Page 87 of Overdose

Held me like a promise.

God, I was so fucking gone for him.

I remember Noir, too. That desperate, haunted look in his eyes. The way he always pulled me into shadows like I belonged there. Like I was his tether to something real. Like he cared.

I remember the pills.

The music.

The way the bass made my bones vibrate like maybe I was alive for the first time in years.

But it wasn’t real.

That’s the part that eats at me most. None of it was.

I keep telling myself that.

Over and over.

I kept looking for them. Even after I swore I wouldn’t.

Dagger and Noir. My dark little delusions.

But there was nothing. No records. No texts. No hoodie tucked in a drawer smelling like smoke and sin. No proof that either of them had ever existed outside whatever cyanide-laced fever dream I’d cooked up in that motel.

Everyone I asked gave me the same look—somewhere between concern andis-this-bitch-for-real? Like I’d just asked if they’d seen my imaginary boyfriends who may or may not have also been criminals with god-tier bone structure.

And maybe Iwascrazy.

Because how the hell do you miss people who were never real in the first place?

Back home, I paint skulls.

Neon pink, mostly. Sometimes I add glitter, like blood caught in strobe light. Occasionally, I give them faces—one with eyes like chaos and ruin, the other with a smirk that could short-circuit your morals.

I know.

Totally sane behavior.

But what else was I supposed to do? After a psychotic break so vivid it gave me a personality reboot, I went back to college and enrolled in art. Because apparently my trauma response was becoming a tortured creative genius. Who knew Cyanide could unlocktalent?

Now my professors think I’m edgy and mysterious.

All I do is paint the same goddamn thing. Over and over.

Pink skulls. Pink skulls. Pink skulls.

Sometimes, late at night, I swear I hear it—that beat.

That low, pounding bassline that drags your ribs open and makes you feel alive even when you’d rather be dead.

Other times, I think I hear a motorcycle.

Just once. Just faint. Just enough to make my heart trip over itself.

But no one ever shows up.

But no one ever comes.