seaycee (A Collection of Short Stories)

Euphoria.

edited :)

*Big Trigger Warnings: overdose/drugs/death*.

We're all just searching for something to make it all seem meaningful

She rubs her nose with a knuckle, sniffing quietly in the bathroom stall she occupied.

It was a dark and dingy cubicle, the only stall of two that wasn't closed up with caution tape in the club she found herself in, the slippery memories of how she'd ended up there eluding her.

"Shit," she whispers, hands freezing momentarily as a thought occurs to her, " I got 'nesia."

Giggling to herself with a quietly hysterical edge, she lays a dollar bill to the side on the toilet paper dispenser surface and covers the pills with a plastic baggy.

The bathrooms hygiene level wasn't anything to write home about, grubby handprints noticeably placed a shoulder width apart on the door and paper wrappings tossed carelessly about on the speckled vinyl.

Not that she cares. Or really even notices.

She brandishes the edge of a credit card to the surface of the baggy, crushing the pills until they were reduced to powder. Despite a foggy mental state, her actions are meticulous, practised as she removes the plastic, taking care not to disturb the fine particles.

The dispenser, like the rest of the stall, looks like a strange ode to prison toilets; only with years of visible grime covering everything. The cold impersonal steel lends a chilled quality to the powder that stings her sinuses when she bends, the now rolled bill lifted, inhaling swiftly.

Her favourite part of the bathrooms 5 star decor though, has to be the single poster promoting a drug/smoke-free area. The irony feeds her giggles even as she lifts her gaze upwards, noting with disattached interest the disgusting state of the ceiling, the surface housing discolouration and other unknown substances.

She blinks aggressively in an attempt to clear her blurred vision when the harsh sound of aggressive banging breaks her reverie, the loud knocking accompanied by a few choice curse words.

"I'm almost done," she calls.

She backs away from the dispenser, eyes still closed with her struggle to gain control of the dilated rogue organs. Her retreat is stopped when her back touches the opposite wall and she twists to place her forehead against it, the contact cooling her feverish skin.

It creeps up on her like it always does. The feeling that she's alive, like a live wire running through her has been set afire, electrocuting her nerves momentarily. Then there's the moment of suspension, where everything stops. Your heart, your lungs and then finally, your brain. Your body hovering over that chasm of sweet, sweet nothingness.

Then just as suddenly as it started, your biological instincts kick in and you give your body air again, and with it everything you feel, and wish and want to forget floods back in.

The first time it had happened, she'd been convinced she was dying, an experience that had almost scared her away permanently. But the call of what came without fail after called her back, the feeling a pathway to the moments she now lived day to day for.

With both palms to the surface of the wall, she pushes away to flush the packet before slamming the stall door open. Trudging forwards on rubbery feet and with outstretched arms, her muscle memory takes over with the motions of soaping, washing, drying.