You're The Red That Heals Me

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Please read description/tags for TW

***

He didn't deserve anything more than this.

Caked in the rotting grime of a below zero-star hotel, Angel Dust felt like one of the unlucky ones. A self pitiful, vile and pathetic excuse of a human being. Bottom of the food chain, a whore living off scraps graciously given to him by a controlling man that was equally as vile and as unforgiving as he was.

Some people were born rich. Beautiful. Smart.
Others are fortunate enough to be born into aspiring families of doctors, lawyers, revolutionary mathematicians or scientists.
But those successes in life often go both ways. The all important game of life is a gamble, occasionally influenced by the hands you are dealt at birth, and sometimes, some people's unfortunate lives are just shit stain, after shit stain, after shit stain.

He didn't deserve anything more than this.

His family left him years ago, his boss only loved his ability to morph into an obedient cash cow, so who is Angel Dust, exactly?
A lousy whore caked in false pride? A drug addicted low-life drowning in the need for approval? A human being kept only afloat by hits of cocaine, sleepless nights of haughty deprivation and impersonal sex?

It sounds awfully familiar.

This bathroom is a fitting place for someone like him.
A final resting place that is as sad and as filthy as he is.
Whoever claimed to clean the establishment might find him in the morning, or, maybe they wouldn't. Maybe it would be days or weeks before anyone bothered to check why room 32 was still in use.

So what was his plan, you ask? What is this magnum opus of his that will cure all of his pain?
Well, Angel had thought about that all extensively.

There's a note scrunched and shoved into the front pocket of some old, gray hoodie he wears, a piece of clothing that reflects the gray-scale of the world he'd faded into at one point or another.
The note, funnily enough, has nothing of a revelation upon its singular crumpled page. There are no 'Tell them I love you-s'.
It's just his full name (something long dead and buried), and social security number scrawled in pen for good measure.

There's a gun, too. It's a well-kept thing that fittingly has only a singular bullet left in its magazine. The weapon itself is a souvenir, a keepsake from a life that he'd left a long time ago. 

Angel would leave this Earth quietly and alone. When he'd been brought into the world nearing three decades ago now, it was quite the opposite, but oh how times had changed.

And if he can't do it? If the action of pulling back the trigger is just too much? Then...that's okay too.

Sat beside the handgun on the sticky bathroom floor there is a plastic screw-capped container packed full of Diazepam. With what little money he had left from last night's last-minute cash grab, Angel had sought out the pills to do the job as well as one last purchase of overpriced ice to 'cure the nerves'. Not his usual choice, but it had been better than nothing.

Any remaining funds had gone on this hotel room, actually. Better to blow the whole lot than to let some other asshole find it later on down the line.

Not even the bathroom mirror is sparing him an ounce of dignity that night as he stands and hunches over the sink like some harrowing figure torn from the pages of a horror novel. His fingers sport bloody and bitten down nails that cling tightly either side of the cold porcelain.

An attempt at a smile is made, freckled cheeks pushing upwards in a forced grin that has always felt shameless in one way or another.
The dark circles ruin the image, though.