Short Stories

Familiarity is found in bleach and bile

Vibrations disturb the blood flow to her mind, her thoughts jolting from side to side in her skull. Her bones rattled, clinking against the bathroom tiles as she sat in a puddle, melting beside the solid, reflective, toilet bowl. It wasn't a first, and it sure wasn't a last. The disrupted stillness of her body, of her fingers, triggered a reflex, a reflux in her throat, her stomach. Her gasps became shorter, the bile rising, the fat chunks intertwined and hidden amongst the clear vomit that rose and sunk in the blue toilet water. Disturbing the balance in the newly clean bathroom, the smell of bile mixing with bleach causing her body to convulse again, gagging on air. The tears didn't come this time, the emotion from the situation was removed years ago, when punishment was still a primary goal; now it was routine, it was all she had come to know. The shaking was familiar, the smell was comforting; but it was always too much for her body to handle. But her mind didn't think twice now.