Need For Speed by D.I. Jolly
She lay on the floor in the middle of her bedroom, Pink Floyd drifting through the air, watching the kaleidoscope of colours and shapes dancing out from her ceiling fan. Caught in the Catch 22 of overthinking her desire to not think, and watching everything she thought manifest in bright pink and purple fractals in front of her. The walls sighed and the fan spun back and forth creating little mini cartoon tornados that drifted off and gently disturbed her paperwork, but she didn’t fucking care. Let them blow away, let the world burn down, let her stupid fucking husband fuck his secretary, let her parents keep their children, it didn’t fucking matter. As long as she could live in that moment forever, then everything was going to be just fine.
Without looking she reached out a hand and dipped a finger into the bright blue liquid she’d bought earlier that day, and rubbed it on her gums, which made the colours brighter, the music more intense with just a hint of ecstasy flittering through her body. Then as it started to peek over the line of her sanity and ability to remain calm she put a small spoon of white powder under her nose and sniffed sharply. It tasted awful but brought her down enough to get back to her personal rock ‘n roll light show.
She slipped a hand into her panties and started sending rainbow shockwaves through her body in time to the music. Her ceiling opened like and eye and she saw God look down at her and smile. Her back arched, she moaned, God reached down and gently booped her nose and her body exploded in laughter, light and colour. The album ended, the next one started and she downed the cocktail of vodka, cranberry juice, Vicodin and sleeping pills that her dealer said was the safest way to come down.
A day later she woke up starving and smelling of old sex and urine. What was left of the blue liquid had crystalised and her cat lay dead next to the plate. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she remembered that she didn’t have a husband, kids or parents. The music that had been bliss when she fell asleep now felt like millions of needles stabbing her with every note. Slamming it until the music stopped made more sense than figuring out where the off button was.
The girl in the mirror looked as if she was 10 years older than she was supposed to be and didn’t just regret her own life choices, but also the life choices of everyone for 4 apartments in all directions. Crying in the shower helped lift some of the pressure off her head and the smell, but didn’t solve the hunger. Thank God for leftover pizza, bought for just this occasion.
An alarm told her she had 16 hours before she had to get to work, so she cried again as she fell back to sleep on the couch. She couldn’t shower her bedroom after all.
A few more spoonfuls of white powder to get her looking fresh for work, and a few more an hour later to smile while her boss fucked her out of a raise, then literally fucked her because he was a pig, but had a big dick and really liked being called a bad boy and spanked by a woman in glasses.
On her way out the door, he signed the papers to give her the raise and she stopped off at her dealer to pick up another run on the magical merry-go-round, her cat had just died after all.
Wash rinse repeat ad nauseam until she worked up the courage to blow her brains out, but decided she’d shoot her bosses dick off first. Until the next morning when she remembered that she didn’t have a gun, and didn’t want to die or go to jail.
But she did decide to file sexual harassment now that she’d actually gotten the raise he’d been promising her.
Three days later a note went through the office saying that his wife left him and he hung himself. A few minutes after that she told someone that she’d heard it was actually autoerotic asphyxiation. It wasn’t but she liked spreading rumours.
At his funeral his wife screamed at her that it was all her fault and that was all the excuse she needed to get another few turns on the merry-go-round. Her dealer looked at her in a way that made her question herself. But a day later when she woke up to the sound of someone banging on her front door and the smell of her dead cat still lying on the floor of her bedroom, she had forgotten that she’d ever gone to the funeral.
Her landlord wanted to scold her for playing music all night long for the third day in a row. But stopped when she opened the door totally naked. His eyes filled with tits, tattoos and scars. He stuttered and she said he could touch them for 50 bucks. He left 20 minutes and 200 dollars later.
It had been a long time since she’d had a shower that didn’t end in tears.
Her dealer moved without leaving a forwarding address, and her job started getting harder now that her new boss was a woman who actually made her work, and threatened to fire her if she didn’t start showing up on time.
By the third day she had the nervous breakdown she’d been promising herself since high school, and when the doctors checked her blood, she was immediately put into rehab.
She missed the colours, and would talk about how grey the real world was. She missed the smell of rain before a storm like the ones she remembered from her childhood, but didn’t miss the hangovers, the crying and the total indifference to sex.
They let her out when she admitted, weeping, that she wanted to want things, she wanted to have true feelings, lasting connections, and wished she could remember what had happened to her cat.
At 26 she looked like she could have been anywhere from 17 to 47 depending on the angle and the type of makeup. At 28 she was promising to love honour and cherish her husband, and just after giving birth to their child, she wondered out loud if she’d ever see the colours again. A few minutes later she bled out.