Is 'Down The Drain' Based On A True Story?

Five years ago, my family died in a car crash. My parents. My adopted sister, Liz. Everyone but me. They left behind grief, an empty house, and a debt so large it swallowed my life. When the collectors came, I turned to the only person I had left—my husband, Adrian. He told me he had cut ties with his own family to marry me and had nothing left. I believed him. For five years, I worked every job I could find, paid every dollar I earned, and told myself love was worth the suffering. When the balance dropped to its final $18,000, I signed up for a paid drug trial at a private clinic. They handed me a waiver, warned me about possible delayed reactions, and promised fast money if I swallowed the experimental dose. I thought it would buy us a new beginning. Instead, I came home early and heard Adrian on the phone. “Let Liz use the card. Evelyn still doesn’t know. She took away Liz’s money five years ago, so she has to earn every dollar back herself.” Then he laughed softly. “One more year, and her punishment is over.” That was how I learned the dead were alive. The debt was fake. My husband had never been poor. And the life I had fought so hard to survive was only a sentence they had given me.

In my past life, I was performing emergency pipeline repairs 300 meters beneath the ocean when my oxygen line ruptured. I swam back for help, only to have my wife, Summer Yates, and her first love, Zachary Gibson, lock me out of the diving bell. Not only did they ignore whether I lived or died, but they also started live-streaming an extreme no-oxygen endurance challenge to the entire internet. In the end, I suffocated and drowned. Even after my death, Summer and Zachary smeared my name, calling me a deranged saboteur, while they ran off together with my massive life insurance payout. When I opened my eyes again, I had been reborn to the exact moment I was banging on the hatch. Right on cue, Summer's sweet, teasing chuckle came through the comm. "All units, don't open the hatch. Carter wants to attempt an extreme challenge today. He's going to swim back to the surface without oxygen!" Immediately after, Zachary's voice followed, trembling with excitement. "Babe, the sponsors said if Carter succeeds this time, I'll be the lead director on next month's million-dollar documentary series!" In my past life, I had begged them through mouthfuls of blood, only to be met with Summer's impatient urging. "Stop wasting your energy. You should save your oxygen and start swimming up. You're such a strong swimmer. Just hold on for another half hour, and you'll make Zachary's dream come true!" Now, as I listened to this pair of scumbags plot against me, I sneered and cut the communication. I raised the highest-powered underwater cutting torch in my hand and aimed it directly at the main load-bearing cable connecting the diving bell to the surface vessel above. They wanted me dead, so none of them would be leaving alive either.

The floodwaters were about to swallow our home, yet my wife—the captain of the rescue team—took every last member with her to save the man she had always loved. That was when I realized she had been reborn too. In our previous life, the moment she heard I was in danger, she had rushed to save me without hesitation. Because of that, she missed his call. He fell into a depressive episode and took his own life. But before he died, he posted online, accusing me of bullying him throughout our school years—and of stealing the woman he loved. After his death, the internet turned on me. I became the target of relentless harassment. My wife said she didn't blame me. She treated me as she always had. Yet, on what would have been his birthday, she broke both my limbs—and my mother's as well. Then, in front of his grave, she shoved the two of us into a folded bathtub. "If I'd known you bullied Nathan all those years, I would never have married you! You could swim, yet you deliberately called me to save you. It's all your fault—Nathan wouldn't have killed himself otherwise!" I listened to my mother's agonized cries as despair swallowed me whole. And then I died. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day of the flood. This time, she could save her beloved. I won't stand in her way.

A string of sexual assault cases sweeps through Fenborough, and all the evidence points toward me. In just a single night, I've become the prime suspect and target of everyone's anger. The moment I get home, my wife, Natalie Parker, glares at me with hatred and disgust. "A monster like you doesn't deserve to be called a human!" As she rages at me, she dumps a bottle of sulfuric acid on my crotch. The agonizing pain makes me collapse onto the floor, unable to move. The next day, she brings another man to the house—Harvey Green. He looks down at me and says, "So you're nothing but a scumbag. No wonder she detests you so much." Natalie also eyes me coldly, her words cutting as she says, "Why would I keep a tainted piece of trash like you around? Just the sight of you disgusts me." I refuse to believe that I would ever commit such a crime, so I secretly arrange for a DNA test—but the results prove that my DNA is a match with the culprit's. My blood runs cold. A wave of despair washes over me. Once Natalie sees the results, she brings the victims to the house. They charge at me, smashing glass bottles against my head and breaking my legs with bats. When my parents rush over and see this, they faint on the spot. I end up dying on the operating table. Suddenly, my eyes open again. I've been reborn. I've returned to the day the crimes took place.

She craved to be chosen openly, shamelessly with no hesitation. When he entered her life, he gave her exactly that, intense affection, gentle touches, long conversations, and a kind of desire she had never known. For a sheltered girl who has always felt invisible, his warm affection always felt like a light at the end of a tunnel. But behind the desire lay something heavier. His temper, his violent stories, the weight of his complicated past, and the quiet way he consumed her emotionally began to drain her. Torn between the only man who made herpersonal story about the dangers of being intensely desired and the courage it takes to choose oneself over the person who makes you feel everything feel truly seen and the growing uncertainty of what staying might cost her, she found herself trapped in a love that was both yearned for but slowly emptied her. Raw, honest and unflinchingly intimate. He Drains Me is an in-depth personal story about the dangers of being intensely desired and the courage it takes to choose oneself over the person who makes you feel everything.

I was the broke scholarship kid, stuck sharing a room with Sherry, the spoiled heiress. From day one, she was all fake smiles and "let's be besties." She'd take me out for fancy meals. She even introduced me to Kenneth—her rich childhood buddy. It was fine—until Kenneth and I started dating. That's when the claws came out. One day, she "accidentally" dumped hot soup all over herself and claimed I'd done it on purpose. Then she demanded I pay her back. I gave her every cent I had, but it wasn't enough. Next, she accused me of stealing her wallet. The school bought it. I got written up, everyone turned on me, and Kenneth? He dumped me with, "You're just an ugly duckling trying to be a swan." I couldn't fight back. Humiliated, alone, and dragged through online hate, I dropped out. Then I let the river take me. And then—I woke up. Back to the moment Sherry introduced me to Kenneth.