The jagged teeth of the comb fought through the greasiness of her matted dark hair. Her swollen and malnourished eyes peered out of the 17th story dormer window. Her hand sluggishly pushed the comb halfheartedly over the right side of her head. The comb like tips of blades gnawed at the exhausted strands of hair. Reluctant to push the comb over the last portion of her head she was then overcome with sickness. She ran into the kitchenette and discharged the contents of her stomach into the sink. A white foamy whirlpool lay thick and rank at the bottom of the discolored basin. Her eyes reflection, red and teary as she ran the cold tap, lapping from her cupped hands. A faint hope of washing the bitter sour taste from her mouth. Her body then descended into shivers while her body broke out in a cold sweat. She needed that fix or she would go out of her mind. One of her sleazy dealers told her he would be there in the morning to drop off her daily rock of dope. It was one PM and her body knew more unspeakable torment than she. She slumped in crude form on the sticky discolored sheets of her single mattress. She raked her half chewed fingernails over the bloody cankered bumps along her right arm. She began to disrupt the scabs of her tracks until her arm looked like streaks of varnish on virgin wood. She sat impoverished while she pruned from an unweeded garden of nettles.
Her stomach felt uneasy again as she thought about the deliverance of the needle that she wanted to slide into her hot hungry vein. The ends of her hair dripped like a leaky water tap absorbing into the fabric of her tattered shirt sleeve. The bones of her fingers snapped as she ran her fingers through her matted wet hair. She pulled her bangs away from her eyes to the back of her head. Her fingers became stuck in what felt like a cocoon of knots. She had not finished combing the back of her hair. She searched franticly around the room for the comb while succumbing to the heavy residue still in her mind. A hard knock at the door yanked her out of deep thought.


Her Maleficent saint stood heavy at her door. The author of all things who was her savior. She was now exempt from future punishments. Her vestal body knelt obscenely before his judgment, his retributive justice. His angelic hand revealed the silver wrapped sacrament now unearthed to her. Her regeneration, her morning prayer now answered. She scurried along the dirty carpet for foil and lighter. She quickly turned the rock to liquid on the bent spoon. Her teeth clutched the needle while she searched her arms for a vein. The liquid flushed out of the needle and christened her in divine light. Confessions ran ramped through her mind while tears welt up in her eyes. Water flowed out of the tear ducts and remission of sin ran down her cheeks. Her subconscious self ran to hold her unconscious self then slowly fell back into the mattress. She was freed from earthly pain deep within the monastery of the needle.
Her dealer came over to her with his collection plate. She didn’t answer for a few minutes, her mind still glazed in sticky confections. When she came to she realized her pockets were vacant. Her ill-bread landlord made a typical house call earlier that morning. She said she would turn a trick or two and have it by tomorrows visit. Her mind now sharp to reality was forced to remember that incident. His ruff and vulgar stature standing over her as she wept for not having the money for rent. How he knocked her around for not having rent. She felt the side of her cheek. It was still hot and red from his hand print. He seized her brutally down to her knees and show her that another kind of settlement would do for the time being. His smelly cock robed her mouth. But what was far worse was the feeling of having a thick tuff of her hair rifled between his ill-proportioned knuckles and repulsive fist. His spasm and discharge a flare in her mind, now over. She snapped back to reality when the door to her apartment slammed. He was gone and she was alone, abandoned with the blotches of dried blood and a newly recent smudge stripped from her vein. She felt dejected as her heart palpitated. She closed her bloodshot eyes and yearned to comb her hair, the knot that now mirrored her ordeal with her landlord. She drifted off into a drunken impure sleep. She was sailing far too close to the wind.