Exquisite

2010

Sitting up suddenly Lena felt the sweat drip down her spine as she clutched her chest tightly. Glancing over at the clock by her bed she watched as the red numbers flicked to 3:21am. Shit. Every night the nightmare was the same. It was like a bad scene in a movie that was stuck on repeat and wouldn’t stop. The only major difference was this was her reality. No matter what she did, for the last nine years of her life, Lena had been living with the ugly truth that she’d been behind the wheel the night Carly was killed. Leaning against the headboard, she squeezed the bridge of her nose and inhaled deeply. Lena looked over to the picture on her empty dresser, of Carly and herself at Carly’s 18th birthday, and sighed. Closing her eyes she slid down into her bed staring at the ceiling fan as it spun slowly making that irritating, thwump, thwump, thwump with every rotation. Just another thing she’d neglected to fix, she thought to herself and added it as a mental note. Kind of like the rest of her life. With that depressing thought, Lena rolled over onto her side squeezed her eyes shut and willed herself to get at least one more hour of sleep before she had to get up and go to work at 7am. However, as the seconds turned into minutes, she knew sleep was beyond her, and as she did every morning, Lena woke up thinking, well shit.