Vegas Baby

She walks down the sidewalk, swaying slightly almost as if in a daze. Her eyes are glazed over and she seems barely there. People step aside as they continue on their way, barely even paying attention to her. Her breathing is labored, and erratic. Her makeup is smeared on her face, the results of many tears streaking down her pretty cheek.

"What a difference, a day makes," she sings softly, as she brushes against a car, as she walks. "Twenty four little hours."

She feels eyes on her, but she ignores them. They don't matter. Nothing else matters to her now. Those times were gone. Her sympathy for others, her caring of what people thought were gone, having been replaced with a numbness that went from the surface of her needle marked skin, to the depths of her soul.

She stops at a building and leans against the wall. Her hands, instinctively go to her belly without even thinking. They hovered there for a moment, before she withdrew them, and put them in her jacket pockets. How long would it be, she wonders, before she stops rubbing her stomach? Before she puts the past day's events out of her head? Before she can forget?

What would happen if she could not move forward? Is moving forward an option, or would she be doomed to a life of self-flagellation for her many sins, and most importantly her most recent egregious one?

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, the tagline says.

"If only that were true." she whispers, to no one in particular.

No matter what the tourism department wanted her to think, she would never be able to rid herself of the memories of what happened. A hundred and fifty years would not erase 24 hours.

She would grow up, and have more children, she was sure. Maybe even five, but she would always wonder what could have been. What would have been. She would blame herself, whether or not that was warranted. If she hadn't drank, would things have ended differently? If she hadn't been a sorry loser fucking junkie, would that have changed things? Would she get another chance, or had she lost her chance to be a mother?

She drops to her knees and looks up, seeing a giant neon cross, and the words SALVATION.

"God help me!" she croaks, tears streaming down her face, as she is on her knees, arms outstretched.

She closes her eyes and falls back on the cold sidewalk, arms still stretched out. After a few moments she opens them, and sees nothing. She sits up, and looks at the building in front of her, and sees just a casino. She looks around and wonders if her mind is finally going away.

She has so many questions to be answered, and they eat at her very being.

She draws her arms in, and folds them across her stomach, wishing that someday she would be able to feel a life growing inside her again. And praying to God that this next one would live long enough for her to look into it's eyes, and whisper it's name.

She had the name picked out and everything. Deborah Vegas. To remind her always, of the day she went into Vegas a 'sorry loser fucking junkie' and came out a winner. The house of life loses, and she wins. For once in her life. Deborah was gonna change things. She now had a reason to live. A reason to rise up out of the drugs and sex and alcohol that had ruined her life since she was little. Everything was gonna work out, she told her self.

Now she never wanted to remember Vegas again. Nine months of happiness and anticipation all went to hell during three hours on the operating table. They hadn't said that drugs or alcohol played a part in her baby having been still born, but she would never be able to separate that thought from her mind. Every waking hour, of every day that she lived she would know in her heart that she had killed her child. What kind of forgiveness was there for that? What kind of absolution could she possibly receive for such a heinous crime?

Women all over the world are suffering because they can't have children, and now she gets one and what happens? She kills it through excess and self medication. Always being selfish, even to a fault. All her life she had followed a certain path of self-destruction, and now it had reached it's destructive grip out to that which was most precious.

Now she couldn't help but think she would never get out of her rut. What did she have to motivate herself? A family that had disowned her? A boyfriend who took off as soon as he found out she was pregnant -- but only after he realized he couldn't get any 'pregnant ass' from her? Neighbors who had looked at her with disdain at the fact that she was a single mother to be. She could only imagine the whispers from them once they find out that her baby had not lived.

As she sits on the sidewalk, back to the wall she realizes that she would get over this, as hard as that is to imagine. She has to. It is either get over it, or die. And as appealing as death looks right now, she's sober enough to realize that it wasn't the answer.

She closes her eyes and says a little prayer to the God she has forsaken all these years before. The God whose name she had mentioned a mere five minutes before for the first time in six years. Wondering if God would forgive her for all that she had done, and for putting her child in harms way, and ultimately leading to Deborah's death. She is tired of living everything according to how she wanted. Maybe it is time to let someone else help.

"It's up to you now God. You better be for real, cause I got nothing left to try."

She sighs and opens her eyes. She gets up and brushes off some dirt that is on the back of her jeans. She puts her hands in her jacket pocket and makes her way back to her motel. Back to her life. Back to a new life, unsure of what waits for her.