Nineteen. A cracked mirror reflecting a stranger in this sterile shoebox they called a dorm. The air hung heavy, thick with the stench of yesterday's failures. "Not her," I clawed at the silence, but the echoes skittered off hollow walls, mocking my defiance. Memories flickered like a gruesome home movie - a child hacking at bangs in a desperate attempt at self-exorcism, hair christening the unforgiving tile in tear-soaked baptisms of solitude. My own Roman Empire in ruins, the weight of expectation a suffocating crown. Evil? A question first, then a truth so heavy it pressed the oxygen from my lungs.Loving him was a twisted prayer whispered into the neon hum of the night. A plea that he wouldn't see the monstrous hunger gnawing at my insides. Did his touch ever reach the real me, or was I just a ghost haunting his narrative? Red bled to a dusty auburn, a faded memory on a forgotten canvas. Nineteen, three hundred and sixty-two days, the supposed expiration date. S...