6 Chapter 5. What Am I?

The lies that she feared the most were  the ones close enough to the truth to pass under the radar, or else the ones that are so big you never dreamed a person could make something like that up. The half truths lead you away from trust into a closet of paranoia. The big ones are shock and awe, they just root you in fear so primal your brain starts doing the thinking. Once you're in survival mode there's a muzzle on your higher thinking, concepts like kindness and happiness become whispers among the anxious screams. If you fight it you stick out, you're a rebel, a conspiracy theorist, a marked person.

But if you leave it alone. You become consumed.

Adriana felt lost in their lies. The only thing that was there after searching for so long was betrayal. It slowly seeped in how much of a fool she had been, oblivious to the world. She floated away from the fake promises and reality until she was just a lost star.

But all lost stars must have a red button, a button that tells you YOUR time is up.

She had found hers.

It would stay with her for as long as vindictive fate decided, the knowledge that she would have to suffer thoughout, sneering at her.

"Who am I?"

"Who am I!?"

Pain seared through Adriana's abdomen hotter than a branding iron, her mind conceded to the torment, unable to bring a thought to completion. Without a conscious notice, her body curled into something fetal, something primeval and all the while the pain burnt and radiated.

"Just gonna stand there and watch me burn, but that's all right because I like the way it hurts"

The pain was merciless without escape.

The nausea swirled unrestrained in her empty stomach. Her head swam with half-formed regrets. Her heart felt as if the blood that kept it alive had become tar as it struggled to keep a steady beat.

Adriana was too weak to fight that fear.

Her heartache was a glove of ice, encasing her in a cage. Her heart longed to fly again, to stretch it's wings and soar, and see the vast possibilities of life laid out before her. But it stayed locked up in it's frozen prison, afraid to pick the lock or try to break the bars.

Adriana's melancholy mood hung over her like a black cloud, raining her personal sorrow down on her in waterfalls as she walked alone.

The devil is not evil, the only evil ones are us.

How could life go on as usual? How could it when the curtains have opened and her world had crumbled?

Abandonment is a betrayal. It is a burning of the soul. It is a dusty hot road in which the mind and body wither.