Chapter Z: Medicate & Motivate
A Renaissance...

*Beep*
*Beep*
*Beep*
*Beep*
*Beep*
*Beep*
*Beep*
*Crunch!*

I slammed my fist onto the annoying alarm clock, breaking it as I opened one eye.

6:45am

"Shit..." I said as I pushed my face off the pillow. The sun was beaming at me through the motel window, as I rolled over and seated myself against the headboard. I took my smokes off the table, and looked into the pack.

"One left.... Good luck, or a good fuck... " I say quietly as I take it from the pack, and light it. Tossing the empty box aside I look to the figure laying next to me.

A five-seven female with 32c's, blonde hair, and green eyes, but most importantly... she was human. Said, her name was Ivy, and she probably wasn't going to be happy to wake up to find me gone, but that wasn't really my problem.

My problem was the gaping hole Cheri left in my heart the day I woke up to find her gone, all that was left was a ridiculous note, and a bottle of Jack Daniels.

"Hmmphh." I muttered as I moved to the edge of the bed, grabbed my pants, and slid them on. As I quietly dressed myself I thought more about Cheri and what happened.


-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-Flash / Back-X-X-X-X-X-X-XX-X-X-X-X-X-X-

Saturday, August 11th, 2K7
Detroit, Michigan
11:14 pm
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I opened my eyes to darkness, there was nothing inside the room, at least until my eyes adjusted themselves. As the room began to come into focus, I noticed I was sinking ever deeper into my side of the bed. I turned to my left to see more nothing.

Cheri was gone.

I sat straight up in bed, my mind racing through more than double it's normal amount of scattered thoughts as I tried to listen for footsteps, some sign that she was still there.

Again... nothing.

I threw my legs over the bed and began turning on lights throughout the apartment. I searched everywhere, even West, and Richard had gone. And after seraching the entire place, All I found was a note with a large bloodstain, next to a large bottle of Jack Daniels on the counter.

In the short time I had known her, I had fallen for her. She was different from the rest, not only because she was part of something inhuman, but because she was a contradiction to herself. She was guilty, but innocent. Mature, but young. She was love, yet hate, and so on and so forth.

I took my seat at the table and read the note aloud to myself. Hearing her voice play through my mind, reading it with me.


"James... I'm sorry. This can't work. We can't be together, I tried to make it feel right, but it just doesn't.... I don't know how to say exactly what I want to say, but......

I'm not human James, I'm something darker. You're a human, guarded by a light. A light that blinds me, and hurts to look at. You are far beyond my reach. I extend my hand, but even when you hold it............I cannot be saved.

I am leaving now, please, don't look for me. We cannot be. I know how much this will hurt you, so I've left you something on the counter... I only ask for one thing... Please....don't cry..."


'Don't cry?' I thought as the tears streamed down my cheeks. 'Veya, Red, Nicci... They had all been naught but lust, Cheri was something I could feel inside me. There was more there that I couldn't begin to describe.'

I crumpled the note in my fist, as my face cringed.

Tossing the note aside I opened the bottle, and began to drink.


-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-XX-X-X-X-X-X-X-

Sunday, August 12th, 2K7
Detroit, Michigan
09:46 am
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*Fwump*
"HUAH!!!" the puke erupted from my mouth as the foot made it's contact with my stomach. Stomach acids, blood, and alcohol splattered my face as the fresh puke splashed into more puke that was solidified and partly crusted to the side of my face. It smelled terrible as I pulled myself from the floor, my head still swimming in liqour, throbbing, and discomforting.

"So... have fun last night?" the voice came from above me as I turned to seat myself against the kitchen cupboards.

My eyes slowly came into a double-visioned focus as I seen three main figures standing before me.

Vic Powers
Seraph
and Spaz

"Damn man... Two bottles of Jack... I'd say he had fun... my only question is... Where's the weed?" I recognized quickly as Spaz's voice.

"Knowin James... Gone." obviosuly Powers.

Seraph lowered himself to a sqaut in front of me, the double image of him spinning aroundthe real one. "What I wanna know... Is ho we're supposed to win a tag-team title shot with him as hungover as he is. Shit he's probably so poisoned with alcohol I wouldn't be surpirsed if he died at the start of our match!" Seraph said, a tone of frustration showing in his voice. "Hell the guy could barely make it into the ring when he was sober against you, Vic. How's he expect~"

He didn't finish his sentence as I planted my right fist into his jaw. He fell to his ass, while Vic and Spaz just laughed.

I pulled myself to my feet, rubbing my forehead with my other hand. "Don't you worry about me... It'll take more than a couple bottles of liqour to stop me." I said to him as I stumbled groggily towards my bathroom.

"What the fuck happened to you man?" Vic said. "You look like shit, and ya smell like it too." He really didn't have to say, because the smell was only making my vision worse as it burned its way through my nose and into my eyes.

"... You guys really wanna know what took me down like that..." I said leaning a forearm against the open bathroom door frame.

"I'd say the two bottles of Jack, but that's just me." Spaz chirped.

"Love..." I said as I entered the bathroom. Shutting the door behind me I tried to focus the reflection in the mirror.


"In this lifetime you are at a point in your soul development that requires you to do the work of refining and purifying your own nature. Like the ancient alchemists whose goal was to take bare materials and turn them into gold. Your own process of self-transformation involves taking what is crude or disordered in yourself and refining it. It is a cycle of separating the wheat from the chaff, requiring acute discrimination, rigorous self-analysis and self-criticism." The reflection spoke to me. No one heard the words but me.

"This impulse to perfect, to create order, and to focus on the flaws in order to improve and correct is the basis of much of your behavior. When you project it out into the world, James, it manifests as extreme fastidiousness, meticulous attention to detail, the ability to do very fine and exacting work, precision of thought and expression, and sometimes a peculiar fussiness. You can be the critic, the razor-sharp analyst, the master craftsman with a reputation for the greatest finesse and polish. You quietly observe, dissect, and measure everything against your own inner standard of perfection. Everything must be tested and go through the refiner's fire in order to prove its efficacy, Rarely do you swallow anything whole. Everything must be examined and judged, the acceptable parts ingested and the unacceptable rejected. This is true on many levels, including the physical. You should be extremely discriminating about your diet, concerned with proper nutrition and the avoidance of pollutants and impurities in your food or environment, and so on. Your physical body itself may be very sensitive to what you take in - more so than other people are. On an intellectual level, you are similarly discriminating, perhaps to the point of frank skepticism. Because of your underlying need to create order, James, you like to expediciously categorize and put things in neat little boxes, and you may deny, avoid, invalidate, or refuse to take seriously something that does not fit in to your scheme. Even in investigating the spiritual or mystical, you seek a system, an order. Ambiguity, multiplicity, chaos or disarray of any kind may vex you considerably. You can also be very critical and demanding of other people, in a nagging, petty way. This is if you are projecting your need to refine and perfect onto the outside world. However, that is really a misuse of what is essentially an inner process, getting rid of the dross and refining your own character." The reflection finished it's speech and I just stared blankly.

"James?" I said to the reflection... but there came no response. I simply shook my head and turned to the toilet, puke was still crusted to the rim of the bowl. As I pissed, the world began to stop spinning, and my mind began to sober. What had just happened, was some kind of an epiphany. Something of a subconcious thought exposing itself to my benefit, should I so choose to do so...


-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-End -FlashBack-X-X-X-X-X-XX-X-X-X-X-X-X-


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|Self Mutilate|