Chapter Text
Nene sat at her desk in her bedroom, her dishevelled zombie of a reflection staring blankly at her from within her mirror. Nene had olive skin. Nene had shoulder-length black hair. Nene was often described by her peers as “pretty”. Nene had habitually gone to the effort of preparing her favourite outfit this morning - a pastel pink turtleneck, a fuchsia pinafore with a matching headband and bow…
But none of this mattered. Because Nene was going to die shortly.
She had been planning this for quite some time. It’s not that she hated her life, she had lost that intense contempt to the numbness some time ago. She supposed it was more stress than despair. Keeping up a game of charades pretending to be somebody she wasn’t around her peers in school, and not receiving a break when around her family. She sat, thoughtlessly, her glazed over eyes fixed on her own image. She noticed something new. This in itself was not unusual - Nene struggled a great deal in recognising her own face, and it seemed to change a little each time she dared to look at it. This time she found blisters and sores in the early stages of development around her mouth.
“Great,” she thought, “Another problem to deal with.” She finally released her eyes from the mirror and turned her attention to what lay atop her desk. A rope. A knife. A plastic jug of milk. A gun. A paper fortune teller. She grabbed the last of the items and began to slide her shaking fingers under its slots, her breathing growing evermore unsteady.
“Pink.” she muttered breathlessly before opening and closing the fortune teller four times, alternating its direction with each letter. Once this action was complete, she opened up the fortune teller one last time and fumbled with the flap of paper labelled number four. After a paper cut or two, she lifted it up and read its contents aloud:
“Milk.”
Excusing herself from her desk, Nene got to her uneasy feet and took the jug in one hand, gripping onto it for dear life, the other removing the bottle cap, cautious not to spill it with her hands shaking so much.
She lifted the carton to eye level.
She shuddered.
Trying to drown out her own thoughts, she pressed it to her lips and downed what she could before her allergies took hold. Collapsing to her knees, she felt her throat closing on itself as her neck fell to her side, causing her whole body to drop to the ground suddenly and fall unconscious. She was awoken seconds later by her body involuntarily regurgitating some vile orange liquid, a foul mixture of blood and vomit, staining her now-pale hands and favourite clothes. It felt as though all her senses had declared war against her at once, but she didn’t hate it. She didn’t hate the unrelenting agony her body was feeling, because at least she was feeling something. In dying she felt more alive than she had in a long time. With what little strength she had left, she made a feeble prayer to God, thanking him for freeing her from her misery and apologising for her sins. As her body became as numb as her heart, her eyes slowly closed and she faded away into the inky abyss of the afterlife.
And then she woke up.
The truth is she knew this would happen. The truth is that this exact scenario had played out everyday of Nene’s life for the past year, and every single time she died she woke up in her mom’s car, as though nothing had happened. The first few times this happened, she broke down crying, but she had grown used to it by now. If she was being honest with herself, she only still tried because she enjoyed the high she got from dying. She had a little disdain for herself in this way - she knew normal people didn’t enjoy hurting themselves. Her parents and the kind people at church had made that abundantly clear. She was not normal, and these thoughts were not normal. A lot of things she did and thought were not normal. Her reflection was not normal. Her promiscuity was not normal. But these were things she could not change, try and pray as she might. There was nothing she could do to change her fate.
“Ooh, turn up the radio, Mom! I love this song!” she sang cheerily, beaming from cheek to cheek.