Addiction

It's times like this during the quiet stillness of early morning that Sam feels barely alive. In the moments of the half light, when the sun begins to overtake the moon. Pure blackness giving way to shadows that bend and stretch into elongated forms. His mind drifts between fiction and fantasy. Jumping the distance of reality and his dreams. Back and forth. Back and forth. A nightmarish seesaw as pain and anxiety begin sinking their hooks into his resurfacing mind.

His eyelids peel back across the hazel irises, which too seem to be locked in a never ending battle as to which is the dominate color. He can barely make out the popcorn ceiling now. But he has memorized the landscape of its backdrop from the years of depression and boredom, and in its plainness he hates it for all that it is.

He feels the attack coming on, as it usually does. It happens when the numbness of his sleep leaves the body and he's bordering on fully awake. His tongue feels thick in his mouth, like there is not enough space to house it. Sam registers that the sheets seem to be constricting him. Tightening around his extremities. He fights his way out, tearing the suffocating blankets from his skin. He is sweating in the cold room, and he squints through his right eye, the one that sees clearest at the moment, searching his surroundings. Where are they? Where are they? Where are they? His brain repeats his desperate need like a mantra over and over. He needs to calm himself. Sam takes a breath, the air tastes putrid and stale as it sweeps across his tongue.

He opens the drawer, and sees them. His slender fingers grasp the lighter, then the needle, and finally the spoon.