It begins with a small forgetting. The edge of a headache, the hum beneath her ribs, the reason she started counting things. The pill is round, unassuming, a tiny moon. She swallows it and the sky inside her head goes dim.

Relief comes like a shifting of walls, no crash, no crescendo. Just absence, the kind that tastes like snow or static. Her body stops arguing with itself. Her joints hum lullabies. She stops fearing the sound of her own breath.

Soon, the pill is no longer taken. It is received, like a sacrament, like a promise made under water. Time becomes unreliable, looping, pausing, skipping ahead like a scratched record. She watches herself butter toast three mornings in a row and none of them feel like now.

She begins to dream while awake: foxes in the bathtub, a hallway that ends in her own mouth, teeth made of glass. The mirror forgets her face.

When the bottle runs dry, the walls start sweating. Her skin itches from the inside. Light becomes unbearable, like being stared at too long. She cannot tell if the house is shrinking or if she is growing too sharp for the space. Her shadow detaches. Her name feels misspelled.

She tries to return to herself, but the door is missing. There is only the room. And the memory of silence. And the ghost of something sweet, just out of reach.