Warning! Triggering content, drug abuse.
This was inspired by Peasants by Houses.
I do not own any characters.
Thanks for reading. Love always.
She didn't want to admit it. She would never admit it, but she had fallen to her knees. Tumbled through her rock hard facade. Down on the floor. Unfamiliar tears that burnt both her cheeks and eyes had fallen like she had. The air was so thick. Too thick. It had been so hard to breathe. She had gripped the dresser in a futile and childish attempt to gain support, but she still fell. Down. On her hard and cold knees. She fell because the support she needed had just left through the door.
When the numbness finally came to her after hours of uncontrolled pain and grief, she pack a few things she needed and left through that door. It stung, but she couldn't think about that then. She had her mother to bury.
Even if she tried, she couldn't act for the first time in her life. She couldn't act like it didn't bother her. There was no energy left and it actually felt like like somebody dragged a knife up and down her throat. Even if she didn't want to, there was no stop, she had no say in it. The tears still came, but it didn't help like all the stories promised. It didn't feel better. Her body felt heavy, but at the same time hollow. Like she was a useless lead bullet that was hollow and missing its gunpowder.
Her heart was beating hard and strong in her ears, but it didn't feel like it belonged to her. Like it wanted to remind her that she was still alive and breathing. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Her heart should be broken. Shattered into pieces. Torn to shreds. A whole heart that could still beats wasn't hers. How could she still be intact when her other half lay in that white coffin, covered with distasteful and badly smelling roses? Her mother had deserved all the love in the world, not the kind of love that comes in flowers. A red rose wasn't going to make a difference. A red rose couldn't say all the things in the world she had yet to tell her mother. A red rose couldn't bring her back. It was just a useless waste of plants that would rotten in a faster pace than humans did. A symbol of how fast life really goes and it was such a clear message that stung so badly in her eyes.
There was no words left in her, when she slowly and forcefully walked up to the coffin to say her last goodbye. The last. The final time, but it was so fucking silly. Her mother was already gone. Her real last goodbye had been months ago. And the most recent had been over the phone a couple of days ago, but that didn't count. It was just electrical waves flying trough the air transmitting sound. It wasn't something one could touch.
There was a photograph of her mother. She knew exactly which one it was, even if she only saw it from the corner of her eye. Her aunt had taken it on both of them, but this was a version with her cut out. Just like it was now. Her mother wasn't a part of her life anymore. Alex couldn't be with her anymore and it was fitting, if not only ironic that the only photograph of her mother had her in it, so therefor, they had to cut Alex out of the photo. Just like life had decided to cut her mother out of it.
She stayed after everybody else left. She just stood there. In front of the lowered coffin. She stayed until someone ushered her away. And when they slowly started to put the dirt over the coffin, she started to walk. She walked until the streets started to look familiar, and then she stood there, in front of the house. Walking up to it, she felt around in her pocket and found the key.
When she entered the all too familiar place, she was first struck by the smell. The smell of home. The smell of her mother. All of the good memories of the place. It came so sudden and just by the smell that still lingered in the rooms. It took her on a trip down memory lane that felt too painful to be walking at the moment, but like everything else, she didn't have control over it. She had to stop and close her eyes for a moment. Breathing hard in yet another childish attempt to try and control her feelings and memories. She hadn't learned yet that no one could control grief.
She took off her shoes, her feet were sore from the walking, but it was yet another petty thing to add to the list of all the dull throbbing pain she carried. Her soul was so sore. Like a vicious sun burn, but she felt more burnt by the moon. Those tender beams that didn't seem to be able to hurt anyone. Silver beams that looked tender and kind.
She tiptoed through the small hallway. Her body taking control because her mind was somewhere else. Not ready to accept this kind of pain yet. The defense mechanism she had spent her life perfecting, but at a time like this it didn't really matter. This wasn't something that would go away. Nothing could make it better.
She tiptoed because if she didn't, it would make it real. If she stayed silent she could pretend her mother was asleep or away on one of her jobs. She tiptoed in to the kitchen. A place of many Saturday mornings, with a cup of coffee and the best company in the world. And then she came to her. The one that had left her and wasn't there to hold her hand or caress her hair so tenderly. Just the thought of yet another thing to mourn shot a dull pain through her that settled in her stomach, and she closed her eyes and tried her hardest to pretend she didn't just see what she did. An old photograph of them both on the refrigerator. A beach in, Jakarta. Sun kissed skins and each other in their arms. Smiles plastered so firmly and lovingly on their faces. The sickeningly sweet smile one gets when so deeply in love. So deeply in love that her head was so far down in the asphalt. Stuck in the black sulfur, with the tiny rocks slowly grinding it's way into her skin. So deeply. When she looked at the photograph she couldn't breathe. She took it from the fridge and just stared at it. Slowly sinking to the floor once again over the blonde woman. Her eyes becoming puddles of tears, which stained her glasses as they fell, but she couldn't be bothered to take them off or wipe the tears away. It was actually quite fascinating that she could still produce more tears. After a while, she couldn't see the picture anymore, so she let it slip through her fingers. Letting it slowly tumble to the floor.
She wanted to be numb again, but couldn't find a single thing. There wasn't any alcohol in her mothers house anymore. She stuck her hand into her black blazer and found a small plastic bag. It was the product she so often imported to other countries. She had taken a blazer that she would use in meetings with clients and they often wanted to try the product. At first she couldn't believe how stupid she had been to actually forget about it. But then she thought that this would actually make some of the pain go away. She didn't really like hard drugs and seeing how people who used it became, she kept her distance to the substance she imported. But at a time like this, did it really matter what it did to her as long as it would take away all that she was feeling? She sighed and went to her old room, that her mother had saved as Alex had left it. It had always been her safe haven. She guessed that it still was.
Alex sat down in her old battered desk chair. The wooden furniture in front of her was covered with old fading doodles from her teenage years. Some stray quotes covered the top as well. It felt like an old museum piece that was supposed to represent a certain era of her life.
With shaky hands she lined the white powder up in rows on the old wood. She knew that this wasn't as effective as injecting it, but she didn't have a needle and didn't really want to stick something into her body. The dollar bill was already rolled up and ready to assist her. She exhaled slowly and then lowered her head to the tiny lines. She covered one of her nostrils with a finger and placed the dollar roll in the free one and inhaled with her nose, feeling how the microscopic particles traveled up her nose and tickled. She raised her head again and tried to avoid sneezing. She repeated the pattern on the other line, trying harder than before to keep the substance in her nose so her body could absorb it and trigger it's powdery magic. She didn't expect it to burn as much as it really did. Besides the tickling feeling it felt like her nose was on fire. Even if she had seen hardcore sniffers noses she didn't expect it to make her eyes teary with the pain from it.
As the pain in her nose faded, the drug slowly started to seep into her blood system and work it's way into her brain, making her more calm and all of her feelings started to feel like white noise in the background.
Suddenly she felt really content and warm. There was no troubles at all left in her body. She felt like she was floating in the air and her body was heavy, but not in a bad way. She just felt cozily tired, like she used to feel when she and Piper watched a movie under a blanket together and she had had a couple of wine glasses. Just to get that soft edge on things. This was, however, better than the wine and she felt really safe and warm. It just didn't bother her that her mother had just passed away. She knew that she had, but it didn't make her sad anymore.
After a while, she slowly went out to the tiny balcony her mother had and she took her cigarettes with her. She had bought a packet on the airport and had smoked a few when she waited on the cab.
She sat down on the old dirty white plastic chair and just sat there for what seemed like a few minutes before she lit up her first cigarette. She watches as the smoke danced it's way up into the sky. How it climbed up in the atmosphere and faded into its surroundings and became one with the air. She felt like she also wanted to be one with the air. How good it would feel to fade into nothing. She just loved the air and the darkening sky.
She sat like that for a couple of hours, smoking on a steady but slow loop. Just feeling absolutely content. It happened that she faded into short, but lucid dreams. They were all very sweet and pleasant. Some were with Piper on a sunny beach, or in the water just having fun, kissing and just being with each other. Other were with her mother, playing cards or just watching surrealistic movies with her.
The last thing she could remember was the darkness. She expected yet another bright and clear dream, but instead she just succumbed to complete darkness.
She slowly woke up, feeling like a tone of bricks had hit her. Her body ached and she realized she had been sleeping in the horrible plastic chair. The sun had just about climbed above the horizon and the air had that morning coldness to it. She would've said that it was refreshing if she hadn't just lost her mother and Piper. At that moment she wanted to say that the morning air carried bitterness with it. Like how one was when bitter. It actually felt like that to breathe in. She didn't care to adjust her body much, she couldn't muster up the strength to feel like she had to move. Slowly she started to remember what she had done the other night.
She knew she would want to feel like that again. It was a fever starting to break out. It was something she knew she would really miss, having slight control over the grief and pain she felt and still had ahead of her. She had to have control over something. She couldn't accept to feel this pain all the time. And this was her way of controlling and coping with her current life situation.
Maybe it would never be okay, but it didn't really matter.
Later she would find that she had found a new girlfriend. She was dangerous and alluring, but always there to comfort her. It was all that she had. She was sick and she knew it, that's why she called her new girlfriend fever.