i. 999,999
The nightly rise of the moon met with a sudden drop in traffic in Princeton and for that, Thirteen was eternally grateful. Driving home after a long night out, a strange but beautiful woman sat beside her in the car. She shouldn't be driving, not in this condition, but she didn't know how she got here. All she knew was that she needed to get home and prayed that her instincts would guide her there safely. She pressed a button along the side of her car door her that automatically lowered the window, allowing the cold air to breeze in to keep her conscious and aware of the road even though the lights were blurry and the soft humming of her car was soothing her into a heavy, dream-like state.
The next thing she knew, Thirteen was standing frozen in front of her apartment door. The woman beside her was clinging to her and laughing while playfully digging her hands into Thirteen's pockets, locating her keys, and then slipping into the apartment, dragging a drunk and disoriented Thirteen inside behind her and closing the door. Collapsing onto the bed, Thirteen closed her eyes for a moment and groaned when the room started spinning around her. When she opened her eyes again, she saw her sultry redheaded date holding a small pill between her fingers, dangling it above Thirteen as if she were a dog waiting for a fleshy bone. Grasping the delicate wrist and pulling it down, Thirteen licked the woman's fingers and then sucked the pill from them, chasing it with a kiss.
How did I get here? She asked herself, rolling onto the other woman and kissing her again.
ii. 1,000,000
Abruptly awakened from the fog of intoxication, Thirteen found herself on the floor, wearing nothing but the blanket that she'd torn from the bed above her. Looking around the room, her vision blurred and distorted, she tried to figure out what time it was and what the fuck had happened. Instead, she found tonight's date in a similar predicament not that far away from her. Thirteen begins to crawl over to her to touch and kiss and fuck her again, but quickly realizes through her spinning mind, her warped perception, and her ailing stomach that she has no idea what drugs she's taken tonight and can sense that they aren't mixing well.
"Fuck," she whispers, struggling to stand up so she can get to the bathroom to purge everything out of her system before it's too late, but before she gets anywhere, Thirteen trips over the blanket wrapped around her ankles and her knees hit the hardwood floors with an awful thud.
Her fall rouses her date, who flashes her a mischievous smile while struggling to keep her eyes open. "You okay?" She asks, rolling over onto her back and running her hands through her beautiful auburn hair and then fingering the intricate grooves she finds in the natural wood of Thirteen's floor. "You look kind of pale."
"I'm always this pale," Thirteen slurs, quickly forgetting about how sick she feels when her attention is redirected to the unbelievably alluring woman lying stretched out and naked on her floor. Not wanting to fall again, Thirteen crawls on her hands and knees to the redhead, carrying the blanket with her in one hand. When she straddles the woman and covers them with the sheet, the woman giggles at Thirteen before drawing her down on top of her, anxiously awaiting another round of ecstasy with this insatiable stranger.
When she closes her eyes to kiss and fondle the woman, instead of living in the moment of the fantasy, Thirteen sees stars. And when the woman returns her touch, the stars form entire constellations in her unstable mind and she flies through them at light speed, never wanting to return to where she is, never wanting to feel pain ever again, and never wanting to experience the totality of the endless death that awaits her. Here amongst the stars and the infinity of never-ending life, Thirteen is safe, happy, and thriving. The woman's screams feel like sonic booms echoing within her hallucinations of grandeur and propel her further away through the galaxies to a better reality than the one she currently knows.
Shoved aggressively onto her back by the unknown visitor, Thirteen opens her eyes long enough to catch the bright blue eyes framed by smolderingly dark eyeliner and long, beautiful lashes looking down at her. Her long, auburn hair falls over her shoulders and against Thirteen's chest. Thirteen fingers it gently, delighting in its unique color until she feels the woman enter her and her vision blurs again until she's taken to a new world far, far away from her lonely apartment in Princeton, New Jersey. Without even realizing it, Thirteen swan dives into the woman's blue eyes and awakens on the other side in a lifeless ocean. The water around her morphs into a richer shade of blue as she delves deeper and deeper into the abyss, searching for meaning, hope, and a reason to come up for air. The indigo ripples of the changing tide pass over her faster than she can comprehend and she grasps onto the silken red kelp beneath her, begging to feel the sun beam down onto her, for it to somehow seep though the heavy waves of emptiness and onto her porcelain skin so that she may be guided back to the surface and blessed with a new life.
Panting quietly, Thirteen floats back to the shore of her consciousness, finding herself drenched in sweat and exhaustive sex, but not having felt any of it at all. Her eyes flutter open, hoping to see something new, to feel something different, but there's nothing. Absolutely nothing. The room is the same silent, dark, and emotionless place she's called home for quite some time. She doesn't remember how she got home, who this woman is, where they met, or why she is here. Shifting out from under her, Thirteen carelessly tosses the blanket over the girl and makes her way to the bathroom, desperately holding onto her stomach having now been thoroughly reminded of how sick she was going to be from whatever cocktail of drugs and alcohol she'd consumed that night.
Not even two seconds after she closed the bathroom door, Thirteen's entire stomach contents found themselves a new home in Princeton's sewage system. She felt even worse afterwards and forcing herself to vomit more was aggravating her throat, but she wanted it out of her; all of it. As if by doing so, it would erase everything that had happened tonight. After washing her face, Thirteen rummaged through her medicine cabinet to find something that would make her feel better, but the only thing that honestly looked appealing was a certain dangerous combination of more alcohol and sleeping pills. She contemplated living in a world of nothingness for the rest of eternity, believing that she was halfway there to begin with, but as she reached for the pills, she slipped on the tiles and collapsed back down to the floor, the world around her fading into black.
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Close to dawn, repetitive knocking on the bathroom door eventually woke Thirteen from whatever nightmare she'd been dreaming about on the floor.
"Hey, you all right?" A soft, female voice asked from the other side.
Thirteen sat up and pulled a towel down from the rack and wrapped it around herself, completely mortified that she'd somehow passed out in the bathroom. God, this is a new low, she thought. "Yeah," she rasped, running her fingers through her hair and using the edge of the sink to pull herself up and damn if her ass and back weren't killing her from sleeping on tile all night. "Give me a sec?" Thirteen requested, which the woman allowed now that she knew her date wasn't dead.
Glancing at herself in the mirror for a moment, only to see nothing looking back at her, Thirteen avoided her own eyes and washed her face and brushed her teeth. Opening the bathroom door to allow the woman into the room, Thirteen turned on the faucet for the shower, dipping her fingers under the water and waiting for the right temperature.
"I'm sorry, but do you mind if I join you?" The woman asked, after washing up at the freestanding sink beside Thirteen. "I really have to get to work," she explained.
Thirteen sucked in a deep breath to think about it, but eventually sighed, ran her fingers through her hair, and nodded at the other woman. "Sure," she said with a fake smile, her voice not nearly as hoarse as it had been a moment ago even though her throat was still dry and burning.
The redhead followed Thirteen into the shower and took the liberty of bathing her even though that wasn't part of the deal. Against her better judgment, Thirteen allowed it, not wanting to be rude or start a fight over something so trivial. She'd never see this woman again anyway. In an attempt to get this charade over with, Thirteen mirrored whatever was being done to her: kissing back whenever she was kissed and running her hands along the woman's slick skin, feeling the suds melt between her fingers under the spray of hot water. She thought about how wonderful this would be if only she could feel something deeper than the mere touch of her hands, taste of her lips, and curve of her breasts. Hopeless, Thirteen closed her eyes and allowed the cleansing water to drip down her eyelashes as she daydreamed of invigorating rain storms and peaceful, melting glaciers millions of miles away from here.