Read As You Were for Free Online

scowled at her, annoyed by the impertinence of the young woman. “Doctor’s orders, Missy. You should let us do what’s best for you, and stop trying to do everything by yourself.”
    The rotund woman turned to go, and Brittany thought of how much she resembled a bloated marshmallow. “Oh, Nurse—” Brittany called. “I am allowed to get up and piss by myself, aren’t I?”
    The nurse grunted and squiched out of the room on her white crepe soles.
    Brittany released a groaning breath, clutching her side, and stifling a smile. She took the tabloid from the night stand, anxious to finish the ridiculous story about the woman who gave birth to a lizard.
    Tru checked her watch. Five a.m. Tuesday? Wednesday? She had come home late Sunday night, after a long night of driving, searching... realizing in a stupor that it was New Year’s Eve. Thankfully, the last holiday of the year; Christmas had only been bearable because she had refused to put up the tree, avoided the obligatory It’s a Wonderful Life on T V. In fact, she had kept both the TV and the radio off, except for news, that way she wouldn’t have to listen to the plethora of Christmas cheer permeating the airwaves. The only acknowledgment she had allowed herself was the Cinnamon Schnapps she had bought at a ratty old liquor store Sunday night on her way home from searching.
    She had brought in the New Year watching videos of she and Brittany, playing in the snow. They put the camera on a tripod and built a snowman, and Brittany insisted on giving the snowman a cucumber penis. They laughed at passersby, who stared as they drove up the winding road. “You’re going to cause an accident,” Tru had said, her chastisement met only by giggles of delight.
    The videos seemed endless, a history that had become antiquity, while she warmed her throat and deadened her nerves with frequent shots of the Schnapps. She stayed there well past midnight, into that Monday morning. She had given up on writing a new song, burdened by the difficulty of creative concentration. She had only managed to break a string, from strumming too hard on the Ovation Adamas.
    All she could think about was how she used to come running into the living room with her guitar to share it. She could still see her lover’s face as she sang each new song to her. Brit was gone now.
    So she had stumbled in the back door Monday night, after another fruitless search, shuffled through the kitchen, and collapsed on the sofa for a few hours. Had she slept since then? No... she went searching again and came home last night to sit at the table and drink more coffee.
    Coffee had become a drug for her; she often thought the effects would be the same if she merely leaned over the canister and snorted the black grains directly, or grabbed a handful, and munched them like the dry Shredded Wheat she had eaten days ago, straight from the box.
    Tru had endured another sleepless night here at the kitchen table; sleepless, save the nap she had taken with her head on her arms just before she had reached for her eCig. It was Tuesday...
    Tru put her head down on her arms again and closed her eyes, banishing the images of Brit, if only for an hour. Long enough to rest—
    The sound of the paper boy’s Toyota jarred her awake again as she drifted off. A double beam of headlights flashed over the walls when he turned around in the driveway. Mechanically, she pushed herself up and went through the living room to the front door. Dropsi followed her and darted out to tiptoe cautiously in the snow. Leaving the door open, she watched the calico pounce on the orange polybag in the slush of the yard, rolling on it as if it were filled with catnip. Tru wandered across the drive to drag the paper out from under the writhing cat, brusquely aware that her well-worn sweatshirt didn’t possess enough thickness to fend off the
    cold, and moved slowly back into the house, as if an army of leeches had also sucked her as dry as the Shredded