• They gave me pills and told me they would help me find solid ground and hopelessly, foolishly I believed them. Three pellets a day. Three little, pressed powder, round white pellets meant to help me find my ground and quiet the ache that made itself present deep inside my brain. I wanted to believe that the pills could perform a miracle, take me back to the time before the darkness ached inside my head, but miracles just don't happen in this city built on sin. Oh sure they worked at first, the darkness I had felt, born a week after my parents death, began to slip away in the static of everyday and there was more to life than the feeling of a knife sliding across a throat giving way to warmth and a coppery smell. That I was more than just the name White Widow.
    I got better on those little pressed powder pills, or so I thought, but thoughts change and nothing good can last forever. The first month I lived, truly lived. I could trust myself to go out and enjoy all the city had for me without the constant thoughts and checks for safety, not for me but for those around me, running through my head. Everyone thought that I was better, and for one gloriously free month I had been better. The second month the effects of the pills began to unravel. I knew it the moment it began happening. The itch I had felt deep inside my bones and in my fingers and in my mind began to rise up and make themselves present once again. The symptoms were subtle and simple at first hardly noticeable. I would clutch the handle of each kitchen knife I held a little to tight and a little to long. The ability to feel pain began to slip back into the numbing static of my own damaged mentality.
    By month three, everything the pills had done for me had been destroyed. Now I sit, six months later, on a couch that is way to hard for anyone to find comfort in, with a man who thinks his pressed powder pills I took three times a day have managed to stabilized me. I don't have the heart to tell him I have already killed five times in the past two weeks and that his pills mean less than nothing to me now. The only thing I can hope for is he doesn't see what I see in my eyes every morning, evening, and night. The demon that makes herself home inside my mind and shows herself inside my eyes will no longer slip quietly back to sleep in a drug induced haze. She has felt pain far to deep and strong for silly powder pills to wash away, and the crimes she played victim too will never leave her with peace. They gave me pills, three pressed powder pills a day, and told me they would make my demon go away, but now I know, she will never go away.
    And if I am completely honest with myself I like it that way.