As I ponder my cruelty, the only fond memory of my own mother from my childhood that seems to come to my mind and sadly it wasn't even my actual childhood it was when I started "womanhood" in my preteens. I remember the real confusion I was beginning to have as I was finally identifying feelings I had for years and the hurt as I realized that I would have to wait a while before boys would catch up in maturity.

Years later, similar questions scrape across my mind with broken fingernails and layers of disappointment from everything in my life seem to stay in place like soap scum and grime. Always wanting what you can have and never being able to sleep away your misery and pain.

Yes, I was born into this happy go lucky suburban, cookie baking, red white and blue loving community. But that night I didn't choose to see those things and now that I think about it harder, would I still be hooked on drugs? Would I still be searching? Better yet, did I welcome that thing into my head? I was searching for something different and radical from my environment and instead found a living nightmare.

Before all of that, there was still him. Always there, walking along side me as my equal, leaving a trail of destruction behind us and for the longest time I though he was just a magnet for bad luck. It's evident now though that I was the one who always had the rain cloud hovering above myself and he was the guiding light.

Now in his absence, the world crumbles further into darkness and out of all the so-called heroes in this lame world, I have to effing save the day and I not only feel, I know that I'm the most unqualified for this role.

Somewhere inside me a pain is stabbing away at already mutilated flesh and I know my involvement with the Gray has brought this upon everyone. Another thing on the checklist that is most definitely my fault.

----

As I drove to the old warehouse-turned rave central, I rolled through heavy down pour as well as my dark thoughts. Before I went missing, raves were held in Warehouse 4 and 7 in the east downtown district as well as the basement of and abandoned building about ten minutes from there.

From what I had previously collected I knew that a very intense looking character, full name Samuel Dodge nicknamed "Sam the Man," sold anything from weed to heroin in person but actually pushed god knows how much in crates all of the country through separate areas of the warehouses and the abandoned building.

Sam lived in a remodeled and rebuilt upstairs of the abandoned building. It was set up so that it was half apartment, half office area and was intended for him to have easy access to professional business problems associated with his products and any setbacks attached to deals or shipments.

I know this from many cold nights I spent there beside him trying to kill pain.

The owner of both properties has a profit deal with Sam and his equally shady associates, but I can't seem to find this owner's name through any paperwork or connections. People just give me this really crazy look like I just asked for assisted suicide, but the best reaction was when I asked Sam.

Instead of pulling a gun on me like I was expecting or brushing it off with a bad look, he turned to me with an odd look in his eye. It was the look of a knowing man and in an instant his intensity wore through and his face became so blank that he looked like a doll, I knew he was unlike the rest, but this sealed the deal. He looked no more than 27, yet I knew he had seen more than can be seen in a lifetime.

After that, I never talked about it with him in a silent agreement. I'd by some kandi from him and that was that. No direct looks or speech from him. I said what I wanted, gave him the money, got the drugs, and left.

Now, I was ready to break that agreement and I was ready to break my own previous morals to save my brother and come one step closer to Warren. After all of this is over, I know I'll never come back to them, there was never a slot for me to begin with. It will never be my life.

Driving as slow as possible through the twists and turns of the East Warehouse District, I scanned for one of Sam's cars. Looking at the sky I could tell morning was coming and he would be leaving for home soon and if my plan was going correctly, I'd be waiting for him. Quick enough, part in an alley between a meat packing plant and Warehouse 5 was his beloved dark green Ferrari, but as I began to leave something caught my eye.

Warren's black SUV.