Pills sat on a table. They were being stared at, their danger, their silent menace being observed and fully accepted by a pair of glossy eyes that blinked as though sandpaper where on the other side of their lids. The eyes went as far as embracing the threat they posed as something desirable.

Nothing was said aloud, but thoughts were racing. They were racing around the room, visible only to a special kind of eye—one that was glazed over and especially tired, one that felt it had seen everything there was in the waking world and wanted to find out what was beyond it. So, in the air, these thoughts soared. They went up and then their wings stopped their frantic movements as they glided around a young man’s head, going back up again for another lap not long after.

Every once in a while one of the thoughts struck him and his eyes would get wet, throat tight with some emotion he didn’t feel the need to put a name to. Because he was beyond the phase where the importance of recognition held any weight. He was all too familiar with self-loathing and all its detrimental cousins. Despair, heart-ache, and fear—the emotions were dirty little things that hurt worse than the slaps in the face he was receiving from those rampant thoughts.

How many pills, he wondered. How many would it take before he felt nothing at all? And would it be better than this hellacious cycle of false hope, empty promises, and stabs in the back? He had to think so. But how could he be certain? There was only one way to find out, the yellow pills seemingly spelling his name out on the tabletop, ever-beckoning to him.

The temptation was there. It was very real and very painful, but eventually he found himself lashing out. His limbs went into a tizzy, a flurry of movement and the letters of his name clattered to the floor to regroup. He stomped on them with the heel of the heavy black boot he’d never bothered to take off as he screamed as loud as he could. The sound was primal, but not therapeutic in the least.

Trying to ward off the blows that more frequently jabbed him in the ribs was futile. He was falling apart unlike all the bits and pieces of the pills he wanted to destroy that only came back together again to spell out messages that mocked his existence until he wanted to tear his own hair out. Or maybe it was his eyes he wanted to take, so that he could no longer read the things that he deemed all too painfully true. Trembling hands came to grip at the dirty strands, but they never pulled hard enough. Nothing was ever good enough, not even now when there was no one left to impress but himself. But it was said that everyone was their own worst critic, so he sunk down with that in mind, forehead resting against the wood of the table and he cried. Mark bled his very heart and soul out so that they fell to the floor and dripped between the floorboards, mingling with the tears and the last bits of his dignity.

He was disappointed in himself, and the things he had just read reflected that well enough. Wet eyes watched as they reached out to finish him off now, as they sought their revenge for him ever desiring to shield himself from their allure. He was a weak man; always had been—far too tender and much too soft. But now that he’d been stripped down and humiliated, exposed to the bone and the dingiest places of him were front and center. He had to wonder how he even made it this long. With no support or even the simplest things to look forward to, how had he done it for so long? No one’s smiles brightened his day; no hands were there for him to hold. Walls shied away when he tried to lean on them, he swore it.

And yet here he was. He’d dragged himself on his belly all the way to this pathetic point in his life, though he’d done it screaming bloody murder. It hurt. It hurt so much to think that his effort counted for so very little. All he could manage was more pain and loneliness. In the end, not even he held himself as a first priority and holy that hurt, the resounding question of why bother knocking the wind out of him very suddenly.

Long fingers found the spot where his chest ached, the skin of his forehead coming in to press harder as he tried not to double over with the way he ached so thoroughly. His fingers scratched at his shirt, stopping him from breaking skin with the way he continued to claw as though he wanted it out. In reality, he did. The source of it all lay within his own chest and there was no way to uproot it now, its tendrils holding onto the deepest places they could find and latching on securely to ensure that very ache he couldn’t stand anymore.

He ought to lay down, maybe. Sleeping sometimes helped him feel numb. Other times, though, the merciless thoughts plagued his dreams to the point where it was all very useless. It was all useless. He was useless.

The doorbell rang on the other side of the room, but the incessant noise fell upon ears too far below the surface to hear anything but the way his filthy blood rushed through his veins in a fashion that he wished he could prevent. But he couldn’t now, nor could he ever stop it. All he could do was stand on his unstable legs and hobble into the room his bed was in to sleep it all off and inevitably do it all over again the next day when he saw those pale yellow, oblong pills on the floor, his name written all over his own failure that they reeked of.

This was the life he was destined to lead? This pitiful circle that closed in on him like a pit, burying him alive so that he may never see the light of happiness like a normal person might? So be it, he decided, hair mussed from the way he gripped at it. The strands became more unruly with the way he tossed and his old pillow that night. Round and round he’d go on this ride. Round and round and round until one day he finally got dizzy enough to call it quits. When that would be, only the pills knew.