Tails (SOLO) [AV]

Tails [AV], see also Heads



Saturday morning, 6am.



Suffocation woke Zed, as it often did. Stifling a groan she rolled off the couch and knelt on the floor for a few moments, waiting for the earth to stop spinning. Some apneas were worse than others, and this had been a bad one. Trying not to couch so loud as to wake the baby she shrugged the worn blanket over her shoulders and moved to the fire escape for her morning dose of nicotine. The cold air nipped at her fingers and knees where the blanket didn’t cover, but the smoke coursing through her lungs made that irrelevant. Numbness. It was what she sought more often than anything else.



7am.



Two trashbags of dirty laudry hang from each of her hands as she made her way down the stairs, a sulking Peony strapped to her back in a secondhand carrier stained from the half-dozen babies it had carried before. She shrugged her shoulders to move the weight of the child around and trudged onwards to the laundrette.



9am.

The clanking and hot, steamy air of the laundry washing in inexpertly loads sorted into ‘really dirty’ and ‘dirty, but not that dirty’ seemed to calm the sulking toddler and Zed slipped outside for another breath of burning tobacco. Peony was safely contained in a washing basket sitting on top of the machine, the vibrations soothing her into thumb-sucking silence.



10am through 2pm.



Sitter time. Leaving little P under the paid supervision of someone else Zed made her way to the sauna to soak up some much needed chlorine gas. She had a job to do today and it wouldn’t do to run dry in the moment of need.



3pm.



The job got done.



7pm.



It was cold tonight, and the landlord still hadn’t fixed the heat. The baby grizzled and Zed warmed grey slop in the jar for her to eat. She splattered it everywhere with something like glee. Zed had a balanced dinner of cheap liquor and cigarettes.



9pm.



The baby had finally succumbed to sleep despite what felt like hours of protesting. She wanted to be held, to sleep with her mother in the main room of the house, despite it being degrees colder than the bedroom. Zed wouldn’t risk it. Too much of a chance that she would sleep-shift and poison the little screamer in the night. Laying an extra hoodie gently over the sleeping form she made her way back to her couch, nudging a towel against the crack at the bottom of the door to keep any gas from slipping through. It was safer that way, to leave the window to the fire escape open to whisk away any death she exhaled without realising. It made for cold nights, but it was better than the alternative, she could see the offending breath puffing out into the room, for now it was harmless, but when asleep anything could happen.



11pm.

Cold beans from a can had joined the burbon in her stomach and the toll of the day was catching up to her. With a quick check to ensure she had a knife at the ready in case someone saw the ajar window and got any ideas, she settled into the musty couch cushions and pulled the blanket to her chin. Perhaps tonight she could get
some rest.