Chapter 1: Lava Lamp

Staring at the red capillary webbing of her eyelids she rolled onto her back, emitting a sound probably best likened to that of a manatee. She thought about trying to open her ocular curtains but they felt like lava lamps, if she cracked the glass thick globules of white and green would spill down her face.

Even in the silence her senses felt overwhelmed; the tooth of the sheetless mattress, the vaguely offensive taste of morning breath. Even the dense air trapped by the four walls encapsulating the small space (that served merely as somewhere to exist) weighed more than it should. The only thing that didn't seem offensive was the scent of the room, it was so familiar it barely existed to her at all, until she had ventured outside, on return it greeted her with a familiar comfort.

Her existence in this space spanned into distant memory and despite its apathy she didn't care to contemplate an existence outside of it.