she muttered to no one. She had no sense of time. Judging by the warm glow pouring in through her window and falling across her bed, it was afternoon. How long had she slept? It felt like ages. She turned her head to glance at the bedside table, but her eyes traveled past the green glow of the digital clock. Her gaze rested on the little bottle of pills that sat on the table. The cap wasn’t screwed on tight and it sat at an odd angle. Her name was emblazoned across the label, and for some reason that bothered her. She stared at the tiny printed instructions. Take one pill at bedtime as needed. She remembered wondering if it wouldn’t be better to just sleep forever. How many had she taken before she’d gone to bed? Sighing, Rebecca pushed herself up and slipped out of bed. She scooped up the sleeping pills and took them to the little bathroom just off her bedroom. She was flushing the toilet and throwing out the empty bottle before she even consciously thought about what she was doing. She felt like she hadn’t washed in days, as if she were covered in dirt and grime. Her eyes landed on the shower. She was standing in the hot water, scrubbing herself pink in the blink of an eye. A faint memory of big, graceful hands on her skin gave her pause, but she brushed it off as fantasy. Feeling more awake, she left the bathroom wrapped in a towel, her still-damp hair trailing down her back. Raman had always liked long hair, and she hadn’t cut it since they met. She glanced about her apartment as if seeing it for the first time. Pausing, she re-traced her steps and scooped up an armload of dirty laundry that was moldering in the corner. She closed the washer with a bang and went to pull on some clean clothes. She had to dig through a basket of clean laundry to find something to wear. She realized with a start that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually taken care of her clothes, just leaving them in the basket and pulling something out at random every day. As she turned, she caught sight of a pair of gleaming silver utility scissors. She had left them lying on the shelf by the washer the last time she’d used them. A couple of minutes later she was standing in the bathroom once more, gazing pleasantly at her new shoulder-length bob. She swept the long shorn chunks of hair into the trashcan, feeling lighter.
