Fractured

2%

{A/N: **TW** **EXPLICIT** this novel depicts graphic symptoms of mental illness / health issues and substance abuse }

Katya looked over the date written down at the top of the journal: January, 27th, 2021. She scribbled something else out in the small black pocket journal but quickly scratched it off and shut the book instead.

She was sitting at a round cement table in the middle of the cities local park: Mill Lake. She sat back and pulled her backpack closer to her and unzipped the front pocket, a lighter and a few joints (already rolled) sat stagnant inside.

Katya bit her lip before pulling the lighter and one of the joints out and shakily lighting the twisted end of the paper. She thought about how many she'd smoked already that day: one that morning, another after one of her classes, half a joint before lunch and the other half after she'd ransacked the local 7-11, and now this one. She sucked on it for awhile, trying to fill herself with the entirety of it in hopes that maybe this time she would feel something.

She thought that if she could take it all in one breath that maybe she'd finally choke and die from the pressure on her lungs. Instead she exhaled and coughed up a storm before she started to feel the salty spit of nausea crawling back up her throat and began to heave and heave and heave - until she was spitting out leftover lunch and hunched over the side of the table. She spat out some more before sitting back up, an uncomfortable whine came from her as she closed her eyes and wiped her mouth with her frail and pale hand.
She rested her elbows on the table top and placed her head in her hands while hazily staring off into the distance - she could feel her eyes glossing over with that glassy surface.

Katya blinked once and when she opened her eyes again she was outside sitting on the floor of her apartment balcony staring at a box cutter and a shattered Absolut Vodka bottle. She gasped and dropped the utility knife and pushed her self back before that all too familiar lump in her throat reappeared and it felt like she was suffocating. Sitting back against the panelled wall she tired to breathe, mulling over the general definition of this dying feeling: Globus pharyngis - the painless sensation of feeling like something is stuck in your throat and being unable to swallow, feeling like you might just double over and die at any given second... and Katya wished she could.

She closed her eyes again and sat still - just breathing for awhile.

Then she felt like having a cigarette.