We're a fucking mess.

Just look at us. Look at what we've become. Look at what this thing has done to us.

Shade went from being a smart, strong, calm man to a ball of wrecked nerves. This thing took one of the few things that gave meaning to his life, and just like that, it tore it away. And there's nothing he or I can do about it.

And I went from being your everyday college student to... this. Whatever the fuck I am now. I can't even describe it. "Pile of shit" is probably the closest I'll ever get to it. Soaking with cheap vodka and wallowing in my own dirt, terrorized by nightmares of a life I used to know going away forever to be replaced by the hollowness of mere survival, by the fear that each sleep will be my last, that every time I turn a corner he'll be waiting for me, ready to put an end to it all, an end I want to see but yet I'm not yet prepared to, an unfinished play written by an author that has long ago moved on to bigger projects, never quiet forgotten, but yet never important enough to be remembered. Abandoned. Forsaken. Alone.

He went berserk again. Shade. Lost control and tried to throw the TV out the window. For the first time ever I tried to stop him, thought perhaps I could put an end to it. The black eye remains as a testimony to my failure. We left trough the fire escape so we wouldn't have to face the interrogations waiting for us at the lobby.

It was only when I fell from the stair into a deposit full of trash, the smell of piss and rot filling my nostrils, that I started wondering where it had all gone wrong.

I can't stay like this. I have to do something.