Chapter 1

"Good night all." Christine Harrison typed into the chat room, then exited the program. Sighing, she decided to check her email one last time before trying for some sleep. As she waited for her email server to open up, she tapped her nails on the mouse and glanced at the task bar clock. 3:30 am. Again. She grimaced as her inbox finally opened. 83 new messages. All porn and debt consolidation offers.

She was mildly amused by some of the notices. Christine, your foreclosure is coming. 'Funny,' she thought as she clicked off the delete box. 'I don't even own a house.' Sighing, she signed out of her inbox. 'Why do I even bother with an email account? No one ever writes me.'

Instead of shutting down her system, Chris decided to reboot it and put in a DVD. Sometimes the sounds helped her sleep. She lit a cigarette as the trailers played and adjusted the volume. Satisfied, she scuffed her slippered feet to her bed. She sat down and stared blankly at her night stand and it's rows of pill bottles, strange thoughts slithering their way into her mind. Even with the DVD playing, everything seemed so quiet.

Silence. 'They' say silence is golden, but Chris could never figure out what they meant by that or even WHO they were. This silence wasn't the type you hoped for when standing behind the lady at Wal-mart, listening to her frantically trying to hush her screaming child. No, this silence was deafening.

She snorted quietly, blowing a white cloud of smoke down at the little brown bottles that stood silently on the table. They reminded her of a little pill bottle army, standing and waiting for their General to bark out orders.

Xanax, Prozac, Lithium, Herbal remedies, Pain killers, Sleeping pills. They were all there, standing in their tidy little lines. Grimacing, she snubbed out her cigarette and reached for her sleeping pills. She popped the top and peered down into the bottle. There they were, little blue pills nestled in their transparent brown bottle. She made a disgusted noise and plopped two of them into her hand, quickly swigging them down with a gulp of peppermint tea.

She slammed the mug down on the table hard enough to jar the mini army of bottles. The dark thoughts began to filter into her mind as they did every night as she slipped under the bed covers. 'Look at the mess you've made of your life.' The thoughts taunting her as she lay back on her pillows. 'Can't even sleep in the dark.'

Chris glared at the torch lamp in the corner and the glowing computer screen with its movie playing. 'Pills to keep you calm, pills to make you sleep, pills for your stomach. Christine Harrison, the human pill machine! You couldn't handle anything without those damned pills. You can't even eat without popping a pill to make you digest it. What kind of loser do you have to be not to be able to do the basic things like eat and sleep?'

Her mind bombarded her with ugliness until she clenched her eyes tight and growled, "Stop it!" over and over into the dimly lit room. "I can't help it." she muttered, clenching her teeth and fists. 'Of course you can't help it. You're too weak for living.' the inner talking taunted her. 'You're too weak for anything. You'll never be anything more then the crazy freak lady with nothing.'

Mercifully, the pills began to take effect and Christine began the drop into the blissfully empty blank nothingness that the pills offered. No dreams. No thoughts. Nothing but silent oblivion, her only escape from the torrents of thought and internal conversation that never ended.

'Too bad you don't have the nerve to sleep forever. Too bad you're so weak..'