Pariah

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She draws a breath, and the icy air crackles like fire through her lungs. The cry that she pushes out into the night is driven by the burning pain. Thick blood bubbles from her nose and trickles down the back of her throat. She coughs, and something clicks in her chest. A busted rib, she thinks.

Slumped between overflowing garbage bags, she waits. And counts.

One. . two. . three. .

She has always counted. When she was tiny — in a parallel universe it seems now — her parents listened to her interminable counting and optimistically packaged her up as a child prodigy. Stepping from dream to dream, they conjured up futures for her involving nuclear science, brain surgery, accountancy, high finance.

She wonders what they would think of her now. Lying in a stinking vacant lot, her body battered and broken. Craving a hit of heroin to numb the pain.

. . six. . seven. . eight. .

She can count while thinking of other things. Like her mind is working on two levels. A useful skill, maybe, in some walk of life. Not so much in her own, though. In her life, it would often be far better if the numbers could eclipse all other thoughts. . . twelve. . thirteen. . fourteen. .

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