Sensitive Material Warning: Substance abuse, references to physical and sexual violence, mental health.

 Heaven indeed, the valley in early spring. A light wind rustled the trees, tinged with the earthy scent of the paper mill. How lovely, the contrast of the season's chill with the sun proudly bathing the deck where I sat. Why would anyone wish to leave? I tried to shove down the sense of foreboding, and fully embrace the present ideal, but despite every effort, I knew this moment was slipping away. Tomorrow loomed, and though the bustle of air travel would be struggle enough, what greater trouble awaited me when the wheels were to touch down. At the time, two weeks seemed so insufficient to encase the joy of friendship and laughter, to capture true chosen family and light. Were that I could bottle this freedom, for something to sustain me in my descent.

Before this delightful excursion, I'd trudged quite alone sans soleil, despite the blood-bound kin supporting our home on sand-stilts. That bustle was another entirely, wherein I was the only one who could stand still. Our apartment smelled always like an ice chest, and it choked my heart. My father was a live wire, feet ever shuffling to the erratic rhythm that riddled his mind. It was never a quiet moment there anymore, everything having fallen under the influence of the curse – including my father's prodigious talent with the guitar. What had been captivating melody and eloquent motion had instead, become ragged clangs and forced bedlam.

This return was written as ill-fated, no matter which way I dressed it with my eyes. Precious little control bound my will, facing tomorrow's flight. From the kin of faithful friends, heralds of better possibilities, to the din of a chaotic facticity; A regression I felt I couldn't escape. My grandfather used to tell me, “You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose.” It seems you can pick your friends, you can call them kin, but you can't avoid atoning for your errant father's sin. When I had yet but to look forward to the sojourn, the unpredictable desperation of my world had eaten into the marrow of my bones. This trip was a needed escape, an oasis amid an inhospitable landscape troubled with storms.

There was no fuss over my makeup before the airport, no care fretted to my clothes. I knew tears were inevitable and was well prepared to look as wretched as I felt, my mind set apart from the attention of those around me. The last embrace of my dearest friend before setting out to find my gate, nearly ripped my heart screaming from my chest. As I found a seat among the rows of uncomfortable plastic chairs, I felt my stomach clench with helpless anxiety. When the phone buzzed, a byzantine instinct steeled me in expectation of bad news. My father's voice was choppy and slurred, but rushed at the same time, and there was no mistaking his intoxication. “Baby, I- I can't make the drive... down there. I'm just not feeling great, you know, I'm hurting and my ears are ringing. I just, you know, I need to stay home in bed. I called Richter, and he's going to pick you up and give you a ride home.”

It's funny, but not amusing, that my dad had tried to nail it into my mind for all of my twenty-two years, “Trust no one,” And yet, I had always assumed that he, himself, was an exception to the rule. I had been fooled by convention into believing that the man presiding over my house, who sprouted me in my mother's garden, would ever hedge me with protection. Tradition, and the honor code of my family, had instilled within me an assurance that the man would have discernment and lead the charge of his household aright. My father would never do anything to hurt me, and he would do everything to ensure my defense. Tradition doesn't account for the addling power of drugs, when proclaiming this or that ideal. In that moment, I stopped crying.

There is often a quiet superpower among survivors. We have this invisible armor that we can don in an instant. Survival is a mode of being, one that no one asks for, but for which all eventually have need to summon regardless of their own will. In that moment, the armor settled onto my shoulders and forged a barrier over my chest, that my heart may be less vulnerable. I was resigned to trouble, that which I could not see or control, that which I could not fully predict. The cards were lain before me and I had no choice but to play them. I knew that on the other side of this journey, a predator awaited. Even so, I was blind to the dollar signs looming above me.

The first leg of my flight was uneventful, seeing the clouds below through a dissociated lens and hiding within the hood of my sweatshirt. Neither of my books were able to hold me still with the restless agitation spinning in my mind with whirls of red-hot indignation battling the instinct to resign myself. The airport at Las Vegas was as dingy, loud, and abrasive as one might expect from the City of Sin. I lent myself to the theme, settling in the casino box with it's ringing slot machines and bright lights bouncing off the plexiglass walls, to chain smoke. Foul men chuckled and snorted, ashing on the carpet round their feet and sloshing beer in plastic cups. Here, no one seemed in a hurry as the rest of the complex, but seemed content with their degenerate camaraderie.

I grimaced at the slot machine before which I sat, staring blankly at the pointless numbers rolling up on virtual wheels. The games were all themed, some a gross depiction of touristic Hawaiian, an odd blend of vampires and pop-voodoo. The one I had haphazardly chosen happened to be a depiction centered around Dia De Los Muertos. While hopeless, I didn't realize the depth of irony til much later. As masked cartoon women in sugar skull makeup danced across the display, a thin man slipped into the seat beside me and leaned in close. “Can I bum one?” Reluctant as ever to engage in any further trouble and as my pack sat full and open on the ledge of the machine, I relented and slipped the man a couple of cigarettes before looking at his face.

My stomach dropped when I raised my eyes. His skin was pale and sickly, dark bags hanging beneath sunken eyes. Blonde hair gone grey and bristly with ill health, buzzed closely to his head. He puffed the stoge alight and took a deep pull, beady gaze flitting around the smoke-infested cubicle before settling again on me with a flash of pleading. “Do you know how to wake up?” The question made me stumble, and my blood felt cold. I knew he was merely asking for drugs but something about the encounter struck me with a more existential disquiet. I assured him I was only passing through and sadly, no, I did not know how to wake up. Afterward, I nearly pinched myself to assure that I was truly awake. The exchange left me with my sense of impending doom multiplied, as the stranger slinked away to find some other miserable-looking wretch who may have his fix. The coarse men cajoled about his intentions and I laughed along, but I'm sure my smile did not reach my eyes.

When I'd boarded the plane on another layover to Denver, I'd determined to get in some reading and pull myself together. Though my hopes had been dashed for any genuine pursuit when a misdiagnosis and catastrophic error in medication had disrupted my higher education two years prior, I was still enamored with academics, and genetics in particular. A dog-eared copy of Genome by Matt Ridley seemed a colorful and engaging travel companion, awaiting liftoff in my lap. My heart fluttered when I saw a tall woman coming down the aisle, catching my eye the moment she had neared. I prayed silently that she would not sit next to me, as she was devastatingly gorgeous and I felt in no state to present myself well. Dark brown hair hung straight around her shoulders, skin fair with freckled cheekbones, bright eyes beneath stark brows. I smiled shyly, masking my internal panic as she settled into the aisle seat beside me. Classy silver bracelets jingled on her wrists, accentuating graceful hands.

We sat quietly as the pilot and attendants went through their rehearsed rigmarole til at last, the mild turbulence of ascent had been weathered. Marveling at the sight of the Nevada mountains, red ribbons lain on their side, I fought to ignore the beautiful woman beside me as she gazed through the window with a smile of similar awe on thin lips. She and the illumined landscape had distracted me from my intention, and my book lay undisturbed. “Business or pleasure?” My nerves leapt at her voice. I looked down and back to her face, startled from anxious rumination. “Oh,” I smiled, feeling my ears grow hot, “Both, I suppose. But pleasure, really. I'd studied some in college, but now I just enjoy it. I find it really fascinating, to learn what is predetermined for us, to think about all of our probabilities.”

The woman's eyes glittered with mirth. “Probabilities are my wheelhouse. I study number theory. What do you do now, did you finish college?” The loaded question weighed on my chest. “No, actually. Just before finishing my first two years, I was diagnosed with a mental illness and put on a very heavy medication. It totally wiped me out, I couldn't focus anymore or retain any information. To put it plainly, it ruined my life.” Her eyes softened kindly. “By the way, my name is Anna.” I couldn't help but laugh. “That's a beautiful coincidence. My name is Anne.” What inspired me to be so open with this utter stranger was beyond my ken, but a stirring call remained nevertheless. Relaying that I was indeed doing nothing at all with my life, or with my abundant curiosity and academic zeal, was painful yet strangely necessary.

All the while defying a clamoring reticence within me, I found myself pouring out to this woman the disaster my life had become. Dis-aster indeed, separation from the star of my soul. What awaited me, my parents' devastating addiction, a black hole of depression. That which I was presently leaving behind, an all-too-brief refuge of safety and comfort. “It's as though I've had a reprieve in heaven, and now I am headed back to hell with no choice in the matter. I feel like such a coward.” A hopeless ache constricted my chest, choking on the words as they spilled. Anna considered me quietly for a moment. “To be very honest with you, Anne, I do not see a coward here in any way. Everything you had in college, none of that has left you. All of your probabilities are still in your hands, and what I see in this situation is that you actually have tremendous courage. I cannot imagine being in your shoes, but whether it feels like it or not, you've got this.” She tapped the book in my lap. I could not hold back the tears of gratitude overwhelming my defenses.

Lighter discussion followed as Anna told me of her work and her aims in mathematics, and I regaled her with the story of my discovery that a polynomial can be solved backward in a dihybrid cross diagram. She laughed and said she would investigate this and credit me if ever something substantial came through. I'd not felt the hope kindling in my chest through these months of turbulence and desolation, but some indignant flame must have persisted through the darkness; That blaze expanded as I watched her walk away when we had reached our next landing. Dread, however, did depart with her. A phone call from my addled father cemented the pit in my stomach, but some bright determination had arisen from the blessing exchange with this everyday saint.

Though my expectation was dark indeed for my arrival that evening in the south, I was met with worse. Richter awaited me immediately outside the doors with a show of excitement. If he was glad to see me in truth, it was not for a reason any moral person would think or hope. Were I to look in a mirror, I would see a disheveled but determined woman. Were I to see through his eyes, as I would later realize – dollar signs. Still to this day, I do not believe my father was even dimly aware of this man's intentions. His mind may have been wrought with disarray, but his heart has ever been warm, and his perceptions always to recognize benevolence in others even of false contrivance. Along with such foolish trust in the inherent goodness of mankind, he was prone to the assumption that someone posing as a friend, despite red flags ablaze all around. When there is smoke, there is fire, yet my father could imagine a trainwreck to be a hearth of welcome.

For three days, Richter strung me along with empty assurances that we would soon be on our way to take me home. While the cursed apartment with it's ill-contained chaos was hardly the most appealing destination, the pit of dread in my stomach told me that it – or anywhere else – was better than the precarious situation in which I found myself then. The faces of his 'friends' I had the ill fate of meeting then, blur in my memory. I kept up the facade of innocent ignorance well, but the terror I held at bay admitted their predatory prospecting. Determination for escape when the right moment arose was fostered in the back of my mind, awaiting the opportunity for Richter to lose his guard for a brief flash after he had silently decided it was better to be rid of me entirely than to cash in. His weapons laid out, he had trusted vainly that I would be too terrified to act, assured by his psychopathic ego that I was bound in his control. While he had intended then to rinse his hands clean of me, I had convicted myself that my life would not so easily washed down the drain, that it would be better were I to take it on my own.

Whether born of courage or simply necessity and good luck, perhaps I'll know when my light flickers out with finality, but my survival has been hard-won. Those dollar signs never made their way to Richter's bank account despite his effort, having intruded my peace and my body. I strive to one day forget the way his eyes flashed from fire to ice, his hand round my wrist and voice bellowing, “What did you do?” As though he had flipped a switch, alligator tears then covering his cheeks as he rallied false emotion to escape the bind I'd left him in and mess that was made. The scar remains, stark and silken white, wide upon my wrist. Time revealed Anna to be right in her insistence that I could and would survive the trial that faced me. I'd rather call myself lucky than deserving, but in honor of the woman who planted a seed of hope within me, black ink scrawls in Gaelic above the vestige cicatrice – Warrior.