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Faggot. Queer. Bitch.

He could feel the incessant chanting more than he could hear it, pounding inside his head like an oversized, out of tune drum. Discordant. Pulsating in his brain like a dying star. Thrashing its way through his mind like a large animal of prey, looking for something to rip apart, to tear.

Gay. Weirdo. Homo.

Alex curled into a ball. He just wanted to be alone. He just wanted the chanting to stop. All he wanted was for the names to cease, to end, to leave him alone.

Alone.

That word hurt most of all. It described him the clearest. Summed him up, and boiled him down to his simplest characteristic. Alone.

The voices had ceased.

Alex uncurled himself. He looked around. He was alone again, but it was not the respite he had wanted. The landscape was featureless, grey. There was no sound, no color, no emotion. He was alone.

The voices came back.

Faggot. Loser.

The pounding resumed. He curled back up into a little ball. His only protection from the hate.

Queer. Fag.

Silence.

Alex looked up. He stared up at a featureless, empty sky. He heard screaming. It took him a moment before he realized it was his own. He was howling up at the sky, letting all his fear and rage out in one long, blood curdling cry. He sank to his knees in exhaustion.

Except he did not sink to the ground, but instead, sank into water. The dirt beneath him had shifted and he was adrift in a vast, grey ocean.

The chanting started again.

He tried to curl back up into his safe little ball, but he could not. He could only float, thrashing helplessly in the endless waves. He couldn't breath, he was drowning. The chanting grew louder and his struggles became more and more feeble.

He broke the surface one last time. He tried to gasp for air, but he still couldn't breath. His mouth was open in a silent scream but his lungs would not accept the life giving air that was so tantalizingly close but so hopelessly far away.

He plummeted, the chanting growing louder as he sank into the unmeasured depths of despair.

* * *

Alex woke up, gasping for air and covered in a clammy layer of sweat. He raised himself into a sitting position and wrapped his arms around his knees. He gazed around his room in terror, afraid that the voices would start chanting again, or that Lance and his cronies would emerge from his closet and beat him again. He buried his head in his knees, sobbing. Why couldn't they just leave him alone? He lay back down, clutching his pillow and waiting for the crippling sobs to stop. After awhile he started to calm down, his breathing normalized and he was able to think clearly.

He sat up again and, swinging his legs over the side of his bed, he stood up and stalked over to his bedroom window. He surveyed the gloomy street, cars parked in random patterns, street lights dimly lighting the sidewalks. He saw a feral cat darting around behind some trash bins. A lone wanderer of the night, except even the cat was less alone than him. It most likely had a mate, maybe even a litter of kittens it was in search of food to provide for. He laid his paws on the windowsill and rested his forehead on the cool, glass pane. He sighed as the coldness from the glass numbed the throbbing pain in his head.

He turned from the window and walked back to his bed. He reached for a small prescription bottle on his nightstand. He turned it over and over in his claws, listening to the tiny clicking sounds as its contents tumbled over and over inside of it. He stopped fiddling with it and gazed at the warning label: WARNING, RISK OF DEPENDENCY. He snorted quietly to himself. He hesitantly poured two small, white pills into his paw. He stared down at them for a few seconds, then threw back his head and dry swallowed them. He wondered if it was bad that it had become so effortless for him to dry swallow. When he had first received this prescription, he couldn't take a pill without a substantial gulp of water. Now it was as simple as one-two-three. A-B-C. Look 'ma no hands!

Alex threw himself back on his bed. He felt like shit. The drugs started to take hold, and he felt himself drifting off to sleep. He shivered. He wished his bed wasn't so cold. But he wished for a lot of things. He wished his bed wasn't so empty a lot of the time, too. He burrowed deeper into the blankets and curled up into a defensive cresent shape. So cold, and so very, very alone.

* * *

The sound of water hitting the glass pane behind him. The constant drone of the shower. The low hum of the heater.

Alex felt his muscles slowly begin to relax as the cacophony of sound and water washed over him. He didn't know what had brought on the nightmare. It had just started in the middle of the night. He had been ripped from sleep, all his muscles clenched and his body covered in sweat. He shuddered at the memory. He inhaled deeply, trying to relax. The faint scent of mint from his shampoo tickled his nostrils.

For awhile he just stood there, leaning against the shower wall, letting the water cascade over him. It was relaxing. Just standing there, water and sound rushing over him, drowning out the outside world.

He reluctantly let his paw drop to the shower valve and turned off the water.

Silence.

He stepped out of the shower, shivering as the chilled morning air cooled his bare fur. As he went about his morning routine, his thoughts wandered back to the nightmare. He wondered what had brought it on. Had it been that breaking news story he had heard his parents watching on the news when he got home from the hospital? Something about a local high school student being severely wounded in a explosion. It had sounded bad. The anchor had been talking about severed arteries and critical conditions from severe blood loss. Alex shivered. He had always been squeamish with blood...and severe loss of it. Especially after...well, he didn't want to think about it.

He shook his head. Why did he always do this to himself? He always took tiny little things and blew them out of proportion. He could never respond naturally to anything. He read far too deeply into everyone else's actions and ended up crucifying himself over the resulting awkwardness He had always been, would always be awkward, weird....different.

He stared at the lonely looking red squirrel in the mirror. A pair of hollow, green eyes stared back and unkempt hair ran amok all over a scrawny body. The squirrel in the mirror did not look healthy. In fact, he looked like he was on the verge of collapsing. Alex could see his rib cage through his russet colored fur, he looked...empty. Everything about him, from his fur, to the way he stood said, hell, screamed depressed little faggot on the verge of suicide. He felt his eyes growing hot. Soon he would start to cry. Just like the weak, sorry little faggot he was.

A sudden knock on the door jolted him from his lethargic revere.

"Alex? Are...are you okay?"

Alex shook his head to clear the cloud from his mind. He looked down. His paw had been straying towards a pair of trimming scissors his dad had left out by the sink. It was shaking.

"Y-Yeah....I'm fine dad."

Pause.

"Oh, Okay. breakfast is ready downstairs if...if you're hungry."

The worry in his father's voice was almost palpable.

As his father walked away, Alex finished washing his face. His gaze wandered back to the scissors. They just lay there, taunting him with their harsh, metallic glare.

Not today.

But what about tomorrow, asked a tiny voice in the back of his head. What about tomorrow, or the day after that? Alex stared at himself in the mirror. Maybe. He thought. Maybe.

He wrapped a towel around his gaunt waist and shuffled back to his room. Once inside he let the towel drop, once again exposing his body to the cool air of his small bedroom. He just stood there, feeling the air currents and drafts play across his skin. A single tear slowly welled in one eye, then sluggishly rolled down his right cheek.

Maybe tomorrow.