Lisa sighed despondently as Michelle handed her a white bowl. She set it on the coffee table next to the bag of snacks for Johnny's party: flatbread, chips, and more chips. Lisa had omitted chocolate to avoid triggering Michelle's intense fetish.
"Everything's changed," Lisa started, "I need more from life than what Johnny can give me." It seemed their heist was never going to happen. Johnny made a good living, but he was out of time to give her, and the price of essence was ever climbing. Their romantic vision of eternal life together was proving just a dream.
"Suddenly my eyes are wide open and I can see everything so clearly." Lisa said. She imagined the limitless years stacked high within The Room. "I want it all."
Her cocoaphile friend knew about her affair. "You think you can get it all from Mark?"
Lisa smirked. "If he can't give me what I want, somebody else will." All she needed was a younger, more daring conspirator. It didn't really matter who it was.
Michelle was unnerved. "Lisa, you're sounding just like your mother. You're being so manipulative."
"So what?" Lisa retorted. She looked with disdain at her friend's healthy adult body. Lisa would never reach Michelle's physical age. An enormous laryngeal tumour was fated to strangle her from within by the time she was twenty-six. All she could do was stay ahead of it, rejuvenating each time it reached critical mass.
"You can learn something from me," Lisa added. She thought herself some demented saint. A messiah for schemers and parasites. "You have to take as much as you can," she added. Lisa was doomed to live on borrowed time– or stolen time– forever.
"You have to live, live, live!" she pronounced zealously.