I'm sorry in advance.

-

My eyes flutter open.

Florescent lights.

Where am I?

Muffled voices all around me. It sounds like my head is underwater.

"She's awake, get her parents."

"Switch the IV out for the steroids. Keep watch of her vitals."

A door swinging open.

"Prepare some food for her."

"Is she finally awake?"

"Holy shit, she's out of the fuckin' coma."

What coma? Are they talking about me?

My brain feels numb, slowed by the effects of the drugs that are seeping through my system. I'm staring up at a ceiling, two bright ceiling lights shining down on me, nearly blinding me.

There are two women standing above me. I'm laying down a cot.

This situation feels awfully familiar. My first day in hell, I remember, thinking about how scared I was seeing Charlie and Niffty's demonic faces. I have a similar fearful and uncomfortable feeling growing in my chest now.

The two faces hovering above me are both unfamiliar. They are too close to me. Their presence makes me nervous.

One woman to my left-who has a head of black hair that's been pulled back in a tight bun and a medical mask pulled over her mouth and nose-has a syringe in her gloved hand. She's telling me that I'm going to feel a slight pinch in my arm. The other woman, on the other side of me, with brown hair, deep-set black eyes, and thin pink lips, is scribbling something furiously on a clipboard in her hands. We make brief eye-contact, and she gives me a smile that is so obviously fake, I can tell even through the intoxicated state I am in.

These women both look normal. Are they demons? Where are their sharp teeth, discolored skin, curly horns?

"Danielle!" A raspy voice cries.

I immediately register the voice.

My heart drops.

My mother.

"Mom?" I croak, trying to tilt my head up to search for her, but unable to crane my neck at such an angle. Every muscle in my body feels stiffer than concrete, but I'm desperate, so painfully desperate to see her. My mother.

"Baby, I'm here," she whispers, shoving the woman with the clipboard aside so that she can get to me. Making soothing shushing sounds, my mom brings her shivering hands to my face and touches them against my cheeks. "I'm here. I will always be here. I will never leave you again, never ever again."

There are tears in her eyes.

Then there are tears in my eyes.

I went to hell and back.

-

My grey eyes look empty through the mirror's reflection. Gone of all emotion, of all love, of all feeling. My heart aches just looking at myself, at my blanched skin, the thick bags underneath my eyes, the thinned layer of meat over my bones.

I have been out of the hospital for no longer than a week and I still feel like absolute shit.

Not only am I irritatingly exhausted every hour of every day, but every bit of my body hurts with every movement so slight as a breath. My heart hurts too, more than I thought it would.

I just got back to the real world, back to the life I was so suddenly torn away from... but I just want to go back. Back to hell. Being taken away from Vaggie, Charlie, Angel, Husk, and even Alastor so suddenly... it was like ripping a giant bandaid off, and the searing pain still hasn't rubbed away.

I don't necessarially know what happened. There was the car crash-which feels so, so long ago, but apparently, I didn't actually die. I just fell into a deep coma. The guy who had tried helping me that day called 911, and they rescued me. Once I was in the hospital, I entered some sort of trauma-and-drug-induced dream scape. My brain came up with some vivid plot to try and cope with the trauma of falling off the cliff, or at least, that's what my therapist thinks.

My therapist thinks that everything I went through was all in my imagination.

But I think that she's full of shit. I think she's a numb-brained asshole who doesn't know the difference between a refrigerator and her own vagina.

I know that they were real. Everything I went through... it wasn't just nothing. I still remember everything so vividly; it's not fading away like a normal dream would.

And I have to go back to them.

Life is so boring now, knowing all that exists below the surface of the real world. There's a whole other dimension, with demons and angels and magic. Everything real is so bland. Nothing is red, nothing is bloody, nothing is traumatizing.

I have no purpose up here, other than to keep my depressed mother company.

Don't get me wrong, I love her very much.

I just love hell more.

I need to see Vaggie again. What we had... it wasn't nothing.

There is a gun in my left hand. I don't feel nervous holding it-even though it isn't the Glock I got so accustomed to, it's still a pistol, and it feels right in my hands, like it was made to fit between the ridges of my palm.

If you go to hell when you die, then maybe I can go back. Maybe I can see Vaggie and Alastor again... maybe I can figure out what happened to them.

I raise the gun to my temple.

I did bother to write a suicide note. My family just got me back. They should know why I left again.

The note read like this:

parents,
i love you both very much.
you too, Ashley.
you don't need me anymore.
you can still be a
perfect family without me.
i have places to be. not
here though. i apologize
for this.

- love, your clinically insane child, Danielle

I taped it to the middle of the bathroom mirror. They'll see it soon, very soon. Once they hear the gunshot, they will all come running to see what the problem is. They will see my dead body. They will see the note.

I'm seriously fucked up.

I press the muzzle of the gun against my temple. Tears are streaming down my face, and although I can't feel them, I can see them streaming down my cheeks through the mirror.

"I'll see you soon, hell."

I pull the trigger.

⇢ The End