Sara hadn’t been feeling very well lately, at least not as well as she had been of late. She hadn’t quite felt like herself for many many years but she’d been feeling especially tired, depressed and run down, even for her.

She was approaching her fortieth birthday; a day, she kept telling herself, which would make even a strong man depressed.

Something kept nagging at her though; telling her it was more than that. At thirty-nine and three quarters, she’d never been married and had no children; two feats that all her friends her own age could not claim and which did not attack her vanity by causing gray hair or the endless need to use coloring, though she rather did like the effect the southern sun had on her long hair, turning it light auburn with a streak of blonde over her right ear. She’d always hated her mousy brown hair.

She also had no significant other, male or female, to keep her chained at home. Her leather restraints were showing signs of neglect.

She did have two roommates, one of which she would rather not remember having been intimate with, a long long time ago, if you could even call it that. She called it being used, abused, screwed and neglected, all at once. He called it having pity.

She hated men.

So why was her marital status wrecking havoc on her mental well being?

She told herself that it was merely the fact that it had been eight months since she’d had any physical contact whatsoever with another human. Ever since the other roommate had moved into the house, even the fucking had ceased. It had just stopped; no conversation, no inclination, no nothing. Sara had been secretly thrilled that she no longer had to fret over finding ways to say no or  to avoid his advances. She never could say no, to him at least. The new roommate was a godsend. Her moving in was a blessing and a curse.

Once again, someone new to show her exactly where she stood in the scheme of things and that somewhere always ended up being used, abused, screwed and neglected with a little abandonment sprinkled on top for good measure. It happened to her as a kid; it happened to her repeatedly as an adult, but not usually all at once. Guess she hadn’t learned her lessons the dozen or so times before.

Sara slammed shut the journal she had been writing in. Usually her morning routine of writing three pages made her feel better about facing her day but here it was nearing midnight, her morning routine shattered by the new job; the task delegated to her only free moments before falling off to sleep.

She wouldn’t sleep tonight.

Sara hated her retail management job, hated her supervisor, hated her co-workers, hated the hours, hated the customers, hated the small paycheck and resented the invasiveness it had on her life.

She was supposed to be a full-time writer. She was supposed to be a doctor, a psychologist to be precise. She was to go straight through college, get her bachelors, masters and then her doctorate, set up a private practice, meet her soul mate, marry, have three kids, two dogs and a cat, build her dream house in the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania, have a summer home on the beach and planning for early retirement by now. Things hadn’t worked out quite as she’d planned.

She’d allowed a man to distract her, and then another and another until her life could never resemble the life of which she had dreamt.

She was angry. She was bitter. She was cynical, depressed, and hateful.

And she was pissed off.

She wondered why she got out of bed some days. She wondered that often.

It was such an effort to go through the motions, doing the same thing, day after day, week after week, month after month only to realize that yet another year had passed her by and things were worse now than they were the year before. Forty years of this was dreadful. Forty more would be utterly unbearable.

She threw her journal across the room.

She threw back the covers and went to use the bathroom. Again.

She stumbled into the doorframe as she entered the bathroom. She steadied herself and fumbled for the light. She turned on the exhaust fan. She shut off the fan but turned it on again as she flipped the switch for the bright lights. Blinded by the light, she hit the switch again and turned on the dim lights, brights and the fan. She steadied herself against the wall, looked closely at the switches. She flipped the first and second switches down, leaving the third one up allowing only the dim lights to remain on. She looked at herself in the mirror. She looked flushed. She felt flushed but cold. She brushed the hair from her face and went to sit on the toilet. She was thirsty. She knew if she got even more to drink, she’d be up another half dozen times through the night to use the bathroom. She just couldn’t get enough to drink these days. Usually when she ate fruit, her thirst would subside. She and her roommate had finished off a pint of strawberries with fruit dip while watching a movie. She probably shouldn’t have had quite so much dip and more of the fruit. She usually got a migraine when she ate so much sugar but currently she was feeling rather lightheaded.

When she finished in the bathroom, she made her way toward the kitchen to grab the carafe of water she kept in the fridge. She walked around the sofa and sidestepped Maxie, the thirteen-year-old black lab who had planted herself along the living room kitchen divide. The room began to spin and swoon and Sara collapsed on the floor. Maxie gathered her old bones and picked herself up off the floor to investigate, as did Taz, the five-year-old golden retriever, and Paws, the eight-year-old black retriever.

The other human occupants of the house didn’t stir from their sleep.