^Nell^Locke^D5^{FIN}

She awakens in a room full of roaches and mice, with a lone couch. Just like her it bleeds from gashes and holes on its arm, and just like her it is white yet stained with mishaps from the past. She lays upon it, waiting for the termite-ridden walls to stop dancing. Her high has faded, leaving behind a little white ball of a girl. Her long beach blond hair drapes down over her shoulders, almost reaching the end of her shoulder blades. It fizzles towards the end, from years of disregard and abuse, but she lacks the drive or care to cut or wash it; instead it has morphed into a display of her personality. White and pure at the root, but decaying and filthy towards the end.

Nell was a kind girl, her big blue eyes only searched for the good within everyone she encountered, but she was born into a family lacking the good she was searching for. Her father was absent, a shadow that came and went as it wished, and her mother was lost in a world of booze and narcotics, too adrift to care for her children. Her brother, Desmond, was a lone figure of kindness in her strange world. When her mother would stare through her as she tried to get her attention it was Desmond who held her and whispered, "Its gonna be okay, Everything will be okay sweetie." He was her angel, he was her ray of sunshine in a life coated in darkness.

They grew up in a rambled shack on the edge of town. They were isolated from their peers, tossed to the side and made out to be outcasts. Nell was taught to feel like an alien in this world. Only Desmond made her feel like there was a real meaning to her life. It was in his kind words that she felt most comfortable in, and in his arms that she knew she was safe. When Nell looked at her parents, she saw nothing more then faceless aliens, she felt pity for them, for they were the ones lacking love.

As the siblings grew it became clear that the two blonds were not the same. The months, than years, of disregard and hate wore down on the younger blond. Nell craved the attention, she starved for the smallest grain of love or approval. Des never had that desire, he found the grains of acceptance within himself. His smile never faltered while his twin's grin had long faded into a firm grimace. Nell could no longer stand to be near him; she loved him with everything she had, but his dumb grin drove her crazy. When he died, Nell knew that she should have been the one in the big brown box, and it should be her blond hair styled to perfection as she was lowered into the earth.

He did nothing wrong. Nell could imagine everything that occurred on the night of their 14th birthday. He would smile, walk down the dark street with a swagger that betrayed the anxiety in his eyes. The dealer shot him after smoking some of his own product, an act of senseless violence that left him on the concrete sidewalk, life pumping out of a single hole in his torso. Meanwhile his sister waited at home, a lone measly grain cake on the table with a singular candle slowly burning its way into a puddle of dried wax.

She lived in a world of darkness, where her brother was nothing put a distant memory. She found her light in a bright white powder. It light up her world, took her to a place where the lights were suns, and the world was a palette of vibrant colors. It took her to place where the entire planet was beneath her, but it always dropped her back down. She fell at terminal velocity back to her dark world, where she was alone. Now parentless, Nell had long decided it was best for her to be away from the parents who were absent. Nell was by herself, only this snowy powder to help her.

She spent her days in the ratty rooms of the abandoned buildings, and spent her nights stealing to finance for her fixes. After mugging a poor victim, she would walk with her head hung in shame, and with shaky hands she would hand the money to her brothers murderer. She doesn't know, of course, that the boy with the big hoodie ruined both of the lives of the Locke children. And frankly, she doesn't care. Her only care comes in little clear baggies, and is taken up the nasal cavity.

Her body has become a string of pale limbs and bones thinner than cables. Her skin laced with tinges of yellow, and eyes hallowed out. Nell Locke is no longer a complete girl. Nell Locke lost herself on the day of her 14th birthday, to a gunshot to the chest. And now she numbs herself until her world returns to a time when happiness wasn't departed.