Chapter 1
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The fireplace roared with blazing indifference, warming the cramped but cosy Mont Lachat lodge she’d held up in for weeks. Kicking morphine was no walk in the park but Frankie was no stranger to coming down.. the pins and needles, coupled with the slew of volatile emotions swirling through her head. The absence of that all too comforting numbness that so well insulated her from everything difficult that had ever happened. Junk had been a friend and a protector, the only consistent one she’d ever had. Whenever the going got tough, she could slip into that ever blissful and all enveloping opioid bath. The tingling soaring numbness kept her a million miles away from anything that might cause her harm.
Frankie had no good reason to clean up, she’d fallen too far, unemployed, un-excited and unconvinced that life had anything more to offer than another kick in the guts, another broken relationship, another failed attempt at being part of the system of self advancement that would never satisfy her opioid addled soul. If she died, who would know? And who would care? Junk stopped all those hopeful internal musings about what life might still offer her by some infistimial chance, and now she’d stopped using, some of that suppressed hope had begun to creep back in.
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In her moment of sober clarity, Frankie couldn’t help but think of him. It was the first time in a long time her mind had been straight enough to let his memory wash over her. He’d been the only man who’d ever quelled her angst, who ever made her feel loved, he was the only one who ever came close to making her feel understood and unalone. He bridged the ever abyssal gap between friend and lover, and made life seem to her like something entirely different to what she had known. The last time they eloped had not ended amicably, and Frankie’s pride was too great to reach out and extend her hand in reconciliation. How could she have distanced herself so far from someone who’d loved her so much. Losing herself in the arts at times offered her some measure of respite and shelter from her over active mind. Frankie stared at her canvas, unable to conjure anything but the banal and the pedestrian. The harder she tried to self induce the creative moment, the further away it slipped. Going for a walk would usually stir the creative juices, but the weather outside was prohibitively cold. In two more days it will have been a month since she retreated to the French mountainside of Lachat to clean up. It had been a successful detox in the physical sense but the mental anguish caused by the lack of her opiate security blanket had forced her to confront the ghosts she’d thought long forgotten.
The anguish was a sort of grief, like the death of a loved one. Not that she’d really lost anyone to death in her life, but she’d lost someone she loved, and worse being, he was still out there.
Perhaps abstaining from her pin prick salve had been too hasty a decision, she had far too much on her plate to confront without the help of that nice warm tingle.
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