He accelerated the car, stepping on the gas pedal and shooting forward, a sleek metallic blood-red blur moving rapidly away from the quaint town of Carmel. The scream of the car reminded him of his mother’s shrill high-strung voice, and he turned on the radio to drown her out; but still the shrilling of her voice continued.
    “God, I’m never going back, I’m never going back to that” he whispered, trying to convince himself that this time he had grasped enough strands of hope to truly escape; away, away from them. Her yowl was unbearable, and he turned the volume higher to escape it, but the voice only seemed to rise with the harsh Green Day song, and it mutated, sounding like Amy’s yell. He jammed his foot
jammed against the pedal and the scream was the girl from last night, a helpless cry of virgin pain.
    Knuckles grasping the gear shift, he jerked it back, screeching to a halt. “I can’t.” A tear caught on his eyelash, but he ignored it, letting it join with his skin and roll down his face. “God... I’m so damn weak.”
    He took out a cigarette; flicked his lighter watching the tiny burst of flame twitch and dwindle from
his warm breath. He examined his face in the battered car mirror; the reflection hadn’t changed since
he had last checked. His hair remained a long dirty mass, and the scar was still there, still protruding
from the widow’s peak and running down his face, cutting slightly across his soft round lips, to end
meticulously at his jawline.
    Scars; that was something he knew about. His arms were covered in raised, discolored marks, from cutting, bleeding, infection. He could tell a story of the first and ‘till the last – here was the one that had begun a legacy, the one from a cigarette burn when he was nine. He thought he could be a real person, (as opposed to the perfect toy everyone saw him as), but he had been so nervous he hadn’t quite been able to hold onto it, and it slipped from his grasp.

    “Oh god!”
    “You frickin’ idiot!”
    “Oh damn, damn, help me put this out, wouldya?!” he cried, but it was too late, and there was a long red welt rising quickly along the pale skin of his leg. His “friend” mumbled something about it not being his fault, stepped on the cigarette, and handed him another one. “This time, hang onto it you dipshit.”

    He had embraced that cigarette so as not to let it drop; he had kept every single one after that too, and later a joint in his submissive hand. He scrutinized his lips again in the mirror; the way that the smoke curled so perfectly from them. His eyes traveled down, down to his neck, where a fresh scar lay; it was a half-year old, celebrating it’s anniversary that precise day. He sang “Happy Birthday” softly under his breath, leaning back, rolling his head to one side, just like he had that night.

    Candlelight flickering along the walls, generated by gnarled ebony candles, spread around the room. He was laying on the bed next to her... to Amy. Yes, Amy, with the black room, the dark life; she really thought that the canine teeth she had paid the dentist to elongate with fake extensions. He
always knew that the vampire crap she talked about was just a load of shit – a good excuse for
having a screwed-up life, and a good escape from it.
    He remembered how they had simply lay there on her black coverlet, and everything had seemed to disappear; now he knew it was an illusion, an acid drop, but it had seemed so like true happiness!
She had leaned over, whispering “I love you”, as she had turned his head slowly to the side, brushing
his neck with her lips; then plunging her “teeth” into his flesh.
    He pulled away, a strangled screech emitting from his mangled throat, blood pouring down the left
side of his body and soaking his clothes. Amy simply looked startled, and then angry. “It doesn’t
hurt you really! I’m turning you to my kind... my kind!”
    She was insane, just insane. God, she hadn’t seemed like – but hell, she believed she was a vampire, part of a clan! He backed up, pushed the door open, stumbled along her hall to the doorway and pulled it open, for the last time hearing Amy’s plea – “One of us!”, and he was outside, in the bustle of the garbage heap of a city.

    Another tear strayed down his face, following the scar along his face, down his neck, and soaking
into the coarse material of his shirt. Ah, now there was something he remembered. A knife of his
own... if only it gave him a life of his own.

    Sitting in the middle of the floor, surrounded by a sea of blank white carpet and his flesh marring it’s steady stream of bland color; the blade in his hand complemented the floor and he cursed it, wishing he could bury it somewhere, bury himself somewhere, and die peacefully; but no way to destroy himself, so it was up to him to see that the knife stayed from the carpet. Perhaps... he rolled his shirt up, seeing light skin revealed, a mass of it, perfect for the blade. It sank into his skin softly, and he smiled with the pain, the marring of the carpet, now with red stains forever.

    Yeah, forever, ‘cause his upper arm still proclaimed “FUCK LIFE” in white puckered skin. Hey, it still expressed his views... life was just screwing him, and he was going to live this hell and then die, a day he wished for dearly. Then, he was already dead, just like the other arm said.
    His cigarette had burned to the end and he looked for another in his pocket, but the pack was
empty. He laughed; it was a metaphor on last night; his life, in fact. Looking perfect on the outside
and just being so dead; no one noticed, though. No one cared, not his mother, not his drunkard
father, not the girl last night.
    A tear slipped down the side of his face; he just wanted someone else to know his pain, because
they just didn’t understand. For once he wanted her to understand what it was to hurt like he did,
and to know what it was to be deceived. It was a “chemically induced condition”, or at least that’s
what he tried to tell himself, but to hell with that, he knew what he had really done.

    He had driven around, with her, a sweet girl in a lime green dress the same color as her eyes. Her
hair had fallen down her back, in soft amber waves. She had looked at him and smiled occasionally,
and he had smiled back, knowing that she had no idea, no idea at all. They had driven out, away
from the city, and then he had stopped the car.
    She smiled at him, but he saw what seemed to be a premonition of fear in her eyes. It angered him, and he slapped her pale face. She squealed, and he slapped her harder, and then again, still harder.
    “Stop! Please, please stop...” she cried, curling in the corner of the seat, feebly fighting off blows
with her raised arms.
    “Shut up! Just shut the hell up!”
    “Why...” she sobbed.
    Suddenly he stopped. “God.” he moaned. “Oh god, what the hell am I doing!” Tears welled up in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

    He stared into the same eyes she had looked into the night before, still filled with tears. He was so
wrong, so wrong; “if I could take it all back, I would, I would!” he told his reflection.
    A car pulled in behind his. He heard a car door slam; moments later a young man’s face appeared at the window of the car. He had black hair and a equally dark goatee. The automatic window rolled
down, at his command, and the goateed personage ducked his head into the car.
    “Hey man, you okay?”
    “Yeah... I’m fine, but my car is making some noises...”
    “You want me to take a look at that?”
    “No, no...” he smiled wryly, brushing long hair back from his face. He turned the key, starting the
car. “I’m fine, really.” He shifted gears, and swerved the car around, turning his car around to face
Carmel, once again. He left it stalling and got out, and took the man’s hand, shaking it heartily, he
tacked on a smile, saying “Damn you.”