first of all, THANK YOU FOR READING!

(VERY) Important Author's Note: As you know, these stories are my therapy... Well, my life has officially gone down the shitter. My mother has a rare form of MS and I dropped out of college to care for her. Then I got diagnozed with schitzophrenia - an issue I wish to discuss at a later date because the stigma around it that we're all dangerous is such bullshit. But yaaaay! Charlie's life blows! I'll stop. Basic point, my creativity has plummeted. I don't know when or if any of my other projects will be updated.

But hey - I have this! It's a crappy 800 worded passage that really has no right being anywhere because it's a first draft and I didn't proof read. But it's here. And I updated. And hopefully I'll update some more, my other stories included.

I don't remember much about detoxing except for a few select instances.

The withdrawals started like this; My legs don't feel right, they felt alien, and no matter how I moved them they never got comfortable. Then I was anxious, pacing around the clubhouse, chewing my thumbnail. Then I got cold for all of five minutes before I felt such a horrific need to vomit that I ran faster than an Olympian hopeful for the bathroom.

Chibs was there soon after, leaning against the frame of a door I couldn't of been bothered to close before my retching started.

"You just have'ta wait it out." He says calmly, knowingly.

And I do. I sit there for an hour, my arms wrapped around the dirty toilet basin while I threw up things I ate four years ago. I wait it out and finally it dies down – more likely though, I run out of stomach acid to deposit.

He hands me a towel and I take it gratefully. I don't wipe my mouth, I use it to absorb the thick layer of sweat on my face. Then suddenly I'm so hot that it feels like I'm boiling. I strip off my shirt then use it to soak up more sweat that has accumulated on my face.

It isn't until I notice Chibs staring that I realize when I took off my shirt, my scarf came with it. My neck is bare.

My scar is visible.

But I can't be bothered to care, not when my body is being cooked from the inside out.

I stay in the bathroom until every muscle in my body begins to cramp. Chibs has to help me to my bed where I promptly curl up into the fetal position and begin to spout spit-laden obscenities like a woman demonically possessed.

Chibs sits in a chair by the door with a bent leg resting on a knee. He tells everyone else to go away.

When I jump up from the bed and try to fight my way past Chibs to go score any way I know how, he wrestles me back down. He keeps me pinned to the bed until I stop thrashing.

He sits back in his chair.

I pass out not too long after that.

When I wake up, Chibs is sitting by the door.

I tell him that I want to die. I don't think I've ever been more honest in my entire life.

He tells me to suck it up, to wait it through.

"Please, Chibs. I can't take this. I need something. I need something bad, I'll do anything if you just give me a shot." Weeping and with my whole body on fire, I manage to sit up in the bed.

He doesn't respond.

"Please. I'll do anything."

He doesn't respond. He doesn't even blink.

I crawl out of bed over to him. I kneel in front of him with my hands on his spread knees.

"Anything." I repeat.

He stares down at me with those brown eyes of his and leans in closer. For a split second my heart jumps with joy, thinking that he's going to take me up on my insinuated offer.

His face is close to mine, his eyes set hard on mine. For a moment there's silence and in that moment I move my hands to his belt buckle. Quickly, however, he pushes them away.

Then, his rough hands are cupping my sticky face.

"You need to ride this out, sweetheart." I can feel his breath on the tip of my nose.

"I can't."

One finger, just one gentle tip of his finger that I can barely feel touches the healed gash on my neck, "If you survived this, then you're strong enough to make it through the next few days. All you have to do is wait it out."

Then there's another finger on my neck, just one more – just enough to run its length and inspect is depravity.

"I should've died that night." I say so quiet that I almost don't even hear myself.

"But you didn't." His fingers are gone, but his eyes demand my attention. "El, you're going to make it through this and then you're going to kill those basterds who raped and slaughtered you and your family." He says it blunt to shock me and it works. His words make me recoil, make me fall back onto the floor. They make me quiver and almost cry.

But he says nothing else – not even as I crawl back into bed and cry from the pain into a pillow. He really doesn't need to say anything else, anyway. He's already said the one thing I needed to hear. He's already said the words that keep me sane for the next two days.

"Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach death within me how to live."

- John Cocteau

Thanks for reading! :)