The living

She lay curled on her side, her eyes open. The room was narrow and ill-lit, with a bulb above the dressing table giving it a sick, deathly glow. Paint was chipping off the walls, and there was a damp patch on the ceiling from a leak somewhere.
She had been awake all night, for countless nights now. Her eyes were bleary, her eyelids tired and heavy. But she continued to stare unfocussedly into the distance as she willed them open - almost as if hoping that this only contact with the real world would stop her demons from turning on themselves.
As one of her legs dangled off the edge of the bed, her toe grazed the marble floor. It was much cooler than the bed she lay on. She slid off the bed to lie on the floor, her arms spread in an unrequited embrace. A thin sliver of sunlight from a crack in a shuttered window lit up a small patch on the ground.
The noise of the fan whirring above filled her head, and it grew louder and louder till there was nothing but silence.