The alley's damp chill seeps into my bones, a second skin. The air itself tastes metallic, thick with the remnant of something burned. My veins, usually hidden rivers, now pulse with a frantic, shallow rhythm, like trapped birds beating against a cage. They ache for the familiar burn, the sweet, chemical taste.
They say I'm fading, a ghost in my own skin. Their words, once sharp, now drift as if through cotton, muffled and distant. The world around me blurs, the vibrant colors of street signs and passersby bleeding into a hazy, indistinct grey. It's as if I'm watching a movie on a broken tv, detached and disconnected.
The disassociating sting, a stillness, a relief. It's a reprieve, a moment of blissful nothingness, where pains subside and the world softens. I chase that feeling, that fleeting escape, like a moth tractioned to a dying flame. Each hit is a step further down, a descent into a world where only I and the silence exist.
My skin, once smooth, now feels like cracked porcelain, chipped and worn. My eyes, dark and hollow, reflect a stranger, a gaunt, empty shell. I see the ruin they speak of, the slow decay, but it's like watching a film of someone else's destruction. I'm a passenger, not a driver, carried along by the current with no control.
They plead for me to return, to find my way back to the world of the living. But the world they speak of feels distant, foreign, a place I no longer recognize. The drug is my constant companion, my only solace, a twisted kind of love. It whispers promises of escape, of oblivion, and I cling to those promises like a drowning woman to a life raft.
The whispers turn to screams, a chorus of burning wires. The stillness shatters, replaced by a frantic, clawing terror. My body rebels, a puppet fighting its strings, a desperate, violent spasm. The illusion cracks, revealing the jagged edges of a world I cannot escape, a cage built of my own desires.
The mirror, a cold, hard judge, reveals the truth I try to deny. I see the vacant stare, the trembling hands, the slow erosion of everything I once was. I'm its cradle, not its mother, a vessel for chemical hunger. A fragile, broken thing, lost in a world of grey, where the only warmth is the fleeting, burning rush of its touch.
The streetlights flicker, casting long, skeletal shadows. The damp chill returns, a familiar, unwelcome caress. My veins, scarred and weary, pulse with a dull, persistent ache. The world, no longer a movie, but a static, grey tableau. I am a ghost, returned to haunt the ruins of my own making, the echoes of a life I no longer know.
