Good Ol' Fasion Nightmare.

Here is a story about a woman I briefly encountered at a coffee shop. This is all fiction of course, but this is what struck me. So even if it isn't flattering at all, here it is:

She was sitting on the navy sofa that had a habit of swallowing people up when they sat there. She looked about ready to be swallowed up too, but not by the couch. She had a certain melancholy look on her face. And a very curious black eye. A rather prominent one at that, and you could see the passersby sneak quick, invasive looks at her wound. The black eye was the physical manifestation of her old life. Yes, a past life. Laura was moving on now. The black eye? From her former dealer, Ross. Ross was a heroin dealer, and Laura a heroin addict. Laura had been quite desperate to get her hands on more heroin, she was going through the earliest stages of withdraw. And this had been only two days ago. But she went to Ross, broke as could be, and begged and pleaded with him. She just needed enough to shoot up once. Just once, and then she would find the money and pay him back. Ross wouldn't hear it, and when she started to cry... he decked her. Good enough to send her spinning, and soon falling onto the pavement. Something about this caused her Laura to have an epiphany. What had she done with her life? 32 years old, unmarried, jobless, practically homeless. She'd been spending her life, more so, wasting her life on this addictive drug. And despite that she was still shaking and cold, and feeling on the brink of death, she walked home and slept and promised herself that she'd change. She was doing this for herself, no one else. The heroin had to stop. And she knew that. And so it did. But the withdraw still nagged at her constantly. And Laura, being the person she was, was at a loss for what to do. She wandered into the very center of town and here she sat on the navy blue sofa. And suddenly, she knew what she was going to do. She quickly went about snatching up magazines and proceeded to rip them apart on the sofa. She was getting strange stares from the people in the shop, but she was simply to thrilled to care. She would collage her old life together out these scraps of glossy magazine paper. She would show what her life had been. And what it would be, now that she was no longer in the clutches of heroin.

That's the story of the drug-addicted Laura, based on a woman I actually saw. With an actual black eye, who was actually ripping magazines up in Mean Bean last night. Whoever she is, I believe she's got a good story to tell.