I am a ticking time bomb. My world delicate, my safety non-existent. My survival rate bare minimumâ€"I am a walking grenade. I watch those who I love die around me like shooting stars that never seem to hold their trail. They are beautiful, shiny individuals who trade their life in for deathâ€"a payment of living a long healthy life. And I am not gifted the fortune of death, the beauty of everything coming to an end. I am burdened with just never dying, and who would have none that was the cruelest fate of all.

I can't get her out of my head tonight. She is livid in my dreams and talking in my mind. Her voice is rich, naïve, and powerful like I remember it to be. Beautiful Esmerelda; an independent woman whoâ€"despite my years in front of herâ€"I looked up to. She sits there taunting me with pretty blonde hair and enchanting blue eyes, her young figure sitting on a vibrant white picket fence.

I sit up, knowing the nightmares will never end regardless of my sleepiness. I distract myself by making coffee, making the bed, cleaning dishes. The hotel I stay in is not nice. It is a dump with disgusting hunter green drapes and an intoxicating smell of old furniture and men. My blankets are covered in tacky floral designs and my sheets have a stain to which I can assure you I had no part in. The old tarnished cabinetry are falling off the hinges one by one, and sometimes I question if my fridge really works. Every so often I hear an odd ticking noise like it is about to give outâ€"finally kick the bucketâ€"when the sound of a trugging motor regains itself.

I cannot sit here anymore. I stand up, wipe the thick lines of ran mascara off my cheekbones before snatching my winter parka and heading outside. It takes one hundred steps to reach the parking lot. I walk a little down the road, keeping to the sidewalk before deciding here is where I can think. Carefully, I set myself down regardless of the frozen ice and fresh snow and reach in my pocket. There, nestled between unused Kleenex and a stick of chapstick sits a miniature bottle of tequila. I am eagerâ€"painfully soâ€"and flick off the cap like a trained professional.

It is about an hour till I feel sick to my stomach. My vision is somewhat blurred, my body warmed by the false sense of heat which I have tequila to thank for. My eyes are red and my lips a bright pink. I know my breath smells of liquor but I don't care to find gum. Salty tears line my eyes and then comes a never ending stream. I am not bawling, or crying hard. I am silent, my bottom lip quivering ever so slightly and my eyes continuously draining. I hear sounds of distant vehicles and the soft hum of music from the bar but I don't shift. I don't wish to cure my pain with the love of a man for one night or the company of a dozen people that I will never learn the names of. I wish to be aloneâ€"in peaceâ€"like the loner I deserve to be.

With disdain I wipe my nose on the sleeve of my jacket. As the wind picks up I pull up my hood, disregarding my hair and how it looks. With every sniffle I take another swig until my bottle is completely drainedâ€"don't worry... I carry more.

I already regret drinking, but I couldn't hold myself together long enough to stay sober. She was haunting me, my little sister. Esmy, E, Merly as I learnt her husband began to call her. I wish I was around for that. I wish I got to hold a pretty bouquet of pale pink flowers and hug her a congratulations. I wish I got to dance with my own husbandâ€"because in a mortal world I would have married and had four kids by nowâ€"and take family photos in pretty dresses. I longed to have held my nieces hand, a spitting image of her mother with her fathers nose. I would have killedâ€"literally murderedâ€"to have comforted my own sister on her husbands deathbed.

But I was the missing girl. The child at age twenty-four kidnapped, never to be found again. I was the new faerie who instead of experiencing every significant eventâ€"I had to watch in pain and agony from behind the scenes. My nieces name was Elizabeth after our great grandmother, my brother in law was George. They had two horses named Caylpso and Bellie... a tribute to me. And every time I flew in to visitâ€"of course I wasn't actually visiting since they thought I was deadâ€"I would pretend to know what it felt like to hug my niece's body.

Sometimes, late at night and if I felt safe, I would go out and pat Bellie. She was my favourite, watching her die was like watching a family member pass. She was my memory for my sister, a tributeâ€"a picture frame that breathed. Bellie was identical to my own horse when I was younger. Oh God, Esmy loved that horse.

I actually am crying now and I fucking hate crying. Frustrated, I wipe my tears and continue to sniffle. My second bottle of tequila is gone, lying empty like a used needle beside me. My guilty pleasure, my dirty secretâ€"laid out for whoever walks by to see.