A small mouse, grey in color sits on the floor. In jerking motions, it moves it's head back and forth checking it's surroundings. It makes sure nothing has changed since last, it checked, not moments ago. As, suspected, the studio apartment had not altered. One mattress lays, bare, on the floor. The walls are lined with stacks of old newspaper. Surrounding the mattress were magazines and the occasional half empty bottle of liquor. wrappers and assorted trash litter the stained carpet floor. Atop the mattress, under a torn blanket lays a women. Her skin pale, and hair unkept. Though she is not old, her face shows wrinkles and some grey hair is clearly noticed at first glance.
A quiet alarm sounds from under a wrapper, efficiently scaring off the mouse to a hole in the wall. The woman's eyes open, and she rustles as one does as when first woke. The woman sits up on her bare mattress, eyes half open. She grabs a bottle close by and takes a sip before setting it back down. The liquid burned as it slowly fell down her throat. After minutes, she stands, losing balance for a moment but regaining it shortly thereafter. Stepping seamed as a new challenge. She made her way to the corner of the apartment where a small pile of clothing lay, proceeding to dig through it she found a worn grey shirt and her only pair of jeans. Ounce clothed her eyes met a mirror where she began to fuss with her hair. Realizing that she could do nothing her attention drifted downward. Atop a stack of old newspapers was a slice of bread, completely blue with mold. She sighs before slipping her feet into shoes with worn souls and that came apart at some seams. Then, grabbing the jacket hanging from her door, and unlocking the bolt, she steps out of the room.
The woman steps into the dingy hallway. With doors lining it on both sides, she walks toward the exit at the far end of the hallway. With each step, the floor creaked. Occasionally the lights would flicker. Paint chipped off the walls and the corners showed signs of rot. In the opposite direction she walked, a man wearing a black hoodie leaned on the wall, next to a door. His hand held a small phone to his ear as he spoke angrily into it, gradually raising his voice. By time the woman reached the exit, the man was spewing curses and threats into the device. Once the man noticed she had turned her head and was now staring at him, he began to do the same to her. Quickly, she exited the hall, slamming the door behind her. However, the mans yelling was still clearly audible.
Doing so forced her to cough, ounce hit with the thick smoggy air filled with Exhaust from the many cars and smoke from the industrial district.Sadly that was her destination. Muddy slush, ounce the snow of the previous night, lined the cracked sidewalk. She was forced to cross my arms in brace of sudden cold winds as she headed north. The morning winds always seemed amplified throughout the first couple of blocks. However, the smog becomes thick and the air slightly warmer closer to the factories. After each block, shortening the distance between her and the destination, it became harder to breath.
Finally, she reached a large grey building, with smoke stacks towering high. Inside, she punched in five minutes late before assuming her post. Hour after hour, the woman droned on and on, simply taping packages of things to be shipped. Here, her mind roamed.
She remembered starting her job at this same factory eleven years before. She was seventeen then, living with her mother, who constantly told her how beautiful her hair was. She had long straight brown hair which delicately fell over her shoulders. She had started the job to help her mother pay for rent, having recently been fired to to budget cuts. Two years after starting the job at the factory, the mother had died of lung cancer. Unable to pay rent, the woman was evicted from the apartment her and her mother lived in and forced to move into a small studio apartment.
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A loud buzzer sounded, pulling the woman out of her daze. She looked down to find her hands, holding countless miniscule cuts. She gasps in pain as she tries to rub one hand over the other. For countless days of work, at the end of every one, she could recall the sting of these cuts. Doing her best to manage the pain, the woman left her work station to the dining hall. Here, she digs through the trash bins or what ever her fellow workers left behind, before they are cleaned up, for scraps of food. Luckily, she finds a half empty sandwich. She stuffs the objects in her jacket pockets.
Her feet sore from standing throughout the day, she continued to then, clock out and leave for the apartment. By time she left the factory, the sky had already reached sunset, now pink with pollution, as it watches over the woman as she travels back south. As she does so, with the darkening of the sky, the cold becomes harsher. On the last block, it began to snow lightly. She made it to her building before the snow and wind became too harsh.
The woman opens the door to the same hallway, and darts inside. Now relieved to be out of the cold, she walks down it. Relieved that, this time, no one else inhabits the walkway she makes her way down the hallway to her door.
After opening it and stepping inside briefly, she takes off and throws her jackett onto her mattress. The women then retrieves a small stack of bills from under her bed, and takes off to the door across from her own.
Knocking at this summons a tall man, dark in skin tone. The man smiles gently at her. He exchanges greetings with her and few simple words before she hands the man money. Hesighs, takes the bills and shuts the door. Patiently, the woman waits, blank in expression and thought staring at the man's door. Opening the door abruptly the man, no longer smiling, hands her a small bag. Inside, four tablets reside. The woman takes the pills and leaves without any further words.
Now smiling for the first time, she bolts the door behind her while taking out one of the tablets. Throwing the bag on the floor, she swallows a single pill.
Almost instantly, she can feel a tingling throughout her body. The woman loses balance, and falls backward, hitting her head and back against the wall. But somehow, instead of a shooting pain, pleasure grows through her body, emanating from where she hit the wall. She closes her eyes enjoying the sensation. Her papercuts, ounce stinging in pain, now throbbed with ecstasy. The simple act of rubbing her face or pant legs thrilled her nerves. She reached out for an object, collecting a empty bottle. After feeling every inch of the object, she tossed it aside. The sound the bottle made as it shattered the ground played as a sweet symphony to her ears. Again, she reached out. This time collecting a strange object. Its bristles stimulated the deepest pleasure. she rubbed the strange object against her lips and cheek before putting part of it inside her mouth and chomping down. Liquid spilled from it and, though the woman could not taste it, the object felt divine as it traveled down her throat.
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She wakes ounce more. Hair covers her face. She is propped up against one of the walls, between to stacks of newspaper. Her head throbs and her thoughts blur together. Her first sight is the shattered bits of glass across the room. She begins to remember last night, at least when she threw the bottle at her wall. The next thing she sees is a mouse, dead and bloody, with what appears to be a bite taken out. The moment she sees the figure, bile whatever was left in her stomach escaped her throat. As this happens, she falls to her side, tipping over a stack of newspapers. Ounce gagging, she attempts to stand. As she does so her alarm blares its nois, sending her off balance and falling to the floor.
The woman crawls to her bed and spreads herself out, squeezing her eyes together tightly. Today she will not go to work. As she lays there,she thinks about how every day for the past nine year, she has left and returned to this apartment. The woman knows she is addicted to these pills. She knows that the factory will never take her life farther. Most of all, she knows her life will never improve.
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Again, she finds herself thinking about her life before the factory, and her mother. Now, countless years later, standing atop a pile of newspapers. A rope is wrapped around her neck. The woman can't even remember what her mother looks like and is brought to tears. Weeks earlier, the man across the hall refused to give her anymore tablets. Not even a mouse, now, will company her. However, there is no more worry for this life.  The woman smiles for the first time in years, as she steps off the pile of old newspapers.