Ebony

Written by: Collette Cottingham

 

She dug at her nose, “I need a drag.” She leaned out the window inhaling the sweet nicotine…awe “I needed that, life is fucking hard.”

Dark surrounded her. It was in her eyes, hair, skin and in the night sky. Her daddy issues pounded at her heart. She often dreamed he would come save her, but years had erased the hope.

Friends were hard to keep. She lost them to the sweet addiction. Either they overdosed, went mad or were lost in the drug abyss. It would be fabulous to take a drug that made you forget the difficulty of life, the pain, failure and lost dreams. Her mom did that. Mom felt so amazing she forgot she had a life. Now she rests in the Mountain Springs Cemetery off highway 194 if you want to visit her.

I am thankful for her. I stay away from the lost abyss. I know how that path ends. Now if I could shake the cigarettes. Another drag brings relaxation. She needed to eat, but she hated cooking. In a former life she was a Queen. She knew it, because cooking, cleaning and dressing all felt unnatural to her.

Grandpa used to say she was schizophrenic. He said it developed, because she had a cat. That man came up with the most hysterical stuff.

“Bang, bang, bang”

Oh my goodness, it was always the same with this place. Two or three times a day, he pounded on her door interrupting perfectly good thoughts. Just to scream at her through the door that she was three months late on rent. They say you get what you pay for and this place was a one room dump. She was paying him what it was worth.

It was time to leave anyway. A new town. A new start. She inhaled the sweet nicotine, and began itching her face. It was always her face. She itched it, rubbed it, pinched it, it was a bad habit. Grandma said she was going to give herself wrinkles. She could hear her yell, “Not the face.”Oh Grandma, how I miss the.

The pain of life was heavy. She held it all in. The bleeding filled her inside. When she felt like exploding she ran. She hated running. Running isn’t natural, because it hurts everywhere, especially her lungs. She ran into the woods until she bursted with emotions.

Once after an explosive outburst she looked up through her tear filled eyes and saw a bear. She roared her pain from her gut. “You don’t fucking want me, but there are some tasty tarts in my neighborhood have at them.” The bear didn’t eat her. Instead it ran off. Probably terrified it might catch what she had.

She puffed off her cigarette. It was time to go. Where she didn’t know. Her intuition would lead the way.