It's amusing, how you can experience the same thing in so many ways. Humans are so simple, and so complex, all at the same time. We are but one single being, but we have so many faces. Each one veiling the world before them with a different filter. We can all see these different worlds; be it through love, or sadness, or hatred, or any other emotion. I always imagined it like a room surrounded with glass windows, and while there are so many different things out each pane of glass, we stubbornly get caught up staring out only one, ignoring the light pouring in from the others, attempting to show us not just one truth, but all of them.

That night, it was like someone had wrenched me away from my window of cold desperation, hurt and denial, and shoved me up against another. Leaving me to face the foreign light burning the skin it touched. Leaving me to discern what to do with that sort of pain. 

Alcohol was my first attempt at coping. I couldn't understand when I was in my right mind, so perhaps I needed to be out of my mind. I thought drinking for fun always felt light and warm, so perhaps that's how I wished this painful heat would evolve. Drinking when I was depressed, feeling the poison trickle hotly down your throat--raw from crying--filled me with a lethargy like no other, allowing me to focus on it's toxic comfort rather than the pain radiating in my chest, beckoning for more cries. Perhaps I hoped evoking more sadness would lead me back to my comfortable cold window where I didn't have to face unsightly truths.

I wasn't happy though, nor was I depressed for once. All I felt was anger; anger and explainable hatred. It had no direction, it simply was. Drinking out of anger, was an entirely new experience which both excited and terrified me.

The bitter taste, the way the liquor burns the throat before sloshing into the stomach like acid, but it's heat was nothing like that which coiled in my chest like a scorching hot snake. I drank and drank as though it could possibly douse the fire lit by the rage, but it only allowed the flames to grow. It fed the hatred, all while subtly taking away my sense of reason and rationality. Drinking while fuelled by wrath allowed me to become a version of myself I never knew existed.

I wasn't sure where I was, or how far I'd walked since storming out of that apartment. In a blind rage I had taken a half empty bottle of vodka and stumbled out onto the streets. I couldn't go home, but I couldn't possibly stay there either. So, with a bottle to my lips, I simply let my feet carry me forward, truly not giving a single damn where they brought me. There was no place for me anymore. Home wasn't home without Skyy, school was nothing but a reminder of how weak and despicable I was. What did it matter where I went now? That's what I thought. I didn't have value, I didn't have purpose, and I didn't have anyone who cared enough to worry about where I was and what could happen to me. So, I would just keep moving.

I mean, where was one to go when no one was waiting for you? When no one would come looking, and no one missed your presence. This wasn't some sad case where the poor soul just couldn't see that there were people who cared if only they looked hard enough; looked beyond their selfish sadness. Thing was, I did have that in one person and one person only. Yet, no one tells you what yoy do when they die and you take their place as black sheep.

Perhaps I deserved to feel this way. Maybe my bastard brother left so I could taste what he'd lived with for so long. Perhaps it was spite that drove him go abandon me. Perhaps that final misleading goodbye, that smile was because he was glad. He knew what was coming to me and he--

I let out a gut wrenching scream battering my fists bloody against a chain link fence. How could I think this way? How could I be so cruel and think so horribly of my dead brother!? My brother who killed himself to escape his pain.

Even if it were out of spite, could I tell him he was wrong? That I didn't deserve it? I let him suffer this way in silence, simply so that I could keep pretending I was okay, because as long as I didn't reach that rock bottom, things would somehow work out right? How selfish. How absolutelt dispicble.

I drowned my anguish in more liquor, watching the lines in the middle of the road before me start to blur and over lap.

Things like this were so strange. What were the boundaries that kept him here? What was it that stopped him from just running away? Why didn't he tell me what he felt? Why didn't he get angry, or fight back, or try to fit in to stop the hurting? Why did he just let it all happen? Why did he handle it all so differently? Did that make him stronger or weaker than I?

So many questions and only loud silence left behind. The mocking of it's emptiness echoed all around, bouncing off every corner of my blackened mind as if to prove that Skyy's existance was nowhere to be found. He's gone and I would never get those answers, and I deserved nothing more for my cowardice.

The sound of screeching tires and headlights blinding me suddenly pulls me out of my deep thoughts as I notice a large truck skidding across the damp pavement. My heart races and I know I should move, but some part of me seems to just surrender as my arms stay at my sides and my feet remain planted, my dull and blurry eyes looking onwards vacantly.

"Move, Idiot!"

Just as my vision was flooded with light, something hard slammed into me from the right and before I knew it I was landing on the pavement watching the truck pass by, honking loudly as the man cursed and drove on without a care.

I just let my head fall against the pavement, my eyes closing as my chest burned with anger. Why couldn't it be that easy? Why couldn't I go too!?

"Hey. Fucking snap out of it," a deep voice spoke, a hand tapping my cheek non too gently.

Eventually, I managed to focus in on the face, but I only vaguely recall seeing him somewhere before. He was looking me over, but some part of me wanted to laugh at his perpetual annoyance even though he seemed concerned.

"Looks fine," he mumbled.

"Thanks, but I don't swing that way," I slurred with a smirk.

He made a noise of disgust, "Shut up. Can you stand?"

"Jus' leave, 'm fine 'ere," I said, feeling exhaustion taking me over.

"Is he okay?" A girl's voice called, drawing my attention to two girls catching up.

As they came into view, I felt my eyes roll at the sight of the girl from the other day, "Oh, great"

Her eyes widened before a harsh grin lit up her face, "Well, look who wr have here. Lookin' good, my friend."

"Go fuck yer self," I spat, trying to storm off, only to stumble off the curb and be caught by the dude who'd saved me.

"You know him, Maya?" He asked. "You didn't tell me you'd met."

"Not like you said anything either," she said, making me wonder what the hell they meant. "Just wanted to see what he was like for myself."

"Guys, we should really get him out of the rain, he's gonna catch his death out here," The other girl, a long haired brunette from what I could tell.

"Let him," Maya scoffed.

I'd had enough, shoving the guys arm off me before going to look for my missing bottle of vodka, "Look, you did your good deed. You don't need to stick around, I'm not your problem."

"You heard him, let's go," This maya bitch said, looking bothered by my very existance.

"He's obviously not okay, we can't just leave him. Idiot will probably walk into traffic again," the brunette stated, sounding like she pitied me.

They all looked me over, making me feel self conscious and small as I backed off, seeing my bottle on its side by a parked car. I picked it up, ignoring tge guy behind me.

"Why didn't you move?" He asked, making me sigh as I sipped on the bottle, but he took it from me.

"Bro, seriously?"I snapped. "The fuck do you care anyway?"

"You should talk to someone," He said suddenly, making my eyes widen at how pained he sounded.

I took in his appearance, which told me he was definitely someone who hung around the streets, his skin tanned and his features dark. His hair was a little shaggy and tucked up in a beanie, revealing an eyebrow piercing in his arched brow that only added to his intimidating aura.

Everything was harsh except for his unearthly blues that glowed even in the dark, rainy night. They were soft and something in the way they were looking at me made me feel vilnerable and like I could break down and tell him everything; I hated it.

"Blake, leave him alone. I don't know what you think you're going to find in him, but it's not there. He's a fucking bastard and that's that. Let the shit suffer," Maya snapped, looking furious as this Blake guy grabbed me by the arm and lifted it around his shoulder so he could suppory my weight.

"You two go on ahead, I'm walking him home," he said, ignoring the girl as the brunette took hrr gently and made her start walking.

"Don't piss off yer friends. Just go," I sigh in annoyance. "And gimme the bottle back."

"Why? So you can drink yourself into the emergency room?" He asked sarcastically.

I grin at that and shrug, "Sure. My parents would jus' love more hospital bills. Oh, and how they'd explain it to the press. I'd kill to see my mother lie to everyone again."

"That's fucked up," Blake commented, not really sounding too bothered.

"Everything's fucked up," I muttered, giving in and leaning against the dude. "Why are you helping me again?"

"Cuz you might kill yourself on the way home."

"Right," I said bluntly, sighing as I dropped to the grass, leaning against a fence. "You can leave me here."

"Why not just go home?" He asked.

My mind travelled to what it would be like to walk into that home. To walk past the place where those shoes once laid haphazardly. Past the place Skyy's coat used to hang. Past the chair he occupied at dinner. Past the chip in the door frame where dad once tried to hit him with a plate. The stain on the stairs carpet where he'd spilled hot chocolate--mom was furious.

How I would have to walk past that bedroom door again, pretending not to see it as I hurried up to the top floor where I'd hide my existance and pray my father didn't beat me for going out against his orders.

"Forget it, can you go somewhere else?" The guys asked with a weary sigh.

I opened my mouth, but suddenly I felt something else coming forward instead as I lurched over and felt the contents of my stomach spill onto the grass in front of me. I groaned, the world around me spinning and blurring.

Briefly I thought I heard Blake talking to me, but after throwing up a couple more time, i felt my arm give out as I slumped over and slipped into unconsciousness.

What a mess I've become, Skyy. I'm sorry you ever had to call someone like me brother.