"I see people around me, that's the hard part. I see everything and everyone because I'm aware of everything and everyone around me. I see others suffering and I know others have it harder than I do, yet it's so hard for me to cope with all that I have to deal with. I can't handle stress as well as others and I don't smoke, drink or do drugs, so I have no outlet for what's happening to me except for writing."

She had tried to get help because everything had become too much for her to bear.

In the end she tried to kill herself.

These are the words I write. My only witness to the events I've been through...

No one else had listened.

No one has understood what I've been trying to say all along...

She had no one else to turn to. No one had helped her.

And now it's too late...

Let God worry about my soul,

my body and mind are gone.

In the end she was betrayed.

The roommate had harassed her beyond what she could stand. She had gone to a friend's house for refuge but knew that there really was no escape. The vicious cycle that was her life would continue, catastrophe after endless catastrophe. She was sick of it. She wanted to end it all for good.

There is only death.

Death is the only answer.

She had made up her mind to kill herself.

I must leave it all behind, she thought. I must kill myself to end this, to break the cycle.

She knew she was leaving the rest of her life behind but it was such a sickening mess that she didn't care anymore. The only regret she had was leaving her lover and best friend...

Dash...

my beloved.

He was the only one who cared about her. No one else cared or tried to help her. Everyone was BUSY. Living their own lives filled with their own problems that didn't concern her. No one had room for HER, no, only when they needed something or to use her, that was the only time they wanted anything to do with her. But when she needed help... there was NOBODY AROUND.

She left. She left everything, she left her beloved (Dash) and drove her car back to the house she had tried to escape from.

The house was empty, the roommate had taken almost all her things except for a few pieces of furniture and cleaning supplies. It didn't matter now. All the harassment and abuse would finally end with Emerald's suicide. The house would be cursed and her dead body would be the final evidence of all the cruelty of life she had endured.

She grabbed the kitchen knife and took her journal, writing her last goodbye:

Let God worry about my soul,

my body and mind are gone.

I love you Dash,

you are my only true friend.

I'm sorry.

Then she took the knife and sliced it across her wrist.

It didn't cut through.

She tried harder.

Only a red mark.

"Damn it!" She cursed. Knowing that her plan was already falling apart.

Angrily, she tried again, more red marks on her left arm but when the final cut came through it wasn't very deep. The kitchen knife was useless. She wiped what small amount of blood that she could from her wrist and smeared it across the page of her journal with her final goodbye note.

She threw the knife down in a rage then went into the bathroom to grab the sharper scissors that she knew would cut better. They were sharper yet she had to press harder just to break the skin. Finally after a few more tries on her wrist she figured out that if she took quick, sharp, slicing strokes it would cut through the skin better.

She tried on her neck, staring out into the yard while a butterfly landed on an overgrown flowering bush outside.

Goddamn yard I'll never have to water again... she thought angrily, remembering all the times the roommate demanded that she water the garden.

SHARP, SLICING STROKE ON RIGHT SIDE OF NECK VEIN.

Life wasn't for her to enjoy anymore, oh no... not after what she had been through. Violation, after violation, never-ending hell she had always been put through.

At least I'll have a pretty view before I die, she thought but wondered how long it would take to cut a vein and bleed to death before her body was found.

She glanced into the stupid furniture piece the roommate bitch left behind which had a mirror. Her neck was only scratched, no blood ran from her neck. With a frustrated sigh, she tried again.

LEFT SIDE OF NECK, QUICK, SLICE.

It didn't work. Again, just a thin cut, nothing deep.

She was getting frustrated (and scared). What if it didn't work? She had only once tried to (sort of) kill herself before with sleeping pills, only taking two to see what would happen. They didn't kill her of course but the sleeping pills left her feeling groggy, dehydrated and with a headache.

She gave up trying to kill herself after that but what did she know about killing herself after all? Humans were trained to live, not to die and the body was annoyingly resilient. You don't bring life into this cruel world easily, so it must take as much effort (or more) to kill that life.

It was all too much. Too hard to live. Too hard to try to die.

In anger, frustration and hatred of all the people who had done this to her, she sliced along her ankles, and after a few tries, finally cut a vein. The blood dribbled out in a sickening black shade. She smeared the blood onto her hand then knew what she was going to do.

I will curse this house,

the place that has caused my misery,

and the people in it.

She smeared her blood onto every wall she could think of and then took the knife (that stupid useless knife that couldn't kill her) and carved into the walls, "NO ESCAPE".

Everyone will know my hell,

there is no escape.

(No escape for me either)

She didn't care about being caught, she was past caring about the trivial laws of the world now. She was beyond that. She was GONE.

Finally, when she was done she came back to the living room then banged her head against the wall, over and over again. She knew she didn't have the strength to bash her head through it, wondering faintly what would happen if she became a paralyzed vegetable due to head trauma. She didn't have an Advanced Health Directive... what if they force-fed her with tubes? She'd rather die.

No one was around. Next door she could hear men buzzing their way through the yard with gasoline powered machines that she hated. No one came to see what she had done. No one cared. She had slammed the front door that she had left open, shut. She was alone. Alone in her misery. No one cared about her. There was nowhere for her to go.

The Abandoned Factory...

Her only refuge away from the evil humans who had done this to her. She could still kill herself there.

She took the knife and scissors with her, leaving her blood-stained journal and purse with all her identification and phones behind. She got into her car and drove off, covered in blood that nobody noticed as she headed to her final destination.

Along the back way, down the streets until a ways down a country road she took her exit. Past more orchards to the railroad tracks, where she parked her car. Two rail cars were parked on the tracks next to where she left her car with the doors unlocked and the keys in. She didn't care if anyone stole her car now, she was here to end it all.

She walked toward the abandoned factory, as if in a daze, holding the knife and scissors. She didn't think anyone noticed her here yet she was paranoid that she would be caught. In her tank top and skirt, she climbed over the train cars then came the hole in the chain link fence where she clumsily slid under before passing the "No Trespassing" sign through the overgrown fields before the burned out ruins of the once booming Barber Yard property that had housed a small town for the Diamond Match factory when it was first built.

Running through the field in her flip-flops, she lost all sense of time, swept up only in the need to escape but instead of finding refuge she was more afraid than ever.

The ruins were forbidding and she was scared that someone might be here, lurking in the old buildings covered in the insane graffiti of junkies and transients. Also, there were wild creatures about. Bats squeaking shrilly in the rafters, as if they could smell the blood on her, and she couldn't go into the building. She stayed outside where the trees were but when she tried to sit under one of the trees she saw a spider web with a spider in it and backed off.

"Still afraid of spiders even though I'm thinking of killing myself. I'm so pathetic!". She whispered only to herself. She sat down behind the brick ruins of the building then spat onto her hand, wiping more dried blood from her ankle to her hand then onto the bricks and the ground.

"I was here," she said as she staked her claim in blood, "Does it matter?"

No, she thought and knew it didn't make any difference.

Where to go now? She tried to think. How long was she going to stay here?

Where should I kill myself?

It was too much to think about.

She got up, roaming around the brick building, still looking around her for other people in case she was caught. She walked down the dirt road leading to more ruins, at least it gave her something to do and it was a destination of sorts.

Past the fallen bricks, mortar, metal sheets and beams now fallen on the ground. Where the road split, she took a right, leading behind the ruined structure of a building that was more like a strange sacrificial burial ground. Up in the sky, a large hawk called out. She looked up to it, shading her eyes against the harsh sun. The hawk kept calling its startling, piercing cry and she felt as if she were suddenly its prey.

It smells blood. She had a thought then, imagining the hawk to suddenly dive down upon her and tear out her eyes as it would begin its bloody unfeeling feast. But the hawk flew past her and she made her way once more around the ruins to the back.

My own cursed stonehenge... She thought the ruins out in the field looked like the stones used in Druid times for sacrifices. I am the sacrifice.

Then another thought:

Did you come here to die?

And then she knew.

The answer was No.

I came here to escape.

She broke down into heart wrenching sobs, knowing that her cries were unheard of in this unfeeling wilderness where only vultures would care for her body now. Flies drifted and landed on the bloody cuts of her leg and she waved her hand at them in annoyance.

Get off of me, I'm not dead yet.

She laid down on the asphalt ground in the shade and cried.

She didn't know what to do.

She screamed.

No one heard her.

Emerald was alone.

After a short while later (what did time matter now?) she sat up and stared about her. The knife and scissors were still with her but she didn't feel like cutting herself anymore. Instead she took a small rock and scraped the asphalt with it.

"NO ESCAPE" she wrote over and over.

Then she took the scissors and cut pieces of her hair, scattering the small strands on the cement.

A piece of me remains...

She laid down again, looking up into the sky.

It was then that she saw it, a strange glinting light in the sky.

She tried to squint her eyes into the brightness to make out its shape. It was too small to be a plane yet too high in the sky to be a balloon. A plan passed by it and the thing made no progress across the sky. It seemed to stay in one place.

It's a UFO. I'm going to be abducted. She wryly thought to herself yet was still alarmed at the thing in the sky.

She sat up, now earnestly trying to make it out. There was no shape, speed or relation to the object now in the sky. Then she had another thought...

A meteorite. It's going to crash where I am now.

She got up and walked away from the thing in the sky but it seemed to follow her, as if she were its imminent target and it was destined to hit her no matter what.

If a meteor is going to crash, I don't want to be here.

She thought of her grandma, she hadn't talked to her grandma.

And Dash...

She had left him behind when she had made up her mind to kill herself. She had to go back and get him.

I have to call grama, I have to get Dash...

I have to call grama, I have to get Dash...

This became the mantra in her head as she ran back to the Diamond Match factory fence. Then stopping, she held the scissors and knife before her and prayed,

My soul belongs to God.

She brought her praying hands, holding the knife and scissors, to her lips and kissed them. Then threw the knife and orange handled scissors away in the field before she ran back.

I have to call grama, I have to get Dash...

I have to call grama, I have to get Dash...

She made her way back and her car was still there.

She drove back to her friend's house, the one who had helped her, knowing that she would have to face what she had done.