Chapter 20: How far down

Darkness has many depths and the true bottom was a lot farther down than one would ever expect it to be. Bottom was bottom no matter how you looked at it, the only thing that ever differed was how long it took to reach that bottom. For some all it took was one wrong step and there it was the chasm would open up and suck them in. Other times it took years of tempting the fates for that chasm to open up and for that bottom to come flying up at you.

Fear itself comes from many different places and for Carter, fear was an actually something that he was scared of happening to him, but more of letting others down. He didn't feel physical fear what he felt was more emotional than any other kind. It was one that reached deep inside and twisted your gut, made you heart ache. It only served to make the emotional pain that he was feeling run that much more deeper, seem more real and for all intense purposes made him hurt even more.

The thought of addiction, being an addict once again, didn't cross his mind. Those were things that he could control, or thought that he could control. For he had managed to keep it under control for so long. The cravings, the wanting and needing subsided inside him and he had it in a place where he thought that it would never surface again. Here he was standing in a darkened kitchen with one hand around a bottle of booze and the other hand almost reverently cradling a prescription bottle.

What would anyone say if they found out about this? He'd be finished that's for sure. There would be no second plane ride to Atlanta, no second chances. The excuses that he would use were no more real than the ones that he had the first go around. Granted then it was because he had been stabbed and lost his medical student. The more he thought about it the more that his hand began to shake and he could feel the sweat building up on his palms.

He ran his hand through his hair as he wrestled with the inner demons. The ones that had been so silent for so long yet now here they were screaming at the top of their lungs inside his head. He just wanted them to be silent, how long he didn't know. He knew he wasn't crazy nor was he insane, this was the battle that he had been fighting for so long, never once had he ever been alone in it, now it felt as if he was.

He could see a photograph of him and Abby together, both smiling, from a time that seemed an eternity ago. If he listened to those demons, doing what they were telling him, he'd be letting Paul win. If he didn't listen to them, then he would have to sit there and feel the ache that was in his empty heart. Numbness and escape was what he wanted but as of right now, he hadn't been willing to go there. His resolve was failing with each passing tick of the clock. Each tick also let him know that one more second had passed that he hadn't fallen from grace.

He closed his eyes and thought about everything trying his hardest to silence the howling in his brain. He left the bottles sitting on the table in front of him as he began pacing slowly at first back and forth, weighing everything in his weary mind. The black and white blurring into various shades of grey. More and more things became greyer and the path that he should be on became less clear. Nervously he wrung his hands as he paced back and forth his eyes never leaving those bottles. Wanting and needing some peace but the though of actually walking out those doors right now and going to the one place where he should be, he just couldn't stop the pacing long enough to get to the door.

Oh what he wouldn't give right now to have someone to talk to but then what would he say. There was no way to explain what was going through his head. No longer had he been going out with his friends for drinks or socializing after work and he had managed to blow Susan off more than once. If he mentioned this to anyone they would suspect the worst, he had nothing to fear in the way of reprimand from that though or did he? Once suspicion was raised he would be under constant scrutiny, probably forced again to attend meetings, have his every moved constantly monitored and watched. He didn't want to go through that again. The thought of what might happen was the only thing keeping him from doing it.

No Carter was the only thing that was keeping himself from doing it. He stopped in front of the table once more quietly picking up the bottle before walking back to the bedroom and stretching out on the bed. Thinking about it was not doing anything for him, it wasn't making him feel any better, what he needed right now was to feel better, no matter how long that reprieve might have been he needed it. He slowly twisted the top of the bottle. This wasn't going to put him back into that place where he had been. Right now he wasn't working; there was no way that he would be putting any patient in danger. He could very easily rationalize it in his head. People drank all the time at social gatherings, sporting events, with dinner, no this was not the greatest evil in the world.

He brought the bottle up, the cold liquid instantly felt like fire as it went down the back of his throat, searing at first was the pain and then all went numb. He brought his hand across his lips to wipe away what might have remained there after the bottle had been brought away. Just having one turned into two, which soon become half the bottle. At that point nothing seemed to matter anymore. The pain that might have been there when this started no longer there, his head was nothing more than foggy at best, the room slowly moving on its own free will. This was something that he hadn't felt in a long time, a peace had settled into his head, the demon's were no longer screaming at him, there was complete and total silence.

He sat there now, his head resting against the headboard and his eyes heavy from having become intoxicated by the contents of the bottle. They fluttered as he tried to keep them open leaning over he sat the now half empty bottle onto the night stand before falling over onto his side. His arms wrapping around the pillow that was there, sleep pulling him into it's firm and hard grasp. Yet tonight this sleep was not to be peaceful, it was not to be restful, there would be no contentment and feeling refreshed in the morning for John Carter. Tonight his soul would wrestle with those inner demons.

The room around him grew dark, the silence intensifying for a moment and then there was a voice, that chilling reminder of a past that he would soon like to forget but knew inside that he never would.

"So you thought you'd find peace in the bottom of the bottle."

Carter didn't answer that question he didn't want too and he knew he didn't have to. This had to be nothing more than a bad dream.

"Silence from you Carter won't make me go away. You can't get off that easy."

"What do you want?" Carter asked with an icy tone to his own voice, "haven't you tormented me enough, gotten what you wanted?"

"Oh no, I haven't gotten what I wanted rather far from it. Well I shouldn't say that you are playing with fire and might yet get burned."

"You really are crazy you know that?"

"No, not crazy. I never have been what you call crazy. Yes I was sick when I went after you and your med student. But I had a reason for doing that and I have reason now. You might never know that reason but I have a reason nonetheless."

"I don't give a damn about your reasons." That was the honest truth coming from Carter now.

"That I believe, but you won't be rid of me any time soon."

"You don't have any control over me." Carter snapped back now as he moved from where he was to be closer to the voice to try and show that the man had no control over him or his actions.

"Oh on the contrary I believe that I do. You see, fear leads to temptation and in your case that temptation will lead to your downfall. It's already started and it will spin so far out of control before you know it that there will be no going back dear doctor."

"What are you some kind of psychic now, that you can see the future? No I won't be falling like you think I will be, tonight was a one shot deal. I won't be going back to that place in my life again you can't make me." Carter said standing up straighter than he had been.

"I made you once and I can make you go there again if I so chose."

"No I made a mistake and I learned from it. I won't be making the same mistake twice; I won't let you have that much control over my life."

"That remains to be seen."

"No I have self control, will power, determination. I will not let a man like you take me down twice." Carter answered back.

"You are falling doctor Carter, cut off from the world around you; even you have your doubts about telling people that you are getting into trouble. You are too proud, to self reliant to rely on those who you once considered your friends again. After all, when you needed them, where are they, sitting alone in a dark room with nothing but the bottle for company. That doesn't say much about the company you keep."

"Shut up Sobriki."

"Did I touch a nerve?"

"Maybe in your dreams."

"Seems that I am in your dreams now Carter."

"Not by my choice." Carter answered back, "and don't make yourself comfortable cause you won't be coming back."

"Oh but I like being in your head, I can do so much more damage here than I ever could standing on the outside."

"This is nothing more than a dream, you won't win anything. I am not going to let you beat me."

"But I already have."

"I'm not the one rotting in a prison."

"No you're not in a prison at least not one with Wardens and guards but you are in a prison. You are trapped in a world that doesn't hold what you want in it anymore."

"Yes it does." Carter turned his back to the voice now. "And I am not going to listen to you. You are a figment of my imagination right now."

"No what I am is one of those demons that haunts you every day of your life. I will be here from now until the time that you find any thing that resembles peace. It's not as simple as you would like you can't close your eyes and have me gone. I will always be there, somewhere in the back of your mind. Pushing you closer to the edge, you will never be free of me, you can't be. I made sure of that when I stuck you the first time."

Carter crossed his arms over his chest. "I am not going to give in."

"The loneliness is starting to get to you." He said, "the silence of the night, the darkness, it's more than you can bare at times. You will have to face the night ever day, it won't change. And when darkness falls there I will be."

Carter didn't say anything.

"You are the strong silent stoic kind. That's a shame, it's going to be your downfall, your strength will falter and your silence will be your death."

"Only you would know that." Carter said, "no I will prove you wrong. I will get back on track; I will regain my life again. I will not be beating by the likes of you."

"That will remain to be seen." He said, "my money is that you will fall before Abby comes home, that you will be nothing more than either a drunk or a druggie possible both before the next full moon."

"Big words from a dead man."

"The same could be said about you Carter. You won't see your next birthday."

"Empty threats."

"We shall see."

And with that the silence returned and Carter drifted into a drunken sleep. Those words reverberating in his head the rest of the night. After his last run in with Paul could he keep those things from coming true or would he be proven right. It was all up to what happened next to determine what was to become of John Carter.