There was a heavy stink of piss in the air, and he could feel it sticking to the inside of his nose and mouth as he breathed heavily. Beads of sweat dribbled down his clammy forehead. His throat felt parched and itchy. He held tightly to a wrinkled resume, the grease of his fingertips smudging the ink. It was a mistaking coming here, to suffer through it all again, but the options were scarce, and fleeting. This was all he had. He pictured all the others that waited outside, the pimply faces, the crooked teeth, the fine little black hairs sprouting at the corners of their mouths. He was the only one out there who came in a suit.
That morning he had taken a handful of his mother’s medication, hoping it would steady his nerves, to calm the waters he now felt unready to tread. But what was circulating through his body was weaker, diluted, like a drop of blood in a bathtub, and it turned his stomach even more. The pills had never failed him in the past, when he would swallow a few and everything felt just a little less heavy, a little more buoyant. It was what allowed him to so easily quit his first office job, and charm his way into a second. It gave him the courage to take all that petty cash from his third job, and to spit in the face of his last employer. Now he prayed for the effect to kick in, the numbing warmth, the blissful indifference. But there was nothing, just the aching normalness of reality stinging like a thorn in his side. He listened as a man was shitting uncontrollably in the far stall. A wet, sour gurgle echoed in the back of his throat.
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