CORINNE

There was something very different about this time. Corinne had watched her mother inject the dose too many times to count, but still, something was very much different this time. It was in her eyes, Corinne thought. Her eyes had looked empty and dead and without a shred of will to live.

Corinne snapped out of the memory, or a hallucination, whatever the fuck it was. Her shaky hands reached for the cup of water from the table and she leaned on the wall, feeling the cold, stony surface against her back.

The fever worsened with each passing minute. Images – memories swirled through her brain, making her dizzy and unable to concentrate. She needed a plan, fast. But she couldn't even keep her eyes open. Maybe if she just rested for a moment...

Something was different this time. Her mother was clean for a week and Corinne remembered the words she had told her just a couple of days ago.

"If I do not make it this time, it's over."

Corinne had played these words in her head ever since. She wasn't strong enough to do anything other than to think about those words. And what they meant for her. She wanted her mother to get clean, she wanted to help her. Beyond ration, beyond reason.

But how could one help a person that didn't want help? Someone who wasn't capable of helping themselves? There was no way. Corinne had learned that over the last ten years. There was no way to help someone who didn't want help-

"Think!" Corinne shouted out loud, breaking the memory. Pain spread from her head to her chest, finally settling under her ribcage.

The memory was overwhelming. Corinne fought hard to keep that one tucked away in the back of her mind, never thinking about it, never admitting what she had done. How she felt.

"I have to think." She said out loud, her own voice allowing her to think clearly for a few moments. "I have to get out of here."

The hut was empty. She didn't know why she stumbled to that same small hut Greg kicked her out of, but she had nowhere else to go. No.

"No." Corinne grunted, trying to lift her dead limbs of the cold ground. "No. I don't need them." It felt like a lie, a lie she had told so many times through her life. Even when her mother was still alive and she swore she didn't need her.

Corinne lost her mother when she was ten years old. Everything from that moment on wasn't her mother. It was a broken shell that used to be a person. Now, that broken shell was shaking on the floor, her mouth twisting in strange angles.

She had to get out of there.

She had to.

No matter what the price was in the long run, she couldn't stay there for a moment longer. She had lost her childhood, she had lost her naivety and her freedom and her love. For what? For a person that couldn't stay clean for more than a week.

The disappointment and betrayal hurt to the point that Corinne couldn't think straight. The heaviness of the burden sat at her soul, reminding her of everything she carried over the years.

All kids wondered what their parents cooked for dinner during school hours. She wondered which ditch she would find her mother in when she went out looking for her.

And why? Because her mother wasn't capable of caring about anything beyond herself.

That particular memory pulled Corinne to lucidity. Her heartbeat quickened rapidly and she felt like she would vomit. How had she forgotten about that particular thought? She was so busy guarding herself, shielding herself that she forgot the most important thing she hated about her mother.

"I'm just like her." Corinne's face twisted and her eyes watered. The idea of crying felt foreign, but her eyes didn't forget. The pain spread from her chest to her neck, gripping and suffocating and strangling.

She didn't just resent her mother. She resented all of mankind. She resented them for their inability to take action, their inability to change and take control of their lives. And that made her push everyone away.

She deemed them weak and moved on, never even thinking that she might be the one that was incapable of change. And before she even realised, she was all alone.

"I brought that on myself." Corinne said, her cheeks now stained with tears. Crying probably came naturally to other people, but to her every tear felt like defeat. She failed in keeping herself away from the tumbling emotions.

Her mother took everything from her. She ridded her of her childhood, she took her innocence and her laughter and her capability to feel. And this moment, this moment that was so thoroughly different than all other moments, was when Corinne decided her mother wouldn't take anything else away from her.

Before she realised it, Corinne had her car keys in her hands and she ran to the parking lot, leaving the door open behind her. This need to get away washed over her like a tidal wave.

Corinne had lost everything, but she couldn't bare to witness this.

Her mother was about to leave this world and she would have to do it alone. For all the heartache, for all the sleepless nights, for all the endless rides through the outskirts of the city. She would have to die alone.

Because Corinne would not witness it. She would steal this moment and she would never give anything away again. And everyone – anyone – that tried to weasel their way into her broken heart would face stone walls.

Tears dripped from Corinne's eyes as she remembered all the things that happened from that moment on. All the people she pushed away and all that fought so hard to climb over those walls. But she couldn't stop now.

There was no way to fix anything anymore. She fucked up and she fucked up completely.

"It's the fever talking." Corinne mumbled, taking a sip from her shaking cup. Once this fever passed, she would be able to think straight again.

And she would remember the reasons why she did all she did. There was no way someone would keep her in a cage again. Like her mother kept her hostage for all those years. Constrained and weak and unable to leave.

This island held her hostage again, tied to a place where she didn't want to be. The similarity in feeling made her do things she didn't really want to do. But she couldn't stay, not when it felt so eerily similar to what being tied to her mother felt like.

So, she pulled at those chains, ready to let herself free. And she would do it again.

Corinne drove and drove, her mind foggy and hazy. All she saw was the road ahead and all she thought about was how she needed to get away. She couldn't carry the burden of her mother dying in front of her on her soul.

She was too scared to face that. Too weak.

So she drove away and she hoped here was nothing out there that might judge her for her weakness. But the moment she reached the edge of the town, Corinne stopped.

Her legs stopped working, she couldn't push the pedal anymore. The world turned black and empty as she stared ahead.

She could shake everything off, except the memory that hid underneath the pain and heartbreak and loss. Her mother's laughter. She heard it in her head, she felt it in her bones.

And she couldn't walk away.

Maybe that was the exact moment Corinne promised she would always walk away from everything that threatened to shatter her. The moment she turned into stone and ice and hate. Because she couldn't walk away when it mattered. Maybe that made her weak, or it made her strong. She didn't know.

The cup dropped from her hands, the sound vibrating through her skull. In the distance, she heard a familiar voice, but she was too weak to look, too weak to move.

Too weak to walk away.