This is me, This is my corner.

Head back against the bricks, their little idiosyncracies grappling onto hair. The world is too solid, closing in like a hand, and everything is out of focus like a badly budgeted kid's movie where dogs become the size of people and then shrink on another background. Looking down at a plate the contents seem to draw into themselves. Eating enough, or not? The whole world is twisted and all there are can be nails against bricks. It's harder than a chalkboard, but feels the same way, except it digs into the skin.

Maybe it isn't the world. No, it deffinitly isn't. The world doesn't live inside of her chest. It feels broken in there, that little thing, that glass christmas bangle. Broken and drifting away in the blood that leaks outward. But there's no blood here, just inside her body, and that too feels like it's drifting apart. Lead weighted into her joints and a lump in her throat. If she looked back...it would be pointless now, because this is me, this is my corner. And they. Aren't. Here.

Take a recount of the last few minutes. Her watch is broken, the face cracked and smashed in. It's been like that for weeks.

There's a promise left unbroken somewhere hanging in the air, dangling like a carrot on a string. She could take it, and break the promise, and feel safe. But it would only be a feeling and that's why she is where she is now, tucked into a corner and sick.

Facing the others is going to be the hardest part, and she knows that, because she won't be like him. She won't be stupid, she'll keep her mouth shut. The fewer people know, the fewer people are going to get hurt, and she can handle this herself.

No she can't.

She can't reach for that carrot and break a promise, because there's nothing here that can be relied on. And if she won't become reliable, why bother staying at all? There'll be a razor edge she'll have to crawl on, belly to blade, now. No margin for error. She wants the tactical mind to shut up.

So she closes her nails against the chalk sensation of a brick corner and closes a box around the throbbing sensation in her stomach. Now is not the time to break, there's no time to and it won't help matters. So there's only one choice she can see.

The phone booth across the street stretches away from her and lunges closer as she walks, and shakes, and wonders if all of this could just be a dream or a game. It's no dream. Hands close on the reciever which is sticky and humid alone in the evening air. Flat tones take over vision and touch and the low moan of a dial tone dies without much protest at all.

The most distinctive of clicking sounds answers the other end.