Fragile Desires (18+)

Sixty-Four | Tragic

Maybe innocence was always there to be ruined.

Like stepping into a garden, each delicate petal of a flower waiting to be plucked and crushed underfoot. 

My life feels like that garden sometimes, filled with fragile beauty that is too easily ruined by the harsh realities of the world around me.

Slowly, time chips away at my softness—at my innocence, ruining the rose-colored glasses I see the world through.

It's like I'm a priceless vase, waiting for the inevitable moment of being shattered—ruined past all efforts of trying to withstand. 

But perhaps in this vulnerability and ruined innocence lies the very essence of being human. 

For it is the shattering of ourselves where we truly get to see the broken pieces that came together to make us in the first place.

To be shattered is to be unveiled.

- Azzy

♛Chapter Sixty-Four: Tragic♛

The world came back in fractured pieces.

A muffled thump echoed in my head, my dull heartbeat radiating with each pulse.

My eyelids felt heavy, like someone had glued them shut with sand.

Panic, cold and sharp, clawed its way up my throat.

I opened my eyes.

Then came the nausea.

I squeezed my eyes back shut, willing it down, but the feeling only intensified.

When I opened my eyes again, blurry shapes swam in my vision—steel walls, dusty floors, the bright fluorescent lighting cast from above.

I didn't recognize where I was at.

My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic pulse in the confines of my skull.

I was in some sort of warehouse.

Handcuffed to the cold floor.

My body felt foreign, disconnected.

I tried to move my arms, but they felt like metal, weighted down by the heaviness of lead.

Then came the memories.

Flashes, fragmented and terrifying.

A syringe in my neck, a burning sensation down my body, the world tilting on its axis.

A struggle, a scream that echoed in my head but never from my lips—feeling the last instances of being carried before passing out entirely.

Someone had drugged me.

Terror locked its unsettling grip around my chest.

My mind raced, a frantic search for some sort of escape.

Where am I?

Who had taken me? 

A sob escaped my lips, a ragged, pathetic sound.

Tears welled up, blurring the already indistinct world. 

I was alone, trapped, and confused. 

But I couldn't give in to my panic.