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My reflection, distorted through the mirror, showed a man with garnet red hair wildly disheveled and dark bags beneath both his eyes. His skin was sunken and pale.

Frankly, he looked like shit.

Ilooked like fucking shit.

Pressing my lips into a thin line, I glanced down at the orange bottle of pills. They were supposed to help with my bipolar disorder, but it only served to make me tired. Drowsy. Weak.

My hand was shaking as I picked up the bottle and faced my horrid reflection in the mirror. I was a shell of the man I once was. A carcass. My painted on smile couldn’t hide the dead man underneath. Or, at the very least, a soon-to-be dead man.

I could still hear their taunts.

“The world will be better off without you in it.”

“Freak.”

“Weirdo.”

Moving slowly, I emerged back in my bedroom. The dresser had been demolished, lying in a heap of distressed wood and sharp stakes. The bed’s headboard was broken as well. Not even my room was capable of escaping my destruction. My temper.

I knew I was being reckless, stupid, but I didn’t see a point of holding on anymore. I had been gripping a thin branch for years that hung precariously over a chasm. My muscles were cramping, sweat clung to my skin, and my fingers ached from how sharply they grasped the branch. I was just so tired of fighting a battle I knew I wouldn’t win.

I grabbed my phone and shuffled through my playlist, choosing a haunting melody. It seemed fitting, somehow, to play a song that reminisced on life and death in my final moments. With a sob, I shoved my face into my pillow and allowed scream after scream to leave my body. I knew no one would hear. Nobody ever heard.

And if they heard, they didn’t care.

Didn’t. Fucking. Care.

My heart was hammering a mile a minute, my thoughts in a race against the damn organ, but my hand was steady as I brought the pill bottle to my lips. With a dramatic flourish, as if I was downing an alcoholic shot, I consumed the pills.

Maybe, just maybe, relief would come.

* * *

I woke with a start,head pounding. What the…?

It was the dream again. The same recurring dream I’d been having every night since I’d arrived at the school. These dreams taunted me, consumed me, pulled me under icy wave after icy wave until all I could beg for was death.

I scrubbed a hand down my face. Fucking hell.

I no longer cared what hell faced us once we made it out of this school. Nothing could be worse than this—losing a battle against your own mind.