She coughed and choked as she exhaled, elbows braced on her knees. A string of drool drooped from her lip. The one picture she had of her mother, lined in its golden frame, stared at her from the coffee table, one of the only things she unpacked besides her dishes. Such a beautiful woman. Lola could just see the white jagged edge to the right of her mother’s face, where her father’s face used to be before she tore it out. Back when they took that picture, before Lola was born, he was actually a handsome man. He looked happy too, as far as Lola could tell from the photo. But she didn’t know that man. She only knew the whale covered in wounds that refused to heal, gaping holes where scabs tried to grow but a jagged cuticle refused to allow them. The man that couldn’t fit through his own bedroom door, not that he would have left the room even if he could.

She winced when the heat hit her fingertips. The joint had burned down turn to ashes while she glared at her mother, so she put it out, grabbed her box of cigarettes, knocked one loose. Instead of pouring another shot, she wrapped her shaking fingers around the Cuervo bottle, slid her lips around the spout, tilted her head back. The liquor poured directly into her stomach, and she nearly emptied the bottle before slamming it back down on the carpet. Her stomach threatened to reject it, to throw it back out from where it came, but she mashed her lips together and took deep breaths through her nose until the feeling subsided. She burped, long and guttural, then lit her cigarette.

The clock told her that there was still too much fucking day left. She was too drunk and high to do anything but sit there and drink more. But she allowed herself these little binges, every few months or so, when the weight of everything threatened to smear her across the concrete. Tomorrow, it was back to work, back to normalcy. In the morning, she would have her daily five mile jog, then her hour of yoga, then a modest breakfast.

Keeping herself physically perfect was the only passion left, turning herself into a machine of lean muscle and rage. She made most male cops jealous, and they showed it with lewd comments and cat calls. But she wouldn’t let them break her down, would measure dick sizes with any one of them.

Her father’s voice called from the other room again, but she clenched her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut until they stopped. She would never go back to that house again. When she inherited it, it only pissed her off more, and as far as she was concerned, it could sit there and rot. A place for transients to shit, do drugs, and fuck. Good for them, she thought. The house was a prison for her fears and nightmares. A bloated, inflamed boil oozing pus and oil.