C YA N
The darkness was total.
I had pulled the heavy velvet drapes across the window weeks ago, overlapping the thick fabric until not a single sliver of the afternoon sun could pierce the bedroom.
It made the day and the night exactly the same thing, which was the entire point.
Time had stopped having any real meaning around the third day, or maybe the fourth. I couldn't be sure anymore.
The numbers in my head just spun in circles, unmoored from the ticking of the clock downstairs.
I wasn't in the bed. The mattress felt too deliberate, too much like a choice I had to consciously make.
Instead, I was on the hardwood floor, tucked into the narrow gap between the bed frame and the wall. The floor just happened. At some point my legs had simply refused to carry my weight, and I sat down, and I hadn't found a single reason to get back up.
My clothes had accumulated around my ankles and hips like sediment, heavy and discarded, smelling faintly of perfume and stale air.
