Hell Is Chrome.

And in the morning I had a face so dead that the people passing on the street did not notice me. It was his turn last night, after I died for the second time that day, (oh will these Phoenixes just give up...) drenched in sweat and skin cold as the grave, frightened words and epileptic movements. Was it a nightmare, or the onslaught of demons, or the off-gassing of some neurosis that I had simply not yet had the opportunity to experience? He sprang up and the shoulder was out of its socket and he spent a lifetime behind the closed bathroom door and I could hear every now and then a whimpering. Rugby's gaze held fast to the tomb and his ears stood cocked at attention. He did not move from this position until the door opened once again, and the ghost emerged from the darkness.

How many hours later.

"Is everything ok?" and I remembered asking the same question myself previously that night, I remembered the answer and how it had made me see red. The chuckle afterwards that sealed the deal.

"No."

Silence. I could hear his mind replaying everything, searching for the spot where something went wrong.

"Because of the conversation with your brother and sister?"

"Because of everything."

Arms wrap around me and a stubbled chin grazes my back, two lips try to ease the tension but it just feels too late. The allies are so put asunder and the wants and needs of everyone around me only disgust. October is such a long shot to hope for. My eyes are molten glass, lava.

"Along the open road on winter nights, homeless, cold, and hungry, one voice gripped my frozen heart: 'Weakness or strength: you exist, that is strength. You don't know where you are going or why you are going, go in everywhere, answer everyone. No one will kill you, any more than if you were a corpse.'"

Because I knew the sense of worthlessness she'd have to rise above.