#euthanasia game

 As she is hard at work on in her sketchbook, charcoal moving about the page in fast, hard motions. Her cigarette is completely forgotten about between her lips, burning down to a thin cylinder of grey ash and the coffee at her workspace stopped steaming long ago and has no doubt grown cold. When the burned cigarette gives in to its weight and falls, she swears and throws down her sketchpad, frantically sweeping the hot ash from herself. With that, she’s lost her focus and sighs, stamping out the remains of her cigarette in the already overflowing ashtray.

The apartment has a no-smoking policy. She knew that before she moved in.

She downs the entire mug of room temperature coffee in one go, and slams it back down on the desk. She doesn’t want to move but she has to. She drags her body to its feet, stretching every which way to crack her neck and back.

She leaves the mug on her desk as she leaves her room, ruffling her already messy hair.

There is only coffee and the meager remains of a stale loaf of bread in her cupboard. She slams the small door shut, hard enough to rattle the rest. She turns and punches the surface of the island counter, swearing again, then coughs.

After a moment, she pokes at the softness of her stomach and groans.

“Can’t hurt, I guess.”

She shuffles to the makeshift living room and collapses on the cracked, leather couch without an ounce of grace and drapes an arm over her aching eyes. She doesn’t know what time it is and, frankly, doesn’t care.

She wants to stay there and fall asleep, but realizes that she finds the smell of herself to be far too disgusting to ignore. Her arm falls limply and she protests loudly to no one.

She elbows the wall trying to undress herself in the tiny bathroom and she, once again, spits out a few foul words, and loses her balance entirely. She catches herself on the sink and the toilet tank, shirt half off, and gives the wall a half-hearted kick when she’s back on her feet.

She doesn’t wait for the shower to warm up and only winces a little at the chill. She relaxes as it warms, leaning her head against the wall. Her eyes burn when she closes them.

She nearly falls asleep there, upright with the water pouring over her, but she jolts out of her faux sleep and goes on to wash herself without much care, not bothering to shave her legs or condition her hair.

She trips out of the shower when she’s had enough and pulls a towel off the rack, leaving her hair unwrapped and letting the water drip down her shoulders, growing cold like her coffee.

The outfit she pulls out is just a tank top and sweatpants. She reuses the towel to then wrap her hair, collapsing on her unmade bed.

Finally, she checks the time. It’s 4.37 AM. She struggles to remember when the last time she slept was, but gives up fairly quickly and pulls herself upright.

                She can see herself in the mirror across the room—her caramel complexion and the strands of dark hair (even darker with wetness) escaping from the towel on her head, her milky left eye, and all the scars on her body. She looks away half-heartedly and, once more, swears.

She simply lets the towel fall to the floor after awhile. It joins the clothes and a nearly identical towel already there, likely to be forgotten. She fans her hair out behind her and stares at the textured ceiling. She lifts an arm and twists her wrist, reaching for nothing in particular, but entranced by her own movements. She dozes a bit, still watching her arm do its meaningless dance, until it becomes cold with blood loss and it falls lamely back to her side.