It was learning how not to think, that saved her. Learning to throw away everything that had gone before, focusing in on the now, the immediate, one stumbling step at a time. It was a narrow life, lived in fragments quickly discarded; but it wasn’t drugs, and it wasn’t whiskey, and it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Yesterday and tomorrow, ripped from their context, didn’t hurt as much.

And when they came at last, and pulled her back into the light, she fought them with every shred of darkness at her command. And it was enough.

And then it wasn’t.