A Dictionary for All Your Money

Marianne Webster was sitting cross-legged on a low-back armchair, anxiously, if not eagerly, awaiting her first MDMA dose of the day. She had on a periwinkle-and-maroon polka-dot cotton-twill face mask with string-tie ear straps. It was a tight fit, and smooshed her nose, making it feel as if she were breathing through dried blood at times, but she rather relished such simple acts of suffering, so much so that she often purposefully partook in things that would make her life more difficult. It hampered her guilt and resuscitated her passion. Her glasses fogged with each breath.

She had a healthy fear of fire alarms and believed all things that happened to her, no matter how promising, would eventually turn to shit. Her favorite color was drab.

A train blasted by right outside the bathroom window, tussling the fronds of those Royal Palms that lined the tracks and always made her feel like she were on a tropical vacation when they happened across her line of sight. Marianne Webster wasn’t bothered in the least by the train’s rushing thrum. She was too accustom to distractions and abominations to her consciousness and concentration to even notice something so large and ordinary. She craved uniqueness. Rarity. The fixed festivities of abstaining from life’s big-shot nonsense. She breathed through her mouth, downward with pressed lips, as if she were playing the flute…