#41: Hope

The smell is unlike anything you'd ever smelt before, a mix between the local municipal tip on a hot sultry day and the sewage plant. The scent that digs deep into your nose and refuses to vacate days later. You wake up to it crawling on your skin and realise the sheets are all crumpled, meaning most of the night you tried to extricate yourself from it. The dreams come back, infesting you with the memory of drowning in a sludge so toxic you can still feel your skin bubble. You run a finger over your exposed skin and feel relief when you don't feel the blistered skin that burned and itched during the night. You still need to scratch, the type of gnawing that'll draw blood soon enough. A cold shower is the only way to wash the smell off you and for a while, the soap gives you a new hope, like the dawn. But as the towel dries you, your skin resumes the nightmare. The rough texture soothes, so you rub harder until your eyes roll back in pleasure. You think it'll never end, but it will. Eventually. You hope.