It would seem that never was there an individual in my family whose life was not touched by some kind of sin. Perhaps sin is too genetic of a word, and the term I'm actually looking for is vice. Sins are innate, unfortunate traits ingrained in the very fiber of one's being. Vices are the behaviors that one participates in â€" gambling, a vice caused by a sin. Venial sins differed in their definitiveness of an individual's makeup, I believed. Lesser sins, appropriated to needle away at the good in a person until they gave into their vices and exposed their more mortal sins. Maybe it was that the souls of those in my family were merely more exposed to their sins, allowing their vices to be far more obvious than those of others around us. And maybe I'm projecting my own vices onto my siblings, my parents...

I guess I had to learn it somewhere?

Nature versus nurture showed an immaculate deficit in our small corner of the world. By growing up without many of the amenities my future life would have, my siblings and I were subject to unbelievable acts of disgrace, disrespect, and depravity that I would be able to explain to others only in the form of memory imagery and illusions. I would like to blame my faults on this crumbling foundation where I was born and bred, but I don't think that's entirely true. When we opened Pandora's box by allowing branches of evil to ensnare any or all of us, we became solely at fault for our vices. If, maybe, my mother hadn't devoted her life to the luscious, sultry whispers Gluttony murmured to her... If, maybe, my father hadn't allowed Sloth to unfold a proverbial couch beneath his body... If, maybe Envy hadn't plagued my sister with the treacherous fever of desire... If, maybe, Pride hadn't infected my brother and tormented his behavior... If, maybe, Greed and Lust didn't clasp their hands and dance infectiously around us... Then perhaps I wouldn't have greeted Wrath with open arms and allowed it to seduce me with false words of comfort, and touch me with relief tainted by revenge. Then perhaps my sister wouldn't have been left pregnant, homeless, and penniless. Perhaps my brother wouldn't have spent nights in the cells of the local jail, subject to authoritative disapproval. Perhaps my littlest sister wouldn't have known the demons that men could be.

Maybe we would believe in angels, then.

If, maybe, I hadn't agreed to let the biggest vice of them all into my life, my body... I don't think I really ever had a choice, honestly. Whoever said men have more power in this world and life are wrong; it is women. Women with heavy hands, strong whips, and callous hearts. Masters who lie and mistresses who drive a blade between shoulders of the unsuspecting or the needy... The victims of Heroin, our headmaster and headmistress, we all looked the same. Victims to the weakness in our character, the flaws in our personalities, and the vices we indulged in as well as our most intimate sins. It seemed despite my refusal to believe in something holier-than-thou, the crimson hair of the vampire providing me immediate relief from the physical manifestation of my most deadly vice could have been the swoop of wings of an angel, for all I was concerned in such a feverish state. Delusional with desire and a viral excretion of whatever chemicals were still left in my system, I was left to my macabre mental imagery and the thoughts of could-have-beens, should have beens. It was until the soft, soothing tone of the woman's voice permeating the pregnant, heavy silence that I rested in those images, the montage culminating in a scene that was too reminiscent of the first time I suffered an overdose. And it was then that I realized the vampire's words were all too true, and the words needed to fall from my lips for an audience, making them real.

As for now, Serena was never real. Not on this continent, anyway. The moment she died, she wasn't real to me anymore. She was shoved into a corner of the Pandora's box that was my collective memory, allowed only to fester on mounting hordes of disturbing memories. Her golden hair, her vibrant eyes... th sunshine of her heart and the warmth of - ... These weren't memories to hide. I had disintegrated her skin, her bones, allowing dust to dust and ash to ash. She was part of the universe as energy should be once it has been recycled... Why shouldn't I be able to say her name out loud? Why should I - ... Heroin no longer dictated my tongue. No longer constructed the bars of my cage; and if she tried, again, I would rattle them.

With a shaky breath, I moved to sit in a position better to face Isolt. The way worry etched it's brand upon the nonexistent lines of her face brought a furrow to my brow; she shouldn't know what this ... this mode, was. The mode of survival as a slave of a substance. Quickly, though, my initial thought of the woman as a user faded as she spoke of her brother, and the need to help me made more sense. She needed to fill a hole she failed at, before?

Lord knows, that is a role I understood far too well.

And it was with that I nodded gently, as much as the shooting pain and discomfort in my body would allow. It was with an extraordinarily gentle hand that I tilted the woman's chin to raise her gaze to meet the whites of mine. "If I'll let you help me?" I began, my tone much softer and far more raw than she would have heard fall from my lips before. "Isolt, I need your help, more than I want it." I fell quiet, expelling whatever breath I had left to still my increasing heartbeat as I prepared the words that would begin to explain how I had become such a slave to a vindictive master.

"Every year I visit my home town," I began, the crack of my voice somehow comforting; I somehow felt more emotion there than I had in months. In years. I had never willingly begun to speak of her, of them... "I visit a graveyard where the occupants are - ... It's my fault they're dead. A friend of mine can see ghosts, and my literal skeletons came out of the closet. Seeing the faces of the people I've hurt, the lives I've ruined... "I trailed off, feeling the way my throat began to close absolutely inhuman and heart wrenching. "I just thought what I was doing was for the right reasons... Why did she die, then?" I had never expected to receive an answer to that metaphysical question. "The love of my life died giving birth to our son 12 years ago, yesterday. Serena just â€" died. We had no doctors. We had no medication, no prenatal care. Just what a midwife could offer, and the incompetency of a kid who knew how to solve problems with an assault rifle by the age of nine. I just thought ... I can't shake that it's all my fault. All of it."

I had never said the words out loud. Those four words were my life line; the secrets whispered to me by Heroin herself in the dead of night when I was looking for a reason to lay blame elsewhere. It was all my fault, and it was time I accepted it.

"Isolt," I murmured, running my fingers over cracked lips, my voice feeling as dry and foreign as it had the first time I'd heard myself speak through an illusion. "I need help, but I don't know if I'm worth saving."