Theo had messed up. Once again.

It felt like he was always messing up lately. But it couldn’t be his fault. It could have been his dealer's fault, for not telling him what not to mix, or maybe it was the newspaper's fault for showing off pictures from a bombing in some far-off country right on the front page, forcing Theo's hand to the pills in the first place.

But regardless, it’s really not his fault that he was currently lying on the floor of his bedroom, having mixed the wrong pill combination from his little tobacco tin. He felt so sick, his stomach turning, his head throbbing. He kept drifting in and out of consciousness, haunted by vivid revelations of familiarity.

A flash of red hair in the corner of his eye, a sickeningly sweet scent of lilies nauseating enough for him to curl up into himself and try to smell anything else at all, his ears ringing shrilly like the screech of a sliding door.

He heard the vague click of his front door opening, felt footsteps draw closer to him in the thuds on the floorboards, but he couldn't possibly think of who it could be. A robber, he hoped, come to put him out of his misery and steal all his cash.

But there was no way he was that lucky.