Expanse (#TNTHororContest)

Chapter Three

A few would say I'm a good man. The other five billion would say I'm a fucking loser who quit on his wife and his family, and who never amounted to anything he always bragged that he was going to. I was bound to be a millionaire, rolling in money and enjoying luxuries with beautiful women and meant to explore and travel and know how to go about his life in a timely manner.

None of that ever happened.

Around ninth grade, I started delving into heavy narcotic drugs. Everyone did them. They were coooooool, according to my now long dead friends. Heroin became the large one for me, and I was instantly hooked. The rush, the ecstasy, the instant feeling of overwhelming power and larger than life qualities, it was all what I wanted. I just never wanted to work for it. I wanted it handed to me, and I felt entitled to it. Easily the worst decision I made was to attend a rehabilitation center. My dear wife Jillian begged me. I caved. The only thing that made me feel like less of a man than screwing off my aspirations was that I could willingly defy my wife, someone who I vowed to protect and always be loyal and faithful to. It broke me, to see her cry. To see her weep in fear for my life. We held our daughter together. In the balance of my addiction and her distress remained our family. So, I went. I went and I was checked in by the lady at the front.

"Desmond Bryce Euller, that right?"

I remarked snarkily back, "The one and only."

She gave a distasteful look, and motioned toward the door. I went into the clinic and from that moment on I was pretty much dead inside. They prescribed me a plethora of corrective drugs, which I found extremely ironic. Painkillers to help withdrawals. Antidepressants to help with non conforming individuals who maybe wanted their drugs just a little more than me. The irony is that these make a person addicted, just not for pleasurable reasons. I understood this quickly, and I knew I needed to leave. I checked myself out that day, and here we are three weeks from that point. I still haven't been home.