The air in the room was thick, like cold yogurt, and smelled faintly of dust and metallic anxiety. She sat on the edge of her bed, her knees drawn up to her chest, starring at a point in space that didn't technically exist.
Milk. Inside a bag. Inside a bag. That was the safety she used to know. Milk. Outside a bag. Outside a bag. That was her now. Free, but spilling. File: Milk.outside.a.bag.of.milk.outside.a.bag....
"Another day," she mumbled to the room, though she was talking to me—the buzzing, fragmented voice in her head that she called her only friend. The air in the room was thick, like
She reached out and snatched her "medicine"—a handful of small, colorful candies she’d repurposed—and threw them into the air. They scattered like shooting stars over the carpet. She wouldn't take them today. She would create her own medicine, made of memory and quiet, even if it meant feeling the sharp, cold, stinging sensation of "being" more intensely. Inside a bag
Get up. Take the pills. Do the routine, her mind commanded, a jumble of jagged pixelated thoughts.