Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 98992 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 495(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98992 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 495(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
“You meant to be here,” he declares as he picks up his clipboard. “That’s why you’re here.”
There’s no stopping myself from caustically biting, “We’re in the twenty-first century, Doc. They make tablets and shit now.”
“They also make suppressors instead of pillows to muffle gunshot sounds.” His hand nonchalantly motions at the wall space I collapsed into yesterday. “Sit, Collins.”
My feet follow the instructions, leading me over to the wall, while my spirit puts up a resistance.
Tells me to run.
Go backwards.
Fucking moonwalk out the door I didn’t even realize I came in.
Why did I come in here?
Why am I here?
The second my ass hits the cold floor, my legs instinctively bend for me to dangle my arms on top of them. “Why can’t I sit in a fucking chair?”
“You tell me.”
Realizing he never commanded that I sit on the floor or where I sit at all, today or yesterday, makes me grimace.
Fuck me…that I do that, the answer too.
It’s the same reason I do most of the shit I do in here.
Because it’s what I feel I deserve.
I shouldn’t be entitled to sit where the other privileged brats of this country do.
The ones that are here because Mommy and Daddy need them to look better on camera. To hold their personas just a little cleaner for the reporters.
“Answer.”
“Can’t you be fucking polite?”
“I am.”
The viciousness of his bite has me bracing my back on the wall.
“I greeted you upon your arrival and engaged in conversation afterward. You showed me your teeth – unprovoked –, and I chose not to show you my fucking fangs – completely provoked. I would call that polite, Collins.” Now completely in control of the situation the way he should be, he removes a candy stick from his box. “Cig?”
There’s no reluctance to nod.
He tosses me the little treat prior to suggesting, “You should try toothpicks between sessions. The ones with the mint flavor. It’ll give your senses a bit of what they’re craving”
I acknowledge the idea with another nod and pretend to light the fill in drug.
“Why the floor?”
“Because I’m not here for fucking looks. I’m not here to keep up appearances. I’m not here because my picture-perfect family needs me clean in their next Christmas photo or to keep me from cussing out a Senator during a cocktail party.”
“Okay.” His leg crosses the other to create support for his clipboard. “What are you here for?”
The candy lands between my lips and for a flitter of a second, I swear I can feel the nicotine lap dancing on my tongue. “I honestly don’t know…”
“And that’s part of the problem,” Doc casually counters. “You don’t know.”
My eyes fall shut in silent agreement.
“You don’t know what is ahead of you. You don’t know what you want to be ahead of you. You don’t know where you’re going. You don’t know where you want to go. And as long as you don’t know, as long as you’re unwilling to ask those questions or find those answers, you’re going right where the fuck you are now. Because here is something you know. Because it’s comfortable. Because you’re comfortable. You are comfortable in the false idealistic simplicity you have created during your time here.”
The candy stick is shifted to the other side of my mouth in a desperate attempt to mask the bitterness of the truth.
“It is not my job to lie to you nor is it my job to perpetuate the lie you have created for yourself. You are not any healthier for being behind these closed doors. Your system may be flushed, but you are not any cleaner. You are not any less addicted to the substances that brought you here. You just don’t have the same access. If you choose not to learn anything during these sessions, if you choose not to take anything away from them, if you choose not to change even a single choice, then you are wasting your time as much as fucking mine because you will be the same, ugly addict you were when they volun-told you to be here, instead of the recovering person ready to write themselves a future, an existence, worth a damn.”
“I want that.”
“What?”
The pause is too long to handle forcing me to open my eyes again.
“What do you want, Collins?”
“A future.”
“And what’s in it?”
“People…?” It feels wrong to say yet even more wrong to be so fucking vague. “My niece.”
“You miss her?”
“I haven’t met her yet.”
“You want to?”
“Yeah.”
“And you want her to meet you.”
“Yeah.”
“And who exactly is it she’s meeting, Collins?”
His words call to the part of me that’s begun to crave isolation and self-deprecation. It’s the part of me that when I lie in bed at night it haunts me almost as loud as the cries of the soul, I hurt aside my own. It’s the part the drugs always hushed just enough for me to fall asleep. “I don't know.”