AN: This is a story I wrote years and years ago-I figured the prose could use an update. And boy, it could. I'd be happy to know your thoughts.
The song alluded to towards the end is "Heroes" by David Bowie.
...
Sara sometimes wonders what draws you to drugs—circumstances or disposition.
Do they appeal to you because of your environment—because you can get your hands on it, because those who take them seem to be having a blast? Or do they speak to you from the pit of your soul, with the guile of the devil and promises of heaven?
The answer, in her case, leaves little room for doubt.
Sara didn't love drugs because the people around her had fun with it. Her passion for morphine was inherent, irrepressible. Individual, private almost. The happiness she felt with morphine coursing through her knew no match or rival. After having chased one rush after the other, studies and medicine and action, always action, Sara found peace, rest, relief. She found herself, too.
And she fell in love with it, at the very first kiss.
As many others who run from their demons, Sara always buried herself under work. In school, she strove to be the best, not because she wanted validation—what she wanted was to be busy, too busy to listen to the voice that whispered in the crevices of silence.
Because Sara had grown up in a house empty of love, raised by a father empty of everything she thought of as spirit and soul, she had always been terrified to confront who she was—convinced, somehow, that she would find she was empty, too.
Morphine was the first thing that allowed her to put down her weapons. To stop being busy. To rest, finally. It gave her numbness and pleasure and peace. Before, she had thought of drugs the same way any other girl in neighborhood might. They were dangerous. Destructive. Sara had avoided them as she avoided romance, and anything likely to steal her from the rigid control that ruled her existence.
Control had been the leash she used to keep her demons in check.
When she lost it, Sara tumbled down a rabbit hole of pure indifference and ecstasy.
Morphine felt so goddamn good, it was easy to disregard what she was losing in the process. It became her sickness and savior. She grew used to the discomfort, the needle, looking away from the square of white skin that the syringe plunged into, counting to ten, waiting for stars.
The vortex sucked in everything she used to think mattered, her friends and family and plans for the future. Those were first to go, and easiest to let go of. It was longer before morphine took her pride, and her shame as well. Before she became willing to do absolutely anything to get it.
Soon, it wasn't enough to know the right places to go to, to be allowed a taste of the drug. The people who owned it wanted their money's worth. Lies came to her easy as breath. She said anything she needed for her father to give her the money. She can't recall any of the lies now, but the lack of remorse as they poured out of her is something that still haunts her. It didn't matter that her father was worried. It wouldn't have mattered if he were crawling under debts.
Now, Sara doesn't dream of making excuses for her behavior—but she will say that it did feel as if her life hung on the stab of that needle.
Perhaps it would have helped if she'd had more to live for. But she doubts it would have made a difference. Everything Sara was before morphine was swept away in the spiral of being high. That there was no one to mourn her disappearance only made it easier to die.
"Are you okay?"
Sara looks up.
She and Michael are sitting at the kitchen table, and he has interrupted his chopping vegetables for Mikey's lunchbox. The book she was pretending to read is still open at the first page of a fresh chapter. She thought it might be enough to prevent her husband from noticing what's on her mind. He gets insanely thorough when he cooks.
"Fine," she says.
Her husband has always been one to pay attention to details; he is an expert at catching her in those occasional moments when she's feeling blue.
"You've been so quiet, all afternoon."
"I'm fine, really. It's just—it's silly."
And it is.
Nearly a decade since she's left morphine behind. It should feel like a lifetime ago. Silly is the only word for the fact that it still gets to her, now, although she isn't the same person as that twenty-year-old who wanted to flee her past by chaining herself to worse, meaner demons. Who wanted more than anything to flee herself, flee the desert places of her own mind.
"I was driving Mikey home," she says, "and this song came up on the radio. I used to love that song—you know when it feels like the lyrics have been written with ink made from your blood?"
"Um," Michael looks vaguely disgusted. He tends to picture figures of speech very literally.
Already the ghost of her twenty-year-old self rises from oblivion, how she would lock the door of her college apartment, sit cross-legged in her living room, and roll up the sleeve of her blouse humming over David Bowie.
I, I will be king
And you, you will be queen
Telling Michael is worth the pain of thinking about this girl who is gone, this girl who has died. Yet Sara finds she resents that, being a mother and a wife, being so happy most of the time, doesn't wipe clean the slate of the past.
"I listened to it when I got high."
Her voice doesn't jam with the confession. Michael says nothing for some time.
"You don't listen to it anymore," he finally lets out.
"No."
Though she supposes she might. A song about heroes beating the odds forever and ever—it should have spoken to the new her, too. Yet when those notes filled the car, heavy with Sara's ghosts, she could taste the pungent ashes of their resurrection.
And just like that, with Mikey dozing in the backseat, she could feel that itch in the crook of her elbow. Craving a needle.
Michael inhales and she knows it'll hurt to let the air out, that it hurts him to breathe when he is helpless to stop her from hurting.
"I don't miss it," she says. "I really don't. It's just so unexpected that my body would still react to the thought of it. It felt… like waking up to the smell of food when you're hungry," she laughed. "I figured I'd be past this, now. That I'd buried it."
The look of unwavering affection from Michael melts through her walls. He says finally, "Maybe nothing stays buried forever."
She licks her lips.
"I think it's okay," he says. "That it comes back. Sometimes, I'm having breakfast with you and Mikey, or I'm putting on my socks or getting out of the shower, and suddenly I remember that I've been dreaming about Fox River. It's like a slap—no. Like a train smashing into me. The contrast between then and now. It's hard, Sara. I'm not pretending otherwise. What I've been through, what you've been through—it's part of who we are, part of what brought us to where we are now."
She's always liked the sound of her name in his mouth. He says it like a poet and a believer, as if she were something to be worshipped.
"What if it's still in me," she says. "That emptiness I was so afraid of when I started using."
"You'd find ways to face it that wouldn't involve self-harm." There's no room for doubt in his voice, in his eyes. "You'll never take morphine again, Sara."
"But what if part of me always wants to? What if that empty thing inside of me is still there, somewhere, still terrified of its own deserts—still willing to do anything to escape? What if it takes over?"
"That won't happen. I won't let it. Look at me, Sara. I won't let it."
The quietness of his words slowly overcomes her rapid heartbeat.
The look in his eyes is earnest, steadfast.
Michael breaks the distance between them, and when his hand rests on her shoulder, she knows for sure that the battle against the needle is won. Just this once. Her husband's hand is still damp from the raw vegetables he was chopping and he smells faintly of cilantro.
"I love you so much," she says.
"I know."
He leans in to kiss the top of her head. The strawberry shampoo she uses is his favorite—he says it makes holding her feel like never-ending summer.
After a few minutes, when he can tell she's okay, he walks back to his own side of the table and resumes chopping vegetables.
Maybe there is no such thing as never-ending summers, Sara thinks, watching the man in front of her. And it doesn't matter.
They will face winter when it comes, together.
...
Please leave a comment/kudos if you enjoyed the work.
And for the readers who've been making the writing process less lonely all these years by engaging with my content, I wanted to say a big thank you. Before I got an agent and an editor, it was mostly through this awesome community that I stayed motivated. I thought I'd share the good news with you that my debut novel is coming out in September 2025.
I'd love for you to read it-you can preorder the book wherever you usually buy books by searching NO REST FOR THE WICKED by Rachel Louise Adams (it's the gorgeous cover with black cats on it).
I can't wait to know what you think about it. And do feel free to PM me here or on social media-it's been a joy connecting with all of you over the years. As always, take care and stay amazing!
Rachel24601
PS: Don't forget Paul and Sarah have an awesome podcast called Prison Breaking with Sarah and Paul. Do join the Discord community (totally free) where we do Watch parties and have tons of fun. And if you can spare 4 bucks a month, consider joining their they have tons of great content!
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