Every fiber in my body is grasping for oxygen. Like a solo climber on the summit of the Nanga Parbat.
I can't breathe.

Her translucent skin glistens under the halogen lighting, blue root-like veins feed the circles under her eyes, small estuaries of a tired river.
Tattered with smallpox-like scars, her skeletal limbs are attached to the frame of a broken doll. In her heyday she should have been hailed as attractive, gorgeous even.
My gaze lingers there, on the space barely above her clavicle, following mesmerized the upward movement of her Adam's apple.
Dozen of times I dreamed of squeezing my fingers around that thin neck, but it never had a face before. The vivid imagery is getting streamed live to my consciousness.
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

It's the vulgar smack of her tongue that tears me away from my thoughts and precipitates me back to the smoke infested room.
“Whad’a’ya’ retahded? Or a barney”, she asks with swagger, none the wiser to the turmoil waging inside me. I blink in response. "Creep", she says piercing me with her tired gaze. A pack of jimmies lies on the table, the only workable furniture of this dump. "Told ya, I don't remember his name", she says, eager to get done with it.

"Focus", I manage to stumble upon the words. You wretch of a human being. Deep inside me something is boiling, something that I've until now managed to barely contain. I have a mouth and I must scream, but instead I ball my fist until the knuckles are white and the nails pierce the skin underneath.
"I just want to talk, that's all. I'm a writer", I manage to tell while still maintaining a composed expression, "And money is money, right?"
The familiar flare of greed flashes across her face. I'm disgusted, we're definitely on the same page.

"Wicked", and she lights another one.