The Pact (XWhySoSeriousX and Vermiciro)

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Tending to avoid carbonated beverages, Minerva wasn't at all displeased about hearing the dearth of soda at her old friend's grandmother's. She couldn't even remember the last time she had drank soda without some kind of liquor in it. Hell, she couldn't even recall the last time she had a beer without liquor in it. If the flavor was palatable and sharp enough to hide the bitter astringency of liquor then it was guaranteed Minerva had mixed it with something. At least with fruit juice she could pretend she was getting vitamins with her psychological balm.

"I'm not that tall." Minerva commented, more to herself than Ophelia. Though she did stand above most young women her age and the low heel of her boots wasn't helping. "I can't say anyone's struck my fancy." she admitted. Their therapy wasn't exactly a surfeit of intrigue or pulchritude either. "No one ever really has, honestly. A crush isn't something I've ever experienced as other people describe. Not to mention, I've never taken to gents, you know that." though Minerva was reluctant to define whatever sexuality she had, she was certain it wasn't straight.

Mindful of tree roots that undulated the sidewalk, Minerva asked, "So who's this dashing PhD you mentioned anyway?"
 
"Oh him...nah it's nothing serious, he sighs the little white paper that gives me perscriptions...I just felt the need to say that I have someone, relationships make people happy don't they...well they're supposed to" she sighed pushing some more hair out of her face as she rescue do her back pocket pulling out her keys. It had only been a ten minute walk but now they were at her small one story house with two cars in the drive way, on of them belonging to her grandmother. "Okay so grandma is here, you can stay and talk to her while I get some cups and stuff or you can head to my room. But let me warn you, if she does remember you be prepared to hear every damn story she could think of" most people would think that she was joking and when they found out she wasn't, they wished she had been.

Opening the door she sighed and pushed it further open so that they both could walk in. The house was nothing special but it was all she could afford with the money she made working. "Sorry it's not the most prestigious but mi casa su casa so make yourself at home while get the stuff ready" she said then disappeared into the kitchen looking for the cups and some juice that they could drink the gin with. "What kind of juice would you like, we have cranberry, orange, mango pineapple, and prune...I'm pretty sure that prune would taste disgusting so let's go with the other choices." Ophelia reached in the refrigerator and pulled out the first three flavors that she had called out and set them on the counter.

"Alright let's have some fun, my grandma might be sleeping so we might need to take this party to my room...not that I'm trying to get you in the mood or anything" she joked and placed one cup inside the other and held the juices inder her arms.
 
Though Minerva was more comfortable around those older than herself, she had no interest to hear all of Ophelia's grandmother's tales and recollections. She almost shivered at the awkwardness that would come with such an encounter. The home the pair lived in was comforting though. Never taken to affluence, Minerva found the surrounding much to her liking. There was character in the details. Old upholstery, thinning curtains, and grit in its corners, the home felt as one should be, humble.

Minerva idled quietly in the doorway, taking in what she saw while keeping an eye on Ophelia in the kitchen. At the mention of prune juice she visibly grimaced with revulsion. She would sooner drink the gin straight than combined it with prune juice, never mind the likely immediate bowel cleansing effect the mix would have. "I'm not keen on mango," Minerva admitted, "But otherwise I'd say we're ready to go. Can I help you carry anything. Dropping any of those on your toes would kill any mood before it ever began."
 
"I got it I'm a big girl...but it's nice to see that you've admitted a mood between us" she chuckled and figured that would be the last joke cause she hadn't known if that was making the other uncomfortable or not. Walking down a small but wide hallway Ophelia headed all the way to the back and moved to a pure all black door opening it. "Welcome to my humble room, you can sit on my black furry beanbags or you can sit on the bed the choice is up to you" pushing the door further open with her foot she walked into her white walled room that was far from boring.

She had written her favorite quotes on the wall in cursive with a black sharpie and even had some of her small doodles placed everywhere. Her room had a color scheme of monochrome because for some weird reason black and white were her favorite colors. Well there was a reason but there was a whole philosophy she had behind it. "It's changed a lot since you've been in it huh...I just got over my fake girly phase and figured I needed change" she said as she placed the juice and glasses on her bed. Heading over to her desk she opened up a small hidden compartment and sighed realizing that she wasn't going to make the day. "You don't mind if I use in front of you right...I tried going to whole day with a sniff or smoke of something g and now I just feel sick now" chewing on her lower lip she pulled out a tiny bag that was filled with cocaine and turned to Minerva to see if it was okay.
 
The bedroom which Ophelia called her own, wasn't anything like the four walls Minerva was most used to. There was a distinct controlled and personal entropy to the place. Every detail appeared distracting to Minerva, demanding her attention and curiosity. Ophelia's energy seemed to have imbued the very walls, a complete contrast to the bedroom Minerva kept with unadorned wallpaper and pristine organization.

Her eyes couldn't help but wander as she sat rigidly atop a beanbag. "Change can be good, stimulation to overcome stagnation." she commented absently, still following line after line on the walls. Upon hearing Ophelia mention drug use. Minerva was intrigued, even a little jealous that she didn't have the connections to acquire such alleviative chemicals, but only managed a shrug of indifference. "I don't mind." she encouraged. "As long as you don't use it later as an excuse for your behavior. Likewise, even if I end up shit-faced and vomiting, you're more than welcome to hold me accountable to what I do while inebriated."
 
"Well shit you mean if I get high and make out with you I can't blame it on the drugs...damn missed opprituinity" Ophelia said a bit of sarcasm seeping through her words as she placed the rest of the contents in the bag on her desk and lined it into a single file line. "I mean if you get shit-faced and vomit every where then I'll just judge you for a while, maybe call you vomit face as an inside joke and tease you a bit...that is if you don't push me away again after tonight" she added the last bit not trying to seem upset about it or mad but deep down she was, even a bit hurt.

Ophelia bent down placing a small coffee straw up one nostril and left the other side on the little white crystallized pile breathing in through her nose letting all of it sink in. It always burned even if you were used to taking it, but that burn was what she lived for...she even craved it. Ophelia wiped some of the left overs off her nose and turned to face Minerva with a smile. "I'm bad person I know...if you want say that get in line with the others...but people are going to be waiting a helluva long time before I give a rats ass...oops excuse my language" she said chuckling as she pulled the stuff off the bed and moved it nicely on the floor before plopping down on the other bean bag with a long sigh. "You still have yet to tell me how much you missed me...I mean I know I'm a shitty person but you've had to miss me even a tiny bit"
 
Though she was self-conscious of her breathe and a crooked incisor, Minerva wasn't opposed to making out, not after a few drinks when the feeling set in, when reality melted away, when the obsessive thoughts stopped, when the future and past faded leaving only that moment. She figured then she wouldn't mind physical touch, perhaps even desiring it in her own strange way. Because even Minerva's affections were aberrant, more curious than impulsive.

She thought over Ophelia's words, catching back-handed implications. Minerva never considered what she did as 'pushing others away'. She saw it as withdrawing, but at the surface was there any difference between the two? "How much I've missed you." Minerva drawled as she went about mixing herself a drink, cranberry juice and a generous amount of gin. "If I'm honest, the answer is I don't know. My memory of you is tied with a time I don't want to return to, schooling that is. But that does you, an individual, injustice." she paused, a contemplative knit in her brow as she drank deeply from her glass. "I miss being able to talk shit freely though, something which I only did with you." Minerva admitted. "I'm too polite for my own good these days. And I miss pretending that our companionship would last." she laughed bitterly in remembrance. "I use to pretend we were inseparable, but then all that preparation for college and building a life happened and I fucking crumbled. Everything fell apart, including us."
 
"Yeah I guess you're right....and it didn't help that I was trying to get along with the it crowd..." She sighed at the somewhat horrible memories and chewed her lower lip as she began to make her drink. Unlike Minerva and he loved mango, mango lollipops, mango juice, anything with mangos she loved. Hell anything with with tropical fruit she loved. Holding up the glass she had made Ophelia smiled as she began to make a small toast. "Well here's to rekindling our friendship...and this time I won't let anything fall apart" she threw back her drunk quickly and involuntarily shivered as she had finished her drink.

"You know I hadn't known that you weren't straight, I guess I should have realized that since every time I brought up a guy you just registered yourself out of the conversation." Crossing one leg over the other Ophelia sunk lower into the fuzziness of the bean bag chair and aighed looking up at the ceiling. It was just a plan white color cause she was way to short to reach up and write something up there. Even climbing on her bed wasn't an option because she was still a few feet short of the ceiling. Chewing on her lower lip once more she was pulled deep into thought before she snapped out of it shooting back up from the bean bag chair sitting perfectly straight as she stood up looking at the other who sat comfortably in the bean bag. "Shit I forgot to get back to my dealer today...he's totally going to be up my ass since I haven't paid him yet..." Realizing that the thought she had wasn't to important she eased herself back Ito the chair and poured herself another drink. Ophelia just stared at the wall before she turned to Minerva with her pinky extended and her lips curled into a small smile. "Promise me we won't fall apart again...promise me we'll stay by each other's sides until death dues up apart"
 
Before draining her first drink, Minerva tipped her glass in reciprocation of the toast. Words like won't, never, and always were promises, ones people could rarely keep. Because no means of prognostication could foretell what designs the future held. Minerva hid her doubts in a gentle smile and filled her glass once again. Relief waited at the bottom for her, like the trinket in a King's cake. Queen for those hours of peaceful inebriation.

Minerva found it hard to believe anyone ever considered her straight, but she didn't wear her sexuality on her sleeve, and there were those few occasions she had been with men. They were too easy, too eager for sexual gratification, and she needed a personal understanding of what the fuss was over. Nothing, Minerva had surmised after wasted time. Sex without emotional connection, especially of the heterosexual variety, was simply not in her cards. Like many other things it seemed.

"I'm surprised he would even keep you in debt instead of withholding his drugs." Minerva drawled, taking a generous sip from her beverage. She eyed Ophelia's extended pinky. Minerva had broken so many promises in her life, could hardly remember one she hadn't reneged in time. But she couldn't see the hurt in making one last vow. She knotted her pinky with Ophelia's. "Till death do us part." Minerva echoed. "Even if that time will likely come soon." she added grimly.
 
"Okay are you being philosophical saying that death could come to us at any time or is there supposed to be something meant there?" Ophelia looked up at her moving her drink around in her hands before she took another huge sip and finished it off. 'Even if that time will likely come soon' she sounded so sure of it though. If she was trying to say that they could die anytime from. Now to tomorrow then she would have put may somewhere in there. She looked at Minerva for a second then turned away making herself another drink.

"What are you planning on doing, you sound so sure that you're going to die in a short amount of time..." Ophelia said finally opening her mouth after minutes of silence passed through the room. Minerva had always been in the off side but that was what she loved about her, the girl wasn't afraid to be herself even if herself desolated everyone and everything from her mind. Unlike Ophelia, old he pretended to be what people loved so that she wasn't lonely...even got addicted to drugs on the way down.

Likely, Likely was still an undetermined word...but even so Minerva sounded so confident saying it. This girl was up to something and she wanted to know cause curiosity always killed the cat, and in this scenario, she wanted to be the cat so bad. "Come on tell me, or do I need to get you more drunk and ask you then...I've always heard that alcohol is the truth serum" Ophelia said the words sing-songy as she took a sip from the glass she had just made and looked at Minerva waiting for her answer and sort of, preparing herself for it.
 
It was true that Minerva had plans for the future, ones that she had been contemplating for almost six years. For so long they had gnawed at the corners of her mind. With every silence came thoughts of them. It was all she had left. It wasn't an exaggeration of circumstance or psychology. It was an acceptance of the inevitable. It was an understanding, suicide.

Minerva smiled bitterly at her friend. "Alcohol has never been the sodium pentothal of spy movies, but I suppose it would run a close second." she quipped, taking a drink. She wasn't shy about telling her plans, doubting any psychological service would believe Ophelia if she told them Minerva was about to commit suicide. Minerva never discussed it except to strangers online. But she needed to make something certain first.

"Ophelia," she addressed her friend by name, "Have you ever considered suicide? I don't mean casual statements of wishing yourself dead because life is troublesome. And nothing like what's popularized by angry, iconoclastic youth. Not The Bell Jar or Radiohead or romanticized rot. I mean suicide as in literally taking your life, disappearing forever, even your consciousness dissolving into the earth..." Minerva's chest tightened, her throat began to choke around the words. "I'm out of time." she whispered.
 
Ophelia had just looked at her then looked down at the drink then led her eyes back up to the girl. Was she being serious or was the alcohol already talking. Biting her lip she hadn't wanted to answer her question but knew that she would have to if she wanted to know what this girl was going on about. she thoug about how she was going to handle this cause Minerva had seemed serious about this answer. There was no 'just kidding' at the end of her statement so she knew the girl wanted her to answer it.

"Yes....but then again what depressed person hasn't thought about it...and I don't mean I thought about it then threw it around for attention that I was going to actually kill myself...didn't take a selfie with a gun in my mouth and said hashtag last selfie..." She chuckled darkly knowing that that was how people these days handled suicide. They handled it like it wasn't an actually thing, people could be living the perfect life and still want to kill themselves for no god damn reason other than to fit in with the it crowd of 'suicidal' cool kids.

"I even attempted twice....first time I swallowed an ass load of whatever I could find in my drug stash and the second time I hit a vein, my grandmother came to my rescue everytime...though deep down I wish she hadn't...there's always a curiosity, wanting to know if God or the devil is awaiting your arrival so that both could fight to see which side you would be on...I've always wanted to disappear from the sick, fucked-up, and twisted world we call home...it's not like I'll be missed...grandma just wanted me around till she can get the money that comes along on my twenty-sixth birthday" Ophelia sighed and looked over at Minerva smiling her mischevious and twisted smile as she climbed over and sat in the others lap pouring herself another drink.

"Now are you going to explain to me why you've run out of time or are we just going to listen to my views on suicide all night?" She asked her curiosity finally reaching its last straw. Now she wanted to now why this girl decided to become The Riddler out of no where.
 
Twice, a first and second attempt. Minerva considered Ophelia's history of suicide. Both methods were considerably slow, and depending on the somatic will to live, could feel like a lifetime awaiting perdition. That wasn't to say Minerva had many other methods or experience at her disposal for comparison. Without access to a firearm, Minerva had long contemplated drinking herself near black-out and opening her carotid arteries. Alcohol-numb and craving release, she'd sink the inches of a steel blade deep, tracing the edge of her sternocleidomastoid. Once on the left, and if she still had the strength, once on the right. She'd die with vodka-rich blood saturating her shirt to a second skin. Minerva felt it was inevitable, an inexorable fate.

At least Ophelia could relate.

The seemingly sudden, extra weight atop her lap did not go unnoticed despite Minerva's internal contemplation. She became rigid, uncertain how to react to such physical expression, but managed to dismiss her hesitance as she finished her second drink, if not a little awkwardly due the additional burden. The weight of another person was oddly comforting. It felt protective, though Minerva doubted Ophelia's gesture displayed such.

"Everything's over when I reach twenty-five." she began slowly. "Maybe it's self-fulfilling prophecy, but that's my limit. When I hit twenty-five I'll be off my mother's medical insurance. I won't be able to afford my therapy or medication, and I don't see a point in getting my own insurance and job to pay for them when they haven't done much of anything over the past six years. I've tried to find my place in this world. I have tried to find a purpose, a raison d'etre. And there isn't one. I have no reason to suffer on." she swallowed dry, and made a vague gesture for Ophelia to refill her glass as she was unable to. "There isn't anything I want in life. There's no point I want to make, nothing I want to share, nothing I want to change, no place to travel, or people or possessions to gain... I only want to go home, and I've come to the conclusion that home is nowhere this body is capable of reaching."
 
As she signaled for her drink Ophelia poured her another glass and just listened to what she had to say. Great, she just got her friend back and now said friend was probably going to kill herself...didn't that God that people always go on about work in mysterious ways. Ophelia just shrugged her shoulders not know bing what to say, yeah she had her dip in the suicide pool...but everytime she tried everything just seemed to fail because she had weird sadistic tendencies and she wanted to see her self in so much pain and torture. "So how is this going to work? You just gonna go to the nearest building and jump off or something..." Ophelia felt her voice lower as she asked not really wanting to know the answer.

Yeah, Minerva hadn't been in her life for quite some time but once someone made an appearance you always want to keep them around. Call it human thought process...but she wanted to keep Minerva to stay around even if the girl hadn't cared for her. Since it had been close to seven or eight years that they hadn't spoken. "Okay look I get the whole depressed and mopey thing...but damn Minerva I literally just got you back in my life and now you wanna shoot yourself in the face or pitch yourself off some cliff...Am I just that bad of a person" Ophelia couldn't help but feel a bit bad thought. Minerva had always been bad but she had never really opened up to her, they were close but Ophelia could never really see what was past her barricade cause she always kept it up. But the moments were precious when she would give it up for just a few seconds and be herself.

Ophelia thought about it as she poured herself another glass and felt a small buzz kicking in. Her body had never been well with liqour since she rarely drunk it, but she could never handle it even when she was drinking at highschool parties. Ophelia bit her lower lip and looked at her before she took what she had just poured like a shot letting it burn all the way down her throat. "So how are you going to do this...are you just gonna look yourself or try to make something out of your life before you end it? Cause I vote second one...it's nice for the mind to have memories as you send yourself to internal hell since suicide is a sin or something...right?" Her words were slightly slurred but still understandable as she tried to speak biblical despite never reading the enigma people celebrate.
 
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