Suffocation

Paige

I marched up to my room after therapy, comfortably full for the first time in a while, and sat down at my desk. When I asked about the tablet, Tom told me the credit card was to buy whatever I needed, and he’d have his men pick it up. The slim, black rectangle had arrived yesterday, and setting it up had exhausted me too much to try it out. Now, I couldn’t avoid it any longer. I started work on Monday, and I hadn’t so much as drawn a line in five fucking months. My hands shook half the time I tried to pick something up, and my knowledge of color theory seemed to have fallen out of my head. I needed to be the employee they remembered. I cracked my knuckles, turned on the screen, and got to work.

A couple of hours later, someone knocked on my door. I looked up from a page covered in logos for a business I got off a random generator, a flower shop that specialized in grief and grievance arrangements, and stretched. The first few were sloppy, way below my usual quality, but I could