The door slammed shut with a well placed hip as she spilled over with plastic grocery bags from the front hallway to the kitchen. The view out of the window was half bricked up by the neighboring building while the other half showcased the deteriorating neighborhood; she could see the sun rising from its uncomfortable bed of sharply angled apartment buildings, companies, and miscellaneous factories. The graveyard shift suited Aiden – that way she didn’t have to see the ugliness that this area had fallen into over the past few years. The darkness hid the cracked and crumbling pavement, the broken windows, the rise of gang-related crime. Not that her job went unscathed, but she tried not to think about that.

Setting down her dinner and tonight’s breakfast, she went to the bathroom to wash her face. The image staring back at her from the mirror was one that she was strangely familiar with – the rounded face, eyes, mouth, all drawn up tight with aged laugh lines, purple bags, and general melancholy. Refusing to dwell on the obvious unhappiness sitting in front of her face, she unpacked the groceries from the local Food ‘n Fruit: three apples, a container of juice, some bread, some meat, some cheese; eggs that she could toss in the microwave and fry quickly, some aspirin, ketchup.

Everything was meant to move her from place to place more quickly – the actions of a person who didn’t want to deal with reality. Sometimes she wished she had a pet, a cat maybe, or even a fish, but then the realization that she spent most of her time at work, and that when she was here, she was sleeping, which constituted maybe six to eight hours of the day depending on how long the daylight lasted. Everyone thinks that days last twelve hours – to the contrary, and especially in winter, it’s often less. This was something that Aiden looked forward to. Anyway, neither was conducive to the well-being of a happy pet. And if she couldn’t keep herself happy, how was she supposed to keep a fish happy?

Groceries put away, she ran the tap and took a quick, scalding hot shower. The heat eased her muscles and left her skin red, which would eventually soften to a pink that looked much more alive than her usual white pallor; she’d tried turning down the tap as an experiment once and found herself shivering so hard that she could barely turn it back up. It was more than warmth – the heat reminded her that she was indeed still alive. After this step in her restricted schedule, she’d pull on a camisole and underwear and lay in bed staring at the ceiling.

Sleep, something she considered, at best, an acquaintance, was often elusive. It spoke of her social life – she’d meet people and try to be happy, be nice, be enthusiastic (something her boss had always chided her about – “can’t you just smile? You scare the customers sometimes”) but there was something off about her and no one would return her calls. Then again, if she thought about it, was she the one who was driving others away? Again, it was something she didn’t dwell on. There were other things that she could focus her time and energy on that allowed her to live. But she didn’t want to live. She also knew that she didn’t want to die. Stuck in such a limbo was a neurotic, if dull, existence. Aiden didn’t know how to release herself from it.