me now, just as it was before I had snorted my first lines. I couldn't shake this feeling of waking death that had slithered into my veins all those years ago. Everything would be the same, but I would snort these anyway. Well, not the exact same. Blood would drip from my nose and my heart would rip its way out of my ribcage even more than it already had.

Still, I kept going.

Because that's what we do right? We rot ourselves away until nothing left?

I slid the bill inside my right nostril, just like I had done a hundred times before, and leaned my head down.

!PANIC!

My heart raced out of my chest in uneven DUM BUMMM DUMMM BUM DUM DUMMMM motions. It was hard to breath the thumping against my chest was so intense. A tight pressure centered on my heart arose. When I could finally move again, I whipped around to face the source of panic. My black bangs plastered to my face with sweat. My hands shook as my brain was flooded with yet even more stimulant and adrenaline. My wide eyes met the panic and my brain struggled to process it.

Lights on the couch? Phone? Phone!

I now knew logically that it wasn't threat, but my body wasn't so forgiving. My heart stayed high and uneven. My hands still shook and I cursed them. I begged them to stay still, just so I could snort these lines and maybe get high. I damned whoever had contacted me.

Should I really snort these? My heart feels like its going to explode at any moment… if I got another scare… Who am I kidding I'm so paranoid it doesn't even matter.

I looked down at the lines in front of me, trying to get a hold of my brain and add up how much I had had lately. I wasn't religious but right then I prayed. I prayed to whoever the fuck could help me to just let me have this one more high. Let me snort these and feel high like I did the first time I ever had this again.

Let me feel it once more. Just once and then… and then I – I'll quit.

Before I could attempt again to snort my lines, hot breath flashed on neck and I heard him shushing me. I felt his hands wrap around my waist. I felt him bending me over while I screamed.

"Wanna see my new tats?" He purred to me. I felt his nails dig into my hips and the pain shoot up my spine.

I jerked my head as far back as it would go, shivers arching my back up and terror tore through my body in the form of scream.

Not again. Not again. Not again. I can't allow him to hurt me again. No. No. NO. .NO.

I could no longer feel my heart. Just pressure. Then nothing.

I woke up in pain. My head felt like it was rotting from the inside out. My body ached. My fingers and toes were frozen. I stretched out and yelped when I felt the pain rip though my back.

That's what I get for fucking with stimulants. They wreck your back.

It was then that what had happened came back to me, and I sat up. I sat up maybe a little too fast, because a tight pain came and gave my heart a firm squeeze. I steadied myself and then looked around.

I had been sleeping halfway underneath the coffee table, laying against the couch length. I was happy I put down that rug now. I looked over at the table and saw my lines were still there waiting for me. I wanted to dive right in, but I resisted the urge. It was neither quite light nor dark outside my window so I assumed I was out for a couple hours but I needed to make sure. I picked up my phone and then looked at the time.

It was 7 pm and I had two missed calls from work and two other notifications. Fuck. I was out all damn day. I checked the calls only to find out I was fired. I threw my phone down and turned toward my still formed lines. (Looks like Kenny hadn't even bothered to come downstairs all day, which is god because he would have taken my drugs himself had he had the chance).

This will fix it. This will make it better. This will fix me. This will make me better.

As I bent reached to grab my bill from the other side of the table, my hear lurched in a way that can only be described and sickening and, more importantly, a warning. I paused, grabbed my chest instead. Was I going to die?

Does it matter? Does it even matter? I should just snort these and let my heart explode like tnt. Boom. Bye, bye, Levi.

It would be a fitting death, I suppose. I would die just as I had lived, high, scared, and, most importantly, alone. I considered it. I was going to die if I kept going, of that I was sure. What I wasn't sure of was if I was ready.

I could just throw it out. Start clean. Google how to repair my body or some shit.

I allowed myself to picture myself happy and successful in the future for one delicious moment and it was oh so cruel. It hurt. It burned. But, then again, wasn't that what I was good at? Self-destruction. I shook my head. I wasn't always like this. I wasn't always this goddamn bad. There had been a time when I was a little boy in a bad situation that had hopes of getting out. Now I was a bitten man in an even worse situation, part of which was my own construction, and instead of trying to get out I allowed it to overcome me. I poisoned myself until I was just as rotten and bad as m situation.

What is it I want so bad?

"Control." I answered my thoughts out loud. I want control of my life back. Stability. Health. Happiness.

Well, I gave control of my life up to this fucking shit so easily. Maybe I can take it back?

I thought about all the things in my life that weren't so shitty. I had Hanje and Mike, my two friends. I had a few other sober friends, like Petra. Once upon a time I had had high test scores and praises from all my teachers. I wondered if I could put my brainpower, what wasn't fried, into fixing myself up.

All I knew then was that I had to get away from it. I grabbed a book and scraped all of it onto the glossy cover. I went straight to the bathroom then, only pausing to reach into my dresser and pull out my stash. I flushed all of it then and wiped down the table. I grabbed my dollar bill all rolled up and coated on the inside with drug residue and on the outside with my blood, and held my lighter up to it. It caught easily and I dropped it quickly into my sink.

I watched the bill curl in on itself like I had done so many times and weep tears of smoke. When it was all done, I washed its ashes down the sink and went back to my room. I sat on the couch.

I had expected there to be overwhelming emotions. Those would come later, I had supposed, in the withdrawal stage, and I was right. For right then, though, it was anticlimactic. The drug that I had signed years of my life over to, that I had rotted my body with, and that I had sold my soul for was gone. I expected it to be momentous. But it was just what it was.

I checked my phone again. I looked at my previously ignored notifications to find the one timestamped for last night around the time my flashback/ hallucination happened. It was just a facebook notification that it was Petra's birthday.

I sighed and laid down, texting Hanje that I needed their help. They texted back right away, as they always do, and asked only what I needed. Hanje was too good to me, I swear. I texted back that I was going clean and I needed a drug free place to go through withdrawal. Several minutes passed then I got a text that said: On my way 2 pick u up.

I sighed and was going to get packed for my trip to hell when my phone flashed again. Hanje had sent an ominous message only saying: Buckle up Buttercup. I groaned. No fucking kidding.

that you to everyone who was so kind to me the first time around! :D