Rehab
The smell of gunpowder still reeked in the small, rotting apartment, where on the floor a dilapidated corpse of a woman laid atop a mattress chewn through by moths. Despite her corpselike appearance, the woman was unfortunately still alive. Her instincts had pulled her skull out of the way just in time to prevent the bullet from hitting it; despite yearning for the embrace of death, something kept her chained to the reality, where she was sentenced to live.
None of her neighbors came to bang at her door despite the gunshot, because nobody in this building would care even if an atom bomb was dropped on top of the shitty and unmaintained apartment complex, as long as they could spend their last moments either drunk or high. Nobody in this building was happy, and they wouldn’t want to prevent their neighbors’ attempts to escape from this world. Somebody would come to drag her rotting corpse away in a few nights, not caring about the shards of glass that would stick to it. But in reality, she would have to apologize to the poor person who came to retrieve her corpse, because she couldn’t take her own life, despite her attempts. She just would waste the time of other suffering people.
In a few minutes, hours, or maybe even after an entire day, time is hard to measure when you’re almost constantly under the influence of several different substances, something begins vibrating next to the mattress. Mechanically, the woman moved her hand to grab onto it, and wordlessly picked up the phone.
“To the office. Now.” As quickly as the call had begun, it cut off. The woman on the other end of the phone sounded very serious, as per usual.
Seems she had to get up now. Since she was still alive, losing her job would be a fate worse than death.
A few kilometers away, in the middle floors of a high-rise office building, a woman with white hair sat in her office, waiting. She knew that her command would be followed, even if it took a while. Walking from one place to another takes longer while drunk, after all.
And a while it took, but eventually the corpse-like woman arrived swaying into the office in filthy clothes, covered both in blood and vomit, her dyed-pink hair an unkempt mess, and her face like that of a rotten corpse. She loudly mumbled something, but the seated woman couldn’t comprehend any of it, which made her sigh. Too used to this kind of behavior to be genuinely disappointed, she felt real pity for the woman standing before her.
“Kim, dear, please sit down before you faint.” Hearing her own name brought the woman named Kim back to reality, at least temporarily. Nobody had called her by her name in probably over half a year, especially not Boss. That only happened if she was in actual trouble. But this wasn’t the medical room at the back of the office, where she had many times awoken heavily wounded, both legs in the grave, from which she had been dragged out of for the sake of work. This wasn’t a situation, where her name would be used this gently, like she was on death’s door once more. To her, this meant only one thing could be happening.
“Am I getting fired?” She croaked, clearly a few steps from the brink of tears, which flustered her boss.
“No no no, Kim, sit down now, don’t overreact. Everything’s alright.” She spoke in a rehearsed manner, as if she had performed this same routine several times over her career, always with the same stage partner, and as always, her partner sat down.
“Of course, this does have to do with your job, but you’re not losing it. You’re far too important to our group. But lately-”
“But what? Do I hafta stay behind to do paperwork again? Like I’ve said, I suck ass at that shi-"
“Shush.” Boss covered Kim’s mouth with her hand, a bitter expression on her face.
“As I was about to say, lately your behavior has been concerning me. You’ve come to the office late every time you’ve been ordered here, you’ve neglected your other responsibilities, and the quality of your actual work has decreased dramatically. You’ve left more and more evidence for the police to find. Be grateful that our clean-up crew bother to constantly fix the messes you cause.”
Kim was flustered, and didn’t respond at all. If this wasn’t her getting fired, then what were they even discussing here?
“Kim, we’ve tried to tolerate your problems, but they’re too severe for you to continue working here. So!” Boss clapped her hands together, trying to create even a small amount of excitement in the cadaver sitting in front of her.
“You’ll be sent off to the countryside until you get better! I’ve tried to get this set up for a few years already, but none of my contacts were available for that until now!”
Boss continued her explanation, but Kim was already long gone, deep in her own thoughts. To the countryside? Until she got better? The city where she lived was massive, probably the size of an entire country. She had no goddamn idea how far away she was going to get sent. What would she even do there, if the reason for her going there was “recovery”? Some kind of group therapy, like on a TV-show? And speaking of groups, didn’t people who lived in the countryside all know each other? How was she supposed to move into some small town, where they probably wouldn’t trust outsiders, especially those who only came there because they had a drug problem? If she refused to go, would she actually get fired?
“Oi! Earth to Kim.” Her boss did not look the least bit happy about having to drag her back into reality again.
“Try to focus at least a little bit. Eden is a perfectly fine place, and Adam is going to treat you well, even if your alcoholism says otherwise. This is all for your sake, Kim. We’ll pay you enough to manage there, and when you’re back in working condition, you’ll get back to work and we can continue as per usual, right?” Her icy gaze didn’t match at all to the gentle smile that sat so perfectly on her face. It made it clear to Kim that she wouldn’t accept any objections, no matter how well reasoned.
Kim scoffed. “Well, I guess I’ll go there if I absolutely have to.” She knew that it would be completely pointless to say anything in opposition at this point.
“Brilliant! I’m glad you understand the situation, Kim. Don’t bother with going home to pack, I already know that you have nothing of importance at home that you can bring with you.” Despite Kim knowing it was the truth, it still stung really bad to hear it said like that.
“Wait here at the office, go and take a nap in the medical room. I’ll pick you up from there when it’s time to go.” Boss said, and then began wordlessly shooing Kim away from her office. Kim did as ordered, and began slowly stumbling into the medical room, where she crashed on top of the nearest cot.
She was so goddamn tired. Despite knowing that her habits weren’t good for her, she didn’t want to change them. How else was she supposed to deal with the hell she was forced to live in without substances that managed to alleviate her agony just enough that she could focus on surviving? People like her, those who didn’t exist in the eyes of the law and whose obituaries had been published in newspapers years ago, had no other options to treat their trauma aside from self-medicating or suicide. And despite having tried several times, Kim had never been too successful at the latter.
But now there was an existing and available new option, and she was unsure about it. If she did go to rehab, she would lose everything that she was. She was nothing but an assassin, who had no hobbies aside from binge drinking and drowning in self-pity. If she did get better, what would even be left of her? Would it be like a spiritual death, or something completely different? Would that kind of ego-death be good for her, or would it make her a truly hollow person, just a shell with nothing inside of it?
She couldn’t know yet, and neither could anyone else. Maybe she would find out, if she just tried a little.