Corroded

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A fortnight after my husband was murdered, I exhibited a severe allergy to sobriety.

Nightmares plagued first my sleep, then haunted me through every waking hour. In order to maintain what sanity I had left, I chewed the opium that was so much easier to attain now that I had taken my shelter below London’s foggy drift.

Laudanum alone could not accomplish what the resin of Turk’s bliss would.

It became a rote as unthinking as breathing. A bit of tar before I sought my rest. Another bit more upon waking, to ease the ache of the night’s passing. I swallowed it when the anxieties of the fortnight’s events wrapped around my chest, tighter than any corset I’d ever worn, and squeezed the living breath from me.

I licked the bitter medicine for courage and I choked it down to forget.

Revenge tasted best when laced with the cinnamon-sharp draught of laudanum, but such liquid was more difficult to carry and hold than the wax-wrapped bit of opium I had taken to keeping in my pocket. And certainly the ruby solution I’d grown to require could not compare to the long, narrow tube I now held in my hands, its fragrant smoke drifting through my nostrils and into my hazy, addled mind.

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