Lies They Tell You- Part Two (ePub)

'It's a notice of eviction. They're throwing you out, Lea. End of the month.' I blinked up at her, trying to remember what a normal human response might be to sudden homelessness and then merely closed my eyes instead, a fleeting feeling of freedom filling me as I rode the idea out. I saw myself walking the streets at night, lean and random and hungry-eyed and felt the solace of a thousand untried evils swelter and burn inside me, pulsing now- open veins. I saw myself below the hollow white light of a streetlamp, watching a car roll to a stop at the corner beyond me and inhaled deeply as Madge started speaking, her voice drifting over a wide stretch of empty desert as I wondered how long I could wander without speaking. A year, maybe? Longer than that? I pressed my hand against my ear as I tried to blot her out, the hard, violent pull of wandering forever beneath a gray-blue sky so real I felt my throat close with the heat and blinked quickly as she sat down at the edge of my bed and gave me a shake, the sudden note of concern in her voice jolting me back to reality in a sudden drop. 'Lea. Lea. You need to wake up. I'm serious. This shit is serious. We need to talk about this.' 'What time is it?' I swallowed hard as I heard how raw and wind-blown my voice sounded, already getting on board with the program- a couple years of wandering followed by a quick, uncomplicated suicide. Easy enough. Once the poisons started building. ******