‘Just one pill,’ said the woman. ‘Just one pill,’ said her son.
It never was just one pill.
Gray was gone only one hour. He came back to find his mother fast asleep in the bathtub. Gray didn’t seem surprised by the sight, but the opened pill bottle next to her made him feel empty inside. When he was a child, she only ever took one pill in front of him. 20 years later, stubble coated his jaw, and she hadn’t changed one bit.
Her hands were cold and clammy, her body blended with the silent water around her. Gray wondered why his mother’s hands were cold, but that was not relevant.
‘Just one pill,’ he murmured, with not the slightest taste of conviction.
‘Make sure to close the bottle,’ Gray’s mother had told him. “The pills will climb out otherwise.”
He picked up the white bottle, caressing it in his hands before he dropped it in the steel bin in the corner of the room. He stared back at his mother, her eyes closed, her hair knotted like a rat’s nest. She was sprawled out in the tiny white bathtub, her body frail like a child. She seemed almost placid underneath the water, her clothes molding their way onto her body, that it was easy to miss her against the diamond-shaped cream and white tiles.