the-eye-of-the-beholder FINAL TO SUBMIT

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Chapter 1
The room reeks of sex and cigarettes. The news hums quietly
on my phone, rested on my thigh, where a short stump of a man
reports on the fact that no one has been stabbed in weeks. Not
all that surprising when people fear their own eyes snitching
on them. But I am not watching it. I’m off my face, the ceiling
fan contorting above my head and the walls peeling at my glare.
Connor had come round last night, brandishing a smile and
a package of drugs. We smoked through the night, cuddled
together with a cigarette hanging from my lips, whilst my
eyepiece fizzled like static television. One day it’ll probably
explode and kill me - it wouldn’t surprise me. It was my
own creation forced upon me, my own dog collar. Or at least
it would have been, had I stayed in school. Stayed and not
descended to the depths of LSD pathways and tobacco toxicity.
Eventually, I force myself up from the floor that I’ve made
my bed and strut to the bathroom. I move past the dirty clothes
that litter the floor, the holes in the wallpaper that my landlord
can’t be arsed to fix, and the frayed carpets that will make me
fall out of a window any day now. In the mirror is a horrific
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