It was one of those nights when no amount of sweating or bathing could release the demons from her soul or cleanse her skin of their stench. She had realized that very afternoon that most of her life thus far had been spent spinning fantasies, like a record that continuously circled a needle and yet never produced a single sound. She sat on the toilet seat in a towel, her dark hair dripping tears of water down her shoulders. A Q-tip rested in her mouth like a cigarette, the cotton end drinking from the tip of her tongue. She would later question how it had found its way there before tossing it in the waste basket at her feet. She was only twenty-five, though an urgency gripped her. Somehow, she thought, she was running out of time