2:47 AM. I’m wide awake in an apartment I’ve never been to before, lodged somewhere in that one decaying part of town the local news anchors like to talk about. Its bloated corpse put on display like some installment piece at the gala on Lexington and 23rd. Bathed in the afterglow of coke and sex I’m enjoying a cigarette amidst the blueish backdrop of TV static. My partner in debauchery for the evening, a fellow wayward 20-something (I’m not great with names) is fast asleep. She’d taken enough Valium to make sure of that. She wasn’t much for pillow talk either.

“Is this where you thought you’d wind up as a kid?”

“If it was, I wouldn’t be having this conversation… with myself,” I whispered.

“You had ambitions.”

“Sure, everyone’s had some sort of comfortable ab(di)straction they can hang their hat on at the end of the day. Most people end up losing em… whatever the case may be, it doesn’t make it real in any meaningful sense.”

“Uhhhhghhh. Who are you talking to?” she asked groggily.

“No one. Can’t sleep. I’ll turn the TV down.”

She, drifted back to sleep after a few more minutes of tossing, turning and miscellaneous grunting.

“Why can’t you be like that?

“Asleep?”

“No, blissfully unaware.”

“Been working on that for the last few years. A Pharma-Haze like that is no different from a house, a car and 2.5 kids.”

I lit another cigarette off of what remained of the other. smashing it against the ashtray in one final display of violence before exhaling a plume of smoke from its replacement. All of its properties. Its very essence condensed into a hall of mirrors. Stitched to the fate of satiating an addiction. Cold, mechanical, a need unsubstantiated by anything other than its being there. I often wondered if I’d been reduced to the same sort of thing. In the spirit of not wanting to find out I got up, put out my cigarette and started searching for any leftover Valium.

“Goodnight.”