Tremble

prompt : trembling hands

In the darkness her hands trembled as she clutched the prize close to her chest. Stealthily tiptoeing back to her room, she was careful to avoid the creak in the middle of the hall.
Only after quietly shutting her door and listening for the deep baritone of her father's snores did she allow herself to exhale.

Her hands were shaking so badly that she could scarcely get the safety cap twisted open.  She twisted and twisted but it wouldn't give.
Finally, it popped open with such force that all the pills cascaded onto the carpet.
She dropped to her knees with the sinking realization that in her haste and fear of being discovered she had picked up the wrong bottle.

With disgust she fingered the cylindrical red and yellow pills. Antibiotics. That would do her no good.  The oxycontin was what she was after. It was the only thing that numbed her mind enough to keep the demons that always haunted her at bay.  They always brought with them the nightmares that made her re-live the accident that claimed her mother's life, broke her father's femur in three places but had left her perfectly, physically intact and whole.

Night after night when she could no longer keep her eyes open she would find herself screaming in the darkness, suspended upside down  in her seat, crying her mother's name.

Everyone kept saying that time would heal, but they didn't live inside her head.  Her only escape, the only thing that made the nights bearable was the dizzying sweet bliss she felt after popping her father's pain meds.
But she had chosen wrong. Tonight she would have to face the demons and nightmares alone.