Silence filled the room. A lingering glance at the corner echoed the fear of the darkness that was beginning to descend, a blanket of thick fear that trapped the light. Shadows flickered over the lampshade in the corner, washing the walls with the faint touch of the streetlights. The yellow tinge of light illuminated the stains on the wall, the dark red crusting over the cream hotel walls.

The rustling of mice across the floor as they skittered across the room, crawling over and around the body, the glittering stones that sat in her eye sockets empty reminders of the past.

I guess, in the end, that’s all there is to life. Empty shells, empty promises, and empty eyes; and a body lying in an empty hotel room like leftover trash.

Broken bones, broken windows and broken hearts; a record skipping over the same painful track again and again.

It is 2am and you lie awake staring at the ceiling. You feel empty, and at the same time as if you were filled with concrete. The weight forces you down and pulls you under, you’re drowning in a sea that you’ve created. And as wretched as you feel, you can’t bring tears to your eyes; you don’t have the energy, and you can’t see the point of feeling sad anyway. ‘I don’t really feel sad,’, you think to yourself, ‘I don’t really feel…anything.’

And so you cut and you starve and you try time and time again to die, you’re running out of options and you’re running out of time, you don’t want to be alive but you don’t think that you want to die.

A thousand thoughts run through your head as you lie there. You’re weighted down by your mistakes; by everyone you’ve let down, by everything you haven’t done right.

Your arms are heavy; they lie by your side. Your legs feel as if they were made of both cotton wool and stones, a strange feeling of the skin separating from the bone. Your pulse pounds through your chest, slowing each breathe. You count the seconds as they pass; as they turn into minutes; hours.

Outside the moon turns the darkness into something more familiar, something like what you are used to in the light. You try to direct your eyes down to the window but all of your energy seems to have disappeared, as if you haven’t slept in years. Your eyelids feel heavy, the ceiling dances above your head.

Everything descends, the walls come in closer, pulling you to them. You feel sick, and you know that you would vomit if you could, but it’s all you can do to physically keep your heart beating. You struggle to breathe through the bile rising in your throat; your stomach burns and you try to shut it out as you close your eyes.

The morning comes. The sun rises and lights up the house through the fog, the sun streaming in through the crack in the blinds. Your face is cold against the light; your shadow doesn’t move.

The dog walks into the room and nudges at your arm, hanging out of the bed; he whimpers. An empty bottle of pills falls to the floor and the sun flitters over the paper beside you on the pillow.

Blood and vomit stain your bed, your mouth spilling over with both.

The sun sets and rises, and sets again.

The dog walks around, lost. The dog drinks the water left in his bowl. The dog eats all the food he can find. The dog drinks the last of the water in the toilet.

The dog lies down with you, and the sun sets again.