Sleep was not a respite; it was a battleground.
Serena woke to the scream of her alarm feeling gutted, hollowed out.
'Three hours.' The digital clock's red numbers bled into the darkness, a verdict. She had slept for three hours. Her body was leaden, a sack of aches and grievances. The bruises on her wrists had ripened overnight into ugly, tender halos of purple and green.
'It's been getting worse lately.'
The morning routine was a study in controlled fury. The shower was a punishment, the water needling her skin. She dressed with sharp, jerky movements, her fingers fumbling with buttons, the long sleeves feeling like a prison.
In the kitchen, she didn't just make coffee; she attacked the process. The grinder's whir was an assault. She poured the scalding black liquid into a large mug and drank it voraciously, not tasting, only seeking the chemical jolt, the false life it promised. It was a fuel for the utterly disjointed void.
On her way to the bus, the caffeine did nothing but sharpen the edges of her senses. The city unspooled in a familiar, depressing reel: shuttered storefronts, overflowing trash bins, a thousand faces etched with the same weary script.
The internal monologue that usually narrated her anxiety was silent, replaced by a strong staticky hum. She was a camera, recording—glitching— without truly processing. But today, the reel was different. Her usual path was eclipsed by a river of people flowing through the streets. A protest. Hundreds, maybe thousands, filled the avenue, a moving tapestry of signs and keffiyehs.
'STOP THE GENOCIDE. FREE PALESTINE.' Their signs were a unified chant, a roar of collective grief and fury.
Serena watched. A part of her from university, the one that double-majored in History and Sociology, stirred from its stupor. She thought of the historical weight, the brutal geometry of oppression. The desperate need to be seen, to be heard. She saw the determined set of a young woman's jaw, the tears streaking an old man's face, and she felt a quiet, profound admiration. They were doing something. They were turning their empathy, pain, and fury outward—into a weapon, into a song.
Her own pain was a self-centred sinkhole, collapsing inward—cannibalizing on itself. She was a curator of dead civilizations, while they were fighting for a living one.
She walked straight ahead, and the moment passed. The static hum returned, louder now.
———
Work was a special kind of hell. The lack of sleep had sanded away the last of her filters, leaving every sound, every fluorescent light, feeling like a physical abrasion. Mr. Davies was on the warpath about the upcoming donor gala, his criticisms more pointed, his presence a constant cloud of dissatisfaction.
It happened in the Greco-Roman wing. She was re-aligning a case of terracotta votives when two men, smelling of expensive whiskey and lunch, approached her.
"Well, hello there," one slurred, his gaze a sticky thing that crawled over her hidden body.
Serena kept her eyes on the artifacts, her posture rigid.
"You're a quiet one, aren't you?"
"Maybe she's like these statues," the other chuckled, leaning too close. "Beautiful, but all broken pieces. I bet we could put a smile on her face."
His friend reached out, not to touch her, but to tap a glass case, a mockery of her profession. "What's a little thing like you doing in a place like this? You look like you'd be more fun in a bar."
The words were as dull and weak as rotten cheese, but it was the violation of her space, the reduction of her to a thing, that poked at something inside.
She didn't speak. She didn't look at them. She simply turned and walked away, her steps unnaturally even.
She made it to the staff bathroom, locked the stall, and slowly slid to the floor. The breakdown was soundless—a convulsing of her shoulders, tears that fell without sobs, disgusted and ashamed.
They had no idea how right they were. No matter how much she tried to get herself back together, no matter how secure she started feeling—it always crumbled in the end. She didn't know why.
And looking at her life, she was just as worthless as an object. She had no hopes, no dreams, no people she loved. She may as well be a ghost.
She pressed her face against the cool metal of the stall door, the humiliation a live wire. 'Fight back', a voice inside her said. 'Say something'—But the weight of her exhaustion, the years of holding herself together, was too great. She couldn't fight the world or the thing inside her.
After five minutes, she forced herself up. She splashed water on her face, the cold a shock. In the mirror, a hollowed-out stranger stared back. She met her own eyes and watched as the person behind them receded, pulling back behind a veil of functional numbness. She straightened her top, smoothed her hair. She was a machine again—one that could still perform its tasks.
———
The walk home from the bus stop was a mile through a city that felt increasingly unreal. The evening was thick, the air heavy with the promise of rain. Shadows seemed to cling too long to the corners of her vision.
And then she saw it.
In the mouth of an alley, between two overflowing dumpsters, it crouched. A form, small and pulsing, raw and bloodied. A fetus, but wrong—too large, with limbs that twitched with a grotesque, insectile life. Its head, too big for its body, turned slowly, and she felt, rather than saw, the void where its eyes should be fix on her.
A cold spike of pure adrenaline shot through her spine. But her mind, educated in the hard sciences of her own broken brain, provided the same explanation her psychiatrist always gave: exhaustion. Hallucinations.
It wasn't real. She knew this with a chilling certainty.
Yet, knowing did not unsee it. Knowing did not stop the primal part of her brain from screaming RUN.
She didn't run. She simply quickened her pace, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. She could feel it behind her, a skittering, wet sound keeping pace. She didn't look back. She focused on the crack in the pavement ten feet ahead, then the fire hydrant, then her building's stoop. Each landmark was a lifeline.
She fumbled for her keys, her hands shaking so badly she could barely fit the key into the lock. Shoving the door open and slamming it shut, she leaned against it, breathing in ragged, sobbing gulps of the safe, familiar, stale air.
She didn't bother with the rituals tonight. No careful placement of keys, no tea, no pretense of normalcy. She dropped her bag by the door and walked straight to the easel, still in her coat.
The painting of the forest was there, her escape, her sanctuary. She picked up a brush, her hand still trembling, and mixed a color—a fierce, defiant gold. She began to paint a shield of light around the base of the crystal trees, a barrier against the creeping darkness. It was a futile gesture, painting protection into an already meaningless fantasy world.
But it was the only action she had left. Each stroke was a denial of the bloodied thing in the alley, of the leering men, of the crushing weight of the day. She painted not for beauty, but for survival, fighting the coming night with every ounce of colour she could force onto the canvas.