"Morning." I yawned and rubbed my dry, itchy eyes. 

Mom jumped out of her slippers and shrieked when she rounded the stairs and found me standing directly in front of her in the dark walkway. She grabbed the thick crystal bowl she always kept on the table near the stairs and attempted to smash me over the head with it.

I ducked and held my arms up over my head to block her before she knocked me out.  She came down hard on my forearms, causing my elbows to ping and tingle as the shockwave ricocheted into my shoulders.

"Ouch, Momma. Stop, it's just me." I yelled and ducked for a second time when her arm swung back to strike me again.

Mom's eyes went wide with shock, reflecting eerily in the light sliver of moonlight like she had flipped her night vision on. She looked like she had seen a ghost while staring at me, like she didn't even recognize me.

And I knew why.

In her half-asleep state, she thought I was him. It stung knowing I was a constant reminder of him and the abuse he put her through. 

"Ezra, you scared me to death." Mom breathed in and out heavily, pulling the bowl back to her chest quickly.

"I'm sorry." I apologized and pushed my matted mess of tangles out of my eyes. 

"No, bug, it's not a big deal.  I had just gotten used to how quiet it was around here. I didn't expect you to be up. You don't come out of your room very much." Mom pulled her lips back tightly and gave me a forced smile. 

I knew it bothered her that I shut myself away from her, but I couldn't cope with the heaviness I lived with every day.  Mom was also well aware that I was using again. She had never been fooled by my attempts to hide it. The woman had been put through the wringer since the day my father walked into her life. There wasn't much I could do to sell her on my lies. 

He even ruined that part of my life.

I snatched the bowl out of her hands before she hit me with it again and placed it back on the table. Mom gave me an oddly suspicious expression that even the blackness of the night couldn't cover. 

"What?" My paranoid brain started running through every reason she could be staring at me like that.

I twisted the bottom eyebrow ring between my fingers and diverted my eyes away from her.  It was probably the red tint to them that had laser focus.  I had smoked a little and drank almost a whole fifth on top of the handful of pills I had just taken about a half hour ago.

I was at the point I had taken so much in the last forty-eight hours that I made myself sober.  I couldn't feel any of the medicine in my system doing anything.  The drugs were losing their effectiveness as my body adjusted to them. 

In another day or two, I would have to look for something harder and more potent to ease my suffering. 

"What are you doing up right now? It's like 3:00 AM." She pinched her mouth together curiously.  Her worry lines were prominent between her brows as she pulled them together, waiting for me to explain. 

"Uncle Charlie texted me last night and told me to be ready early today.  I got hungry and grabbed myself something to eat before I got in the shower."  I replied, scratching at the itchy skin on the back of my neck where the sweat from my high had dried.

She turned her head like she didn't believe me.  It was the truth—I was starving. It was probably the aftereffects of the pot. I ate every leftover item she had stored away in the fridge in Tupperware containers and then moved on to the cereal boxes.

Besides having an incurable case of the munchies, I had to fuel up for my grueling day of mindless grunt work.

Uncle Charlie pulled a muscle in his back the night after he forced me to get up out of bed and move. The next day he showed up at the same time, hobbling inside the doorway and running through the same routine as the previous morning. Instead of threatening me, his whiney ass started pleading with me for help. He told me that my cousin Mandy wasn't strong enough anymore for the type of work he was doing and Jake had flat out refused to help him.  He was all out of options and needed the extra hands to get the jobs done to keep his heat on for the winter.

I went with him the second day because I felt too guilty to turn him down after what he told me about believing I was the reason Mandy was still alive. 

I didn't feel the same way, I only happened to be there when she started seizing from the overdose. It didn't make what I did anything special.

It didn't make me a good person.

Every day like clockwork before the sun rose for the last three months, Uncle Charlie was standing in my bedroom doorway when I woke up. He would come in with a whole laundry list of odd jobs and excursions he needed help finishing because his back wasn't getting any better.  He never mentioned Ohio or the pills again, only listing off a myriad of impossible tasks that consumed my whole day. 

I did everything from painting the inside of one of his friend's rental properties to hauling junk to the scrap yard for the elderly woman down the street.  The work was hard and pushed me to my limits most days. The only reason I kept going was for my uncle's sake.  He was an annoying prick, but he looked after my mom and I felt like I owed it to him for taking care of her all the times I couldn't.

Each night after a full day's work, I would come home exhausted and disappear back to my hiding spot to chew up a handful of Oxy in hopes it would keep the nightmares of Riley's broken body away.  As soon as I crawled into bed and my head hit the pillow, the darkness would swallow me back down. I barely slept anymore and I was worn down to nothing.

Riley and the baby were the only two things I ever thought about in the long, lonely nights. They were always weighing on my mind.

I missed the wildly insane girl and what we could have been if I hadn't gone and fucked everything up. I replayed all the times we were together—the teasing, the fighting, and the way she fit perfectly wherever she decided to tuck herself into me. 

I imagined what it would have been like if the baby had survived the accident and things didn't fall apart. Watching Riley coo and smile as she held our baby in her arms would have stolen my breath away. It would have been so effortless for her, like everything she ever did.

And I just wanted it all back right here and now—both Riley and the baby. 

My phone buzzed in my cotton pajama pants pocket.  I dug deep and pulled it out, figuring it was probably my cousin Jake telling me he made the drop-off of my new supply.  If I hurried up, I could grab it after my shower and snort a couple of crushed pills before I left the house. 

Uncle Charlie's name flashed across the screen instead.

I opened the message and my stomach soured.

He wasn't coming to get me today. 

"Who is it?" Mom asked when she saw the frown on my face.

"Charlie.  He said his truck won't start." I hurried and deleted the message to erase it from my memory.  I was relieved and disappointed he wasn't going to be here this morning—weirdly, mostly disappointed. I hated and looked forward to the time I spent in silence, working next to him.

I felt like I was two people in the same body and neither one was in control. They were growing further apart and getting worse the more I obsessed over the uneasiness. 

The sensation began gnawing at my insides like someone had strapped a metal bucket with a rabid rodent against my chest.  The memories from the accident were the torturer securing it in place over my heart, while Uncle Charlie canceling on me was the lit match scorching the steel.  The trapped, raging creature was burning alive and the only way out was for it to chew a hole right through the center of my body until it was a festering, gaping wound. I wanted to kick and claw away from it, but my hands were tied behind my back and my feet were anchored to the floor.

I couldn't move—it hurt way too much.

"Honey, are you alright? What's wrong?"  Mom asked and reached out her hand to comfort me.

I tried to step away from her and get upstairs before the creature came bursting through my back. I missed my footing and collapsed to the ground. My body was boneless and began shaking for no reason at all. Every muscle in my abdomen clenched tightly.

"Ezra!" My mom shouted and dropped down to her knees next to me.

I began howling in agony, unable to keep in the guttural, inhuman sounds. Tears poured out of me, drenching my face with a runny mixture of salt water, snot, and saliva.  Now that I had opened the door and let my pain out, I couldn't stop it from rolling over every inch of my body.

It would never be silenced again.

Mom tried to pull me into her arms and hold me until it passed, but I didn't want the relief. I needed to suffer like Riley had suffered—alone, without anyone there to make it better.  Repenting my sins out loud wasn't going to change the past—nothing would replace what we lost that night. 

"Don't touch me! Don't touch me! Don't touch me!" I screamed and fought against Mom's embrace.

Mom found a way to overpower me and pinned me against her.  I buried my face into her sweater and my body went limp, surrendering to the familiar warm, comforting touch even though I didn't deserve it.

"Shhh, shhh. Ezra, I promise that it will be ok. I know it's hard to let it out, but you are strong. You can get through this. You have done it before, and you can do it again." She rubbed the back of my head and held me tighter.

"Why, Momma? Why? Why?" My hoarse voice cried out.

"Why what, baby? Tell me what's bothering you." She said softly. 

"I ca...ca... can't. I can't. I can't do it." I shook my head in a frenzy as I stared up at her. 

"Ezra, you know you can tell me anything—no matter what, I will always be here for you." Mom wiped my hair back from my sweaty face. 

A shadow crept down the stairs and came towards me.

Riley's sad green eyes were staring directly at me. She grabbed the bottom of her stomach and looked down at the blood covering her legs. Then, she took a step forward and leaned down over me. Her small hand went to my cheek, but I couldn't feel her. 

She wasn't really here. It was all in my head.

"I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry." I apologized over and over to her as she stepped back from me and faded away. 

"Ezra, what are you sorry for?" Mom's voice cut through the lucid hallucination.

"I hurt her, Momma. I hurt her." I grabbed my mom's sweatshirt and hid my face against it. 

"Hurt who?" Her body tensed with worry.

"Riley!" I yelled her name out loud for the first time in six months. I didn't deserve to say it after what I did to her, but I couldn't keep it inside anymore. 

"Who is Riley, Ezra?" Mom asked.

"I didn't mean to do it.  I swear I didn't. I was angry at her and scared—but I didn't want to hurt her. I tried to get the car to stop. Why couldn't I get it to stop? I should have died. It should have been me."
I cried.

"Ezra," Mom pulled my face up and looked into my swollen, bloodshot eyes. "Tell me what happened."

"Momma, our baby died and it is all my fault."