“God damn it Stuart!” Her hand smacked across my cheek again, nails raking along the sensitive skin.
I flinched, but said nothing, jaw muscles tightening to keep in the flow of abusive words.
I didn't even know what I'd done.
I stared in horror at the monster that had morphed from the girl I once loved.
I'd had a crush on her since seventh grade, and only last year did she agree to go out with me.
She was perfect. Perfect in every single way. She was cute, shy, funny and could win competitions for the way she kissed me.
But everything, absolutely everything, had changed the second she took that one, little pill...

“Do you want it?” The musky looking guy shook the bag in front of her face.
“Hey,” I stepped in front of her protectively. “Leave her alone.” I threw him a dirty look before turning to look at her, to brush back her silky black hair.
“Frankie, I don't think-” I started to murmur, before I was yanked roughly around by my shoulder and punched hard in the face.
Heated rage burst through me as I flew at the tattooed boy, swinging wildly at his shaved, oval head. He kneed me in the stomach and I fell down like a rock, loosing sense of my upper body.
“Do you want it or not?” He grabbed Frankie by the shoulders and shook her roughly, oblivious to the terrified look that was plastered on her face.
I wanted to get up, I wanted to kick him hard. But I couldn't. I couldn't move.
A tear ran down her cheek as she nodded and pulled the money out of her purse. A grin spread across the punk's face as he traded a zip-lock bag full of pale green pills for the smooth notes.
“Good doing business with you.” He kicked me hard once more and slunk back down the graffiti covered alleyway, never to be seen again.

“Don't give me that look, you've gone too far this time!” She spat into my face, punching me carelessly in the stomach. I looked around the dark street in panic, trying to find someone that could help me. I didn't care about the humiliation anymore. I needed out.
“Baby, I don't know what I did. Please, just tell me.” I whispered desperately. She shoved my shoulders with a loathsome look on her face, and I tripped over my feet, slamming hard onto the ground.
“ Don't baby me. You know what you did. You went out with Johanna, I saw you. You cheated on me!” Her foot made solid contact with my stomach and I threw up bitter chunks of food, food that we'd eaten cheerily only an hour ago, onto the cold, rough tarmac underneath me.
She smiled mercilessly, taking pleasure in my pain.
“ Johanna's my lab partner, I have to work with her! I was in the library with her for five minutes. Don't you think you're overreacting?” I wiped the bile from my mouth, staring up at her smooth, cream face.
“No.” Tears were cascading down her soft, rounded cheeks. “No, I saw you! I saw you.” She blubbered, kicking my leg repeatedly.
“Frankie, it's those pills, you're hallucinating! I need the old Frankie back...” I whimpered against the pain.
Wrong move.
“That's not fair! You know why I take them, my life is too stressful. And you are just making it worse! ” She screamed at the top of her lungs, slamming her foot into my ribs.
“I.” She kicked my chest, the wind tearing out of my lungs with a wheeze.
“Hate.” She moved up, painfully connecting her foot with my collarbone.
I was blinded with a hot, searing, fiery pain that was erupting from my heart.
I couldn't breath. I couldn't see. But I could taste the blood dribbling out of my mouth.
“You! ” And with the last kick, the last kick she would ever hurt me with, the last kick ever to hit my head, everything went black.
It took all of my efforts to breathe out that one last breath, and all of the energy that I no longer had in me to thread in words, but after I'd said my very last sentence, my mind was left blank and blissful.
“I hate you, too.”