(TW for mentions of child abuse and drug use.)
----

Aubrie Thao fucked up. She crashed and burned, demolishing everything around her. …and even more so… Aubrie Thao was fucked up. In her mind. In her soul. In everything.

     And all of her own memories never failed to remind Aubrie of that—-of her mistakes… of her own issues.

     Aubrie found herself sitting, plenty of nights, head in her hands, murmuring to herself… Cursing herself.

     Why the hell did she ever drop that low?

     She took kiroiyaka—-she succumbed to the darkness.

      Every waking moment was agony.

      Going from classes her eighth grade through senior years, dosing on something like that… It took a toll—-as did her own father’s actions.

      Now, while her father was long gone and nowhere to be found—-missing from everyone's line of sight and through searches—-he still haunted Aubrie’s every waking thought.

    …Everything he said… Everything he did. …Every bit of hardship he caused… She remembered.

      Every bit of pain and anguish Aubrie experienced growing up… He was the number one reason. It was him. …Always him.

      Almost every night, Aubrie would hear his voice, painfully and eerily echoing through her ears… An auditory hallucination.

      In every sense, Aubrie hadn't moved on from what he had done.

      Her identical twin brother, Dylan, had experienced some of the same hardships and grief due to their father. The moment Dylan came out as trans, it only seemed to get harder for him. Their father would never stop yelling… Stop screaming… About how Dylan had “sinned”.

      To Aubrie, that bold statement had sounded so rich coming from a man who was literally a demon—-not just because of his past words or actions… But because he was physically a demon. He was hellsent.

      And because of that little fact, Dylan and Aubrie were demons of their own… Well, because of that, and the fact their mother had been a low level one herself.

      Their father had treated their younger sister, Delta, pretty shittily too—-but, as much as Delta saw, she lucked out compared to her older siblings. …She was almost always watched and doted upon by their mother… So, in turn, it made it harder for their father to try anything.

     Aubrie was grateful for that part at least—-Delta had been taken care of.

      Every night, Aubrie had the same nightmares—-the ones of which she thought kiroiyaka would cure… would cast away.

      Unfortunately for Aubrie, the kiroiyaka did nothing for her. …nothing other than make her angry… Desperate. It made her go off the rails. Overwhelmed. …and everything she did while on it… She'd never forgive herself for it.

     She had hurt her ex, Kara, quite a bit… …the same with their son, Greyson.

        Everything Aubrie had done was forever etched in her mind. Everything she did made her feel sick. It made her loathe herself more than anyone in the world.

       …Of all the bad things in the world and all the realms, Aubrie thought she was the worst one.

        No matter how many times people had told her differently, Aubrie still thought so lowly of herself. She became isolated. She had purposely made herself look like an ass just to soften the blow of splitting with Kara. To Aubrie, she thought it would be better for Kara's mental health if they were to split.

      And as for Greyson, she started to realize how her accidental lashing out hurt him. …She had shown up to her mother’s home when Kara was there visiting Dylan, made Greyson’s existence known, and acted like she didn't want anything to do with Greyson, just so Kara wouldn't even think twice about taking him in.

     Aubrie knew Greyson was better off with Kara—-not her. …He was safer that way.

       Even with Greyson in Kara's custody, that didn't stop Aubrie from holding her breath each night, hoping and praying he'd be safe.

       Aubrie loved Greyson more than anything. …she felt like he was the one good thing she had ever done. He was her greatest accomplishment… but also her biggest weak point in terms of what she had done in the past.

      Kiroiyaka was supposed to be her saving grace. It was supposed to lift her out of the rut—-or rather, abyss—-she had collapsed into; but unfortunately, it never did such a thing for her. It made things worse… It caused her to not think… To make mistakes. Hell, it made her worse in terms of emotions and her own mental state. It made small molehills into mountains. It made Aubrie feel like the world had turned against her—-that Kara, Dylan, Delta, and her mother hated her more than anything.

      Kiroiyaka ruined her—-there was no doubt in Aubrie’s mind of that little fact.

      Aubrie had made the decision to try to quit—-cold turkey; the keyword had been ‘try’... She often found herself craving it again. The feeling was addictive. …the highs from it were extraordinary… But the lows… Oh, the lows were the worst. …it only hurt her more.

      Aubrie sat on a motel room bed, rocking back and forth. You've got this, Aubrie’s mind murmured to her. Focus on what you're doing: being free of that burden… That curse. You've done good for the past two days; you didn't touch it once. You didn't seek out the dealer. You've got this.

    Despite reassuring herself, Aubrie wasn't very confident in her ability to stay off kiroiyaka. …she thought it was fate that she'd fall into the abyss once more.

    Aubrie swallowed, closing her eyes, leaning back a little, running the palm of her hands over the thighs of her jeans, trying to calm herself. “You're good. You're doing good. You're—-” She stopped. She swallowed once more and sighed, quickly after. “Who am I kidding?” She murmured. “I won't last a week without it.”

     She stood, pacing around the bedroom, back and forth, trying to ground her mind into a more calm and relaxed state of feeling…. Of thinking—-but that didn't seem to work for her very well.

       “Everytime I think I'm doing okay… I collapse,” Aubrie said, wearing a hole in the carpet from her frantic, frenzied pacing in a circle around the outer edges of the room. “I crash…”

     She ran her hands through her hair and let them settle on either side of her head—-rooted at the temples, locks of hair caught between each finger. “...It's too much to ask for things to go back the way it used to be, isn't it?” She asked no one—-her question slipped through the room and vanished into nothingness.

    She sighed, lowering her hands.

     Aubrie’s golden gaze traveled, falling upon the bed in the room. The pillows were scattered and the blanket strung out across the floor. She sighed once more. That alone was proof enough that things wouldn't go back to the way they used to… Never again.

     To numb the pain of losing Kara, Aubrie had bounced back and forth through hook-ups. None of them had really ever stuck though. She brought men, women, and enbies back… All to try to hush the pain. It never worked. …All it ever did was make Aubrie feel embarrassed in herself.

   Last night, she had brought a guy back to the room… some drummer in a local band—-Isaac was his name… or something like that. Ivan? Ian?

     Aubrie didn't care. She'd never see him again.

     Aubrie exhaled, slowly before listening—-she needed to focus on something else instead of those negative thoughts she had been focused on ever since she woke up an hour prior.

      Her phone, on the nightstand a few feet away, vibrated and sounded off with a notification.

     Slowly and sluggishly, Aubrie made her way over in that direction before picking it up, expecting to see a message of some sort—-most likely a spam one referring to her as a 66-year-old woman named ‘Tammy’ who might be interested in a company's retirement benefits. She was fully prepared to do her usual ‘block number and report as spam' routine.

      Aubrie took a moment to breathe before picking up her phone. She had a small puzzled look on her face when she saw it was a calendar app’s reminder about something.

      She had heavily relied on the calendar—-between the kiroiyaka and her not-so grand mental status, all the days had started to blur together… Nights too. She never knew what day of the week it was—-or what day of the month it was for that matter.

     At first, Aubrie just thought she had an appointment she missed or something along those lines.

      “I didn't exactly make any appointments recently,” Aubrie murmured to herself. “...at least, none I can recall.”

      It was true that Aubrie had often had lapses in memory—-mainly caused by stress, but her other negative factors in her life had played a hand in it too. She had even forgotten to put milk in a fridge at one point—-the next person who got the room was in for a nasty surprise the next time they wanted a drink at breakfast.

     Slowly, Aubrie exhaled and unlocked her phone to see what the notification was for. She tapped on the box and it took her right to a page on the calendar app on her phone. Her gold eyes widened when she had seen what the notification was for—-Greyson’s second birthday. It had completely slipped her mind.