In 1999, I wrote the climax of my Conspiracy Story on my Apple IIC before I left for college. What I wrote was disturbing enough to make me tremble. I printed one copy, then turned off that computer forever. Some time during the beginning of my relationship with a boy named David, I lost the story. Four years later, the day David abandoned me forever, I opened a dusty box that had been in our loft closet for four years and there it was. I've run a spell check on it, but have not changed another word. At last, I give you…
Chlorinated Water
Her face was pale as she stepped over the threshold of the church door; she felt Gaze's hand brush hers, and she caught it in her own hand, holding his thick fingers in her bony palm. The unpleasantly lukewarm air in the church smelled familiar; it was thick with the scent of holy water in corroding metal tins. It was burdened with dusty, pretentious handshakes and the cries of ignored babies. It was hot with the sticky, sweaty presence of people. Gaze's hands moved, his fingers locking around Marion's small hand. His thumb stroked its surface, and his entire body seemed to move closer to her.
Marion blinked her eyes in the cavelike darkness of the church. They were standing in its vestibule; Marion exhaled and her breath crystallized before her in the stream of cold air from the door. Mass had begun and Marion could see through the thick, dusty glass of the church door. The parishioners stood in candlelight complemented by the glow of dim electrical lamps. They were old women, with limp, icy hands and varicose veins, shawls pulled over the curls of their white hair stiff with Aqua Net hairspray. They were lonely, overweight women, nearing middle age, with matted hair down to their waists, wearing spandex leggings and big shirts with sickeningly stretched floral patterns.
They were mums in starched dresses, daddies in loafers and polo shirts, little girls with snotty noses and ruffled dresses. They were Marion's family.
The choir voices rung out from the loft above; Marion shuddered, remembering the sweaty tights that prickled her legs and the hot dress with velvet fabric. Her shoes pinched her toes as she stood in the church, and her lungs were filled with choking incense. The minutes passed with Marion's tiny eyelids drooping; she felt her mind slipping into the smoke. She raised her tiny hand to touch the bruise on her face, releasing her thin fingered grip on the misallette. She brought her hand closer, closer, until she could feel the hot, swollen skin and when she touched it harder, she gasped in silent pain, but it was not with the voice of an eight year old child.
"Marion." Gaze dipped his fingers into the silvered dish of holy water. He crossed himself slowly, left hand still holding Marion. The tears were streaming down her face, shining in the flicker of candlelight.
There they were, in Marion's mind, standing on the other side of the aisle, the man with his twin sons. Marion could see them across the worn red carpeting, the man with his face already gnarled and the boys, dark haired and well dressed. The twins' heads turned in unison, as though they could feel the ice blue eyes of the fidgety redheaded girl. And then, one of the boys-the one on the left-flashed a cocky smile, accompanied by a wink.
But Marion felt Gaze's hand upon her, helping her through the door and into the heat of the church. Looking up, she saw the vaulted ceiling; it was cream colored, with a stained glass window at its termination. Starlight cast a dim glow through the colored glass. Marion stumbled forward, bracing herself against Gaze for support.
The little girl in her mind was overcome by a wave of nausea. She squeezed past Mum; her dress was starched and the color of egg yolks, past the fat woman whose stomach, big and spongy like the firm pillows in Mum and Dad's bed, squished her against the stiff, shiny wood of the pew, over the bony knees of the old lady on the end, tripping over her walker, stumbling embarrassedly into the aisle. And she stood, looking up at the altar, at the Priest in his robe who seemed to cast her an accusing glance. She turned away and tiptoed to the back of the church, bending in pain at her waist. The bathroom was small and one-roomed, with a door that refused to lock and a sink that dripped. The headaches and stomachaches seized her, and the little girl knelt and retched into the basin of the hissing porcelain toilet. The air was cold and damp; it smelled like metal and turds, like medication, constipation, incontinence-like the old bony lady in the walker.
Marion stood slowly, her head buzzing, her stomach still in turmoil. She looked in the mirror, at the face with the bruise, before she turned, slowly. The door to the bathroom was creaking open. She could see the gnarled hand reaching around the light wood surface. And she wanted to scream, but she could not and would not.
Breaking away from Gaze's support, Marion whipped around and walked back down the aisle of the church, almost running past those lonely women with paunches that filled the entire pew, those grandmotherly women whose children had abandoned them and whose husbands had gone to Jesus. Marion hastened past them, those who'd come to thank God for their misery, to kneel on pained legs, to hide their torment in the dogma. She stepped into the shadows of the vestibule, feeling refreshed by the comparatively chilly air, knowing that Gaze was behind her.
His hands clasped down upon Marion's shoulders, turning her into the candlelight, forcing her to face him. Looking into the scared, blue eyes through the flame that reflected in the lenses of Marion's glasses, he pulled her closer. Marion jerked back, trying to escape. Her red hair, braided more loosely than usual, formed wispy tendrils that moved in the air around her as it escaped from the messy plait.
She was crying, which instilled in Gaze a longing to hold her closer, to take Marion into his arms and hug her until all her tears soaked into his coat, but he knew that was not possible. Instead, he let her draw away, keeping a loose grip upon her shoulders. Marion remained facing him, but averted her eyes, focusing her mind elsewhere; she was contemplating the memory, true or not, of the cold, musty church bathroom, the man whose prying stare was a mixture of fascination and desire to control, and the twins, standing obediently in the pews, except to wink and smile cockily. She had seen the man more recently; he was the man in the black suit. And the little boy she had seen as well, though she could not pinpoint where.
"Marion." Gaze whispered her name softly, releasing one of her shoulders to brush the tears from the bruised side of her face with his thick fingers. Marion shuddered, twisting her head quickly away. Remembering the bruise, he raised his hand to the other cheek.
Marion blinked, sending a tear rolling down the smooth, pale surface of her face; it collected upon Gaze's outstretched finger and he held it in the flickering candlelight. She had seen that child. She had seen his cocky smile and eyes that narrowed arrogantly.
Gaze whispered her name again as he kissed the tip of his elongated finger, the teardrop remaining on his mouth. Mark. The child was Mark. They were all connected. She'd been a part of it from the beginning, and they'd always been watching her. Marion let out a cry of anguish, but Gaze placed the kissed finger upon her blood red lips, causing them to purse again.
When he finally drew his finger away, Marion spoke, her voice soft but echoing from the walls of the vestibule. "Gaze, I've remembered. It's all connected, Mark, and me, and you. I saw the man in my childhood, the man in the black suit, and Mark was there. Mark was with him, in this church…"
Gaze replaced his fingers upon her lips, making a silence sound with his teeth. She closed her eyes and pursed her lips again; Gaze's finger slipped downward, stroking the velvety surface of her lips, touching the tip of her chin. The other fingers extended to hold her face on the side with no bruises, and he bowed his head slightly, his face nearing hers until he could smell the sweetness of her perfume and feel the warmth of her body.
His face moved closer and he kissed her velvety lips lightly before drawing slowly away.
The pillows of the couch were soft and warm; Marion leaned back, smelling the sweat of life, the perspiration, the spilled apple juice, stale beer and forgotten popcorn. Her left hand rested upon the frayed arm rest, her right on the old pillow. She breathed slowly through her mouth, snuffling with her nose. From the kitchen came the sound of water running. Marion's eyelids fluttered.
She was standing in the greenyard one summer, the air around her damp and ovenlike, the grass a cool, chemical-wet sponge between her toes. And there, under the honeysuckle bushes, hidden behind the rotting railroad ties, almost into Sister Zita's yard with the big, plastic Virgin Mary, someone was crouched. Shivers ran through Marion's body though the air was hot, but she could hear the yelling behind her growing louder, buzzing like the choir voices in the church loft.
The house had been cold, with air conditioning buzzing, but she'd run through those refrigerator cool hallways, hearing anger from the air vents. A yell. A scream. A slapping sound and the recoil of flesh on flesh, and the screen door had swung open. She'd run across the patio in purple shorts and a My Little Pony shirt. Her hair was messy and the concrete patio burned the soles of her tender feet.
"Marion." Gaze's hands were on her shoulders. "Marion, honey." Her eyes blinked open and he was directly in front of her, his expression soft and concerned. He held a cup of water with ice in front of her, its clear rim beaded with cold tapwater, touching her pursed red lips. Her hand took the cup and lifted it slightly.
She sipped the hyperchlorinated water, remembering the sound of the water as it ran from the hose and onto the patio, puddling and running into the greenyard.
"Marion," he said again, "How are you doing?" He relaxed his grip upon the glass of water, making sure she could hold it, before he sat down beside her. His clothes and body, loose and familiar like the couch, seemed relaxed and at home. Marion, however, remained tense as she took another sip of icy water. She was out of tears; she was dry-mouthed and thirsty, and her hands held the glass of water timidly. "Here," he said, touching one arm to comfort her. "Just sip this for a little while. Calm down. You'll feel better in just a little bit."
"I remembered, Gaze," she said, her voice tentative and halting, like that of a shy child. "They were watching me, even then, when I was a little girl. When I went to church with my family. When I was out playing in my yard." Her eyes had become wide and frightened. The glass of ice water shook in her hands, making ripples in the clear and chlorinated liquid.
"Marion, no," Gaze pleaded, his hand closing loosely around her wrist, steadying her. The ripples in the water began to subside.
"I remember it vividly, standing in the yard. There was someone in the honeysuckle watching me. But I couldn't go inside because my parents were yelling, and…."
Gaze's grip tightened. "Marion, are you sure that what you are remembering isn't just a guise, a coverup for having been abused as a child."
"I was never abused. I was never hit. My father was very hands-off. I don't even remember him touching me. He never touched me. Never at all." She drew her hands haltingly away from Gaze's grip. His face was concerned, but comfortable; he was sitting in his living room with his friend Marion, just talking.
"Maybe," he said, leaning back into the couch as though he was making casual conversation with a Tiegen or a Jennie, home from kindergarten with hesitant school stories to tell. His face was loving, his voice blunt, unaccusing. "Maybe he did, and you just don't know it."
Marion turned away, closing her eyes. She sipped the cool water, feeling its condensation drip down her thin and shaky hands, as Gaze continued. "Maybe these memories, these pieces of conspiracy, are just false images, created by power of suggestion, to conceal what happened to you." He closed his eyes pleasantly, not wanting to see Marion's response.
She stared at him with frightened eyes, not wanting even to consider his theory. "I was not," she began to whisper, but her voice tapered off and she could remember standing on the old gold carpeting, feet itchy and eyes childishly wide. The angry voices echoed down the dimly lit hallway, bouncing up the stairs, seeping through the air vents. "Stop!" she screamed suddenly, her voice squeaking, her words powerful like those of the children on television whose example she'd followed.
At the bottom of the stairs, then, a tall and shadowy figure appeared. Her father.
"Get back in your room, Marion," he bellowed. "Get back in your room if you value your life." It was her first conscious memory of her father.
Laying under the covers in later days, she prayed to a seemingly deaf God, chanting incantations while clutching the plastic beads of the children's Rosary that glowed purple in the lack of light. "Please let Mommy and Daddy stop fighting." But Sister Margaret Ann at CCD told her that it was evil to ask for such things; she ought only to ask for courage, so she whispered, after that, "Please let Mommy and Daddy have the courage to stop fighting." That, of course, didn't work either, not that Marion expected it to. To a child who'd debunked Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny, all in a one0day period at the age of five, God was a far-off figure, his hands either indifferent or tied.
And then, Marion remembered something else, the sound of a hand striking her across the bridge of the nose. Her eyes rolling back slowly, she gasped for breath and tasted blood. She felt the blood trickling down her nose, her pursed lips, her small and bony chin. There, in front of her, stood her daddy, something other than fatherly love in his eyes. He raised his hand again and Marion drew back, breathing blood again, coughing it through her reddened lips, raising her hands in tiny star shapes to keep him away. Daddy spat in his hand, rubbed the spit on the tail of his white work shirt, and wiped Marion's little face rudely. When his fingers crossed the broken bridge of her nose, Marion felt a dull ache, but was too paralyzed to.
She'd run from the air conditioned house, into the greenyard, tears on her face and blood in her throat. Had there really been a shadowy figure in the bushes? Or had it been her twisted imagination? Or, worse, had she seen nothing at all; had this been a false memory, created later by her mind to distract her?
The reason she'd left the church, squeezing past Mum, kneeling on the cold tile floor of the restroom to puke into the basin of the toilet? Had it been another slap? A jab in the stomach or a twist of the arm? Or had she, by chance, actually seen a man with twin sons looking at her?
"I remember," Marion spoke finally. "I remember one time, maybe, just maybe, two times. Probably one. No, probably two; I don't know. One or two times, that he hit me. But it was just…" Gaze's eyes had opened; Marion was sobbing, her lips on the rim of the glass of water, her nose stuffy and her voice muffled. "It was just parenting, you know? And he always apologized, for the one time that I clearly remember, and for fighting with Mum. He'd apologize and he'd bring Mum flowers and toys for me. Like he could buy our love, like he could buy me off, own me, make me stay loyal… forgive… and forget." Her voice broke off abruptly.
"Did it work?" Gaze asked, touching Marion's wrists, petting them with the rough skin of his thumb. Marion took another sip of water, the last sip, and fumbled with her tongue for the ice cubes that remained melting in the glass. She looked around Gaze's living room, at its fingerprinted walls that had once been white, at the carpeting, stained and worn, though comfortable.
"I don't remember," she said, smiling through veils of tears. "I just don't remember. And she laughed, insanely and out loud. She then turned away. Her hair was almost completely unbraided, her hands shaking, causing the ice in the cup at her red lips to chatter. She tipped the cup upwards, trying to drink. But the cup was empty and she was unable.
Gaze took the cup in his hands, drawing it away from Marion. "Here. I'll get you some more." She lay back on the soft couch pillow, eyes staring at the ceiling. She heard the water flowing from the sink in the kitchen and felt the couch pillows through the fabric of her tight black pants. The flow of water stopped. In the kitchen, Gaze watched as it twirled down the drain, clear and chlorinated and cold. He returned to the living room, remembering the way Tiegen had played in those hallways with My Little Pony toys, all in a row, how Jennie had toddled with a crinkling diaper. He saw Marion, sprawled on the couch, her red hair like flame in the light from his coffee table lamp. At that moment, and not for the first time, he wanted to take her in his strong arms and hold her close, to whisper that it was all right, that she was safe, that the conspiracy was aimed exclusively at him.
Gaze sat down on the couch beside her; he understood his duty to his friend. With pale hands, Marion took the cup to her lips and sipped cold water. One bead remained suspended on her upper lip, and Gaze breathed in slowly, something in the pit of his stomach telling him to make her leave, something else telling him that he loved her. However, the words that met his lips were harsh and biting though said in that comforting tone that so fit the couch, the room and the cozy house. "Marion," he said, "You've done so much for me; you've helped me so much to get through this, to help me remember. To help me get closer to my wife and daughter. Gaze winced as he said this; he always, once subconsciously, more recently on purpose, referred to them by name if possible. To keep them human, to keep them alive.
Betty and Jenny were real people, dwelling somewhere alone, perhaps ignorant of him, perhaps wondering where he had gone. But a wife, or a daughter, for that matter, could be divorced, disowned, nameless, in effect, dead. Gaze stared at Marion's sad and questioning face, at her blood red lips with water beaded upon them. "Kiss her, you idiot," his mind scolded him, and he wanted that more than anything. He remembered his lips touching hers so softly in the back of the church, and her face, looking back at him so innocently as he drew away. So he did what a respectable husband to Betty and father to Jennie would do. He drew back. "I'm forever indebted to you for not allowing me to quit. But if this is the price, I refuse to pay it." Marion remained silent. "I will not allow this to destroy your sanity. And if this…" he gestured toward her, "is what I do to you, it isn't worth it. This is my fight, and I've appreciated your help until now, but I will not allow it to destroy your sanity, or your life."
Sipping water, Marion stared at Gaze with an untranslatable look upon her face. "I think you'll feel better if I take you back to your room and you just lay down and go to sleep. You're tired now; you'll feel better about all of this tomorrow. He stood up, taking Marion's hand. His knees cracked hollowly, and he remembered how much older he had become since he'd sat on the couch with Betty leaning on his shoulder and Tiegen and Jennie playing at his feet.
Marion weighed down upon his arm as he led her out of the living room, turning off the light as he left. They stood in the vestibule and he opened the closet, paging past Betty's coats; the winter parka, the spring jacket, sexy and thin, along with small, cute coats for Tiegen and smaller, cuter coats for Jennie. He paged through the dust-covered garments like a useless library, until he came upon Marion's trenchcoat, which he removed from the hanger and draped over her, first helping her left arm through its sleeve. As he took her right hand, he found the cup of water, ice in its bottom, clasped in its palm. He took it from her, smiling, and walked back to the kitchen to return it.
He dumped the melty ice cubes into the shiny metal basin of the kitchen sink, and wiped the cup's perspiration onto the knees of his jeans as he returned. Marion was crying as Gaze tied her scarf loosely around her neck and held, first the screen door, then the heavy, wooden door, for her as they left the house.
Standing in the hotel bathroom two hours later, Marion peered into the mirror as though it was a window. She pressed her face close to its reflective surface, squinting her right eye to view her profile with her left. Her nose was crooked and her eyes were puffy and red. Stepping back, Marion viewed her face from the front. She looked down at the front of her white blouse, at her black flare leg pants and at the hiking boots that were upon the white bathroom floor stained tan by constant use.
It was a cheap motel, with the anonymity of a place where many had been-truck drivers, young families, grandparent figures on fixed incomes, sluts, whores and corporate clones seeking a wild night, a midlife crisis, a cheap bed and cheaper sex. They'd slept-at least some of them had-in the bed. They'd splashed cool water on stubbly faces in the white sink that was now before her, glancing at their reflections in the process. They'd showered in the bathtub with its scratched basin. It was overwhelming to think about who had been there before. Marion rose her hand to touch the mirror; her palm left a sweaty smear upon its shiny surface.
She captured tapwater in the thin, plastic cup that sat by the sink, letting its crinkly, plastic wrapper coast to the floor. "Life," she whispered, mock-philosophically, "is coming down to cheap plastic cups full of chlorinated water." She took a gulp, but the water was warm and overly smooth, so she was unsatisfied.
Bending slightly at the waist to fill the cup again from the sink that was running, Marion dropped it, perhaps not entirely by accident. Kneeling with her arm outstretched, Marion clutched the cup that lay beside her foot, near the platform sole of the tall hiking boot. The floor had not been cleaned; it was caked with spilled vodka, misdirected shaving cream, riddled with pubic hairs and dandruff. Marion's grip on the cup relaxed and she let it fall to the tiled floor again. She grasped the high top of her boot, slowly withdrawing the knife her father had given her, the knife with the carved handle that she always carried. Standing with it clasped in her thin fingers, Marion watched the knife glint in the buzzing single fluorescent light at the ceiling of the room.
Marion held the knife before her, looking in the mirror at the face that would never be conventionally beautiful, that was swollen from Mark's violence and from her crying. She focused her eyes so the knife blurred in her field of vision, first until she could only see the cold, icy blue of her eyes, then, until all that remained unblurred were her lips, pursed and angry and betrayed by her own memory. She thought then of Gaze, of Gaze kissing her gently in the church, of Gaze's hand on her wrist in the comfy little house. Moving the knife to her throat, feeling its cool blade against her tender skin, Marion thought one final time of Gaze, with his forgiving blue eyes, his middle-aged mind that refused to believe he was in his forties, that his most healthy days were ending, that he'd lost his chance to raise his family, that he was dying, cell by cell.
At the moment, Marion's focus was drawn away from the knife and back to the face in the mirror. There she stood, a young woman in her twenties, with red hair cascading down shoulders blanketed in a white blouse. She turned away; the image was hideous to her, but she wondered, as she pressed the knife harder into her own throat, beginning to stretch the skin, how many years of life she was about to waste.
Remembering Gaze's lost years, the way he'd woken up in a white room with whitedoctors to discover that half his life was gone and he had been robbed of his wife, daughters and his prime, Marion's hands recoiled; the knife clattered into the sink basin. Slowly, Marion reached for it, actually believing she was about to replace it into the insulation of her hiking boot.
However, with her hand on its carved handle, with the fluorescent light glinting off of the knife blade, buzzing and flickering, creating idiot flashes and impending shadows, Marion began again to remember. She saw, as the fluorescent light glinting off of the knife blade, buzzing and flickering, creating idiot flashes and impending shadows, Marion began again to remember. She saw, as the fluorescent light flashed like lightning, a white room, with whitedoctors bending over her. She heard their voices booming in her ears, shouting questions that made her cry. She felt, for a moment, some other, deeper memory, of red light in the night sky, of swinging on the tire and watching a white van with no windows moving soundlessly down North Kaines Boulevard, of Ambermay Boertch's birthday party, running in the street, hiking boots splashing through shallow puddles, and of flying, like a little pear tree bird, watching out for the glint of the window.
Those images flashed before her in a period of fluorescent brightness; she saw each for only seconds. And, when the darkness returned, she saw Mark, standing in the doorway with his smug, haughty smile and expensive leather coat, lifting his sunglasses to stare at her gawkingly and lustfully. Again, she saw him, standing in the church and it was the same face, the same look. She had nodded off in church. She had been slapped in the back of the head, had become dizzy and left, tiptoeing to the bathroom slowly.
She raised the knife to her lips, its point directly in front of her eye, the glint of the buzzing light blinding her. The voices rose in Marion's mind, the threatening, questioning voices of the whitedoctors. Her ears straining, she groped for the identities of the whitedoctors; she desired some clue, some connection to the conspiracy. The voices blended into a single voice, menacing and angry, but it was a voice that Marion recognized. She drew the knife abruptly away, looking again at the reflection in the mirror that had held the reflections of so many people.
One thin arm rose to the level of Marion's face, as the other turned off the sink from which the water was running so rapidly; she stared at her pale wrist, the blue veins returning the deoxygenated blood to her heart, the freckles on the skin's surface. The voice grew louder, and Marion became sure of it-it was not the voice of some faraway scientist, but her father. Marion's fingers tightened their grip on the knife's carved base, and she could feel its every pattern against her skin. Tightening her grip more, feeling pain in her fingers, Marion splashed through the skin of her wrist with a clean swipe. Blood spurted from the wound, splattering onto the front of Marion's white blouse, drizzling down her arm and dripping from the joint of her elbow. Marion felt no pain; it was as though her nerves had been numbed.
Shuddering, Marion took the knife in the weakening fingers of the hand that was already cut. The muscles of her fingers faltered; robbed of their oxygen, they were unable to hold the knife steadily. She brought her other arm to the rim of the sink and slashed her tender skin brutally, pressuring the veins, shredding the skin with the tremble of her injured hand The blood coursed to the surface of the ruined skin, and Marion slashed it again. This time, there was pain; her arm ached from the wrists, down her veins, through her shoulder, straight to the heart. Slashing once more, Marion winced in pain, collapsing to the bathroom floor. One wrist brushed the dirty ground, leaving a trail of blood over the layer of life's residue. She'd stopped crying by now, though the pain in her right wrist was nearly unbearable. The sight of her own blood smeared across the bathroom floor, beside the fallen cup and the knife that had hit the ground with a clatter, made her faint.
The room around her seemed to swim; Marion heard the water gurgling down the drain above. Glancing the tile pattern on the floor, Marion assumed herself, for one moment, to be crouched on the bathroom floor of her church so long ago. The door before her was a crack open, and she crouched, her stomach churning with pain, as she looked up, nauseous, small and frightened. She saw the crack of light in the doorway widening, blinding her eyes, and observed a man's figure standing there. He was large, he was strong, and he was nothing more than a silhouette. Scrambling backwards, she seemed to feel the cold, aged plaster wall against her back as the man stepped forward, his shadow falling upon her. Marion looked up to see the man's face for the first time. Like the voices of the whitedoctors, the shadowy figure belonged to her father.
But Marion wasn't really there, crouched in the church, because that scene, true or not, had taken place many years before. Marion extended her arm, bracing herself against one wall. She stood, placing the other hand upon the sink's rim. When she felt steady, she moved the arm that was pressed against the wall. Underneath, she saw a handprint, bright red and perfectly formed, upon the inexpensive vinyl wallpaper.
With her arm in the air, the blood fell in droplets, forming a star pattern on the tile below. Placing her wrists upon the rim of the sink, with the cool, porcelain pressing against the gaping wounds, Marion watched the crimson blood flow down the white surface, reddening the remaining water droplets and collecting around the silver metallic ring of the drain.
From the mirror, a pale and frightened face peered at Marion with wide eyes. Her hair was limp and mousy under the unforgiving glare of the fluorescent lamp. Barely recognizing the terrified face as her own, Marion began to realize the magnitude of what she had done. Many people had washed hands and faces in that sink. They'd shaved. They'd stood with wet feet on the floor's dirty tile. But how many had slit their wrists and stood bleeding into the sink? Marion's blood had collected thick in the bottom of the sink' she raised one failing and throbbing hand to the faucet and turned the water on cool. She watched as the water twirled in the slow drain, turning red, then pink, swirling downward. Thrusting her hot wrists into the stream of cold and chlorinated water, she watched as the pressurized waterfall turned from translucent to red to a steady pink.
Marion's entire body felt weak; her knees were buckling and her mouth was dry despite the cups upon cups of water she'd ingested that day. Her vision blurred, obscuring the reflection in the mirror. She gasped for breath, her lungs starving, her mind swimming with thought. Would she die, she wondered, in the cheap motel bathroom in the unsteady glow of a flickering fluorescent light? Imagining how she would be found, Marion's entire body trembled. It would be next morning. Gaze would call the hotel room, and no one would answer. He'd hurry to the motel in his Cherokee, his midlife crisis truck, fearing what he believed to be the worst case scenario-that she had been taken by the whitedoctors or the men in the black suits, loaded into a white van with no windows like some piece of worthless cargo. Pounding on the hotel door to no avail, he would confirm his suspicions and he'd pick the lock to find an empty room, Marion's suitcase in place, her bed unturned.
And then, perhaps after a moment of breath-starved disbelief, with Gaze's normally pleasant face tense and taut like Marion's usually was, he would notice the light in the bathroom. Perhaps he'd glance the blood on the floor through the crack of the door. At first, he'd think that Marion was hurt-that they'd raped her, cut her, otherwise injured her; he'd call her name and push open the bathroom door to find her crumbled on the ground, blood on her shirt, blood on the floor, the sink running. He would fill with rage for whoever had done this; then, he'd see the carved knife lying beside the bleeding body, and he would understand.
Marion knew what he would think-he'd believe that his quest, her part in his quest, had made her crazy. He would blame himself, and the blame would affect him profoundly. He'd lost his wife, his daughters, and now his only remaining friend. The woman in the mirror faded, going from gray to black, and finally disappearing, but Marion's mind ran on, remembering Gaze.
Stumbling to the door, Marion braced herself against its frame. Her hand left a crimson smear down the white border and her other hand clutched the doorknob. She gasped in pain when her hand closed. The bed was a mere two steps away; Marion stepped falteringly to its side, and fell onto the cardboard-textured comforter. Her hand reached, trembling, for the telephone, clutching the receiver to her ear, the faltering fingers of her other hand pressing the buttons. Nine, for an outside line. Gaze's number.
The phone rang; Marion prayed that Gaze would pick up. It rang again. Marion's entire body shuddered; she could see her blood dripping onto the cheap comforter, onto the sagging bed and overly firm pillows. There was a click on the line, and Gaze's voice, sounding exhausted, spoke, faint and faraway.
"Hello."
"Gaze, it's me, Marion." She spoke quietly, hearing the fear in her voice.
"Marion? What's wrong?"
"Gaze," she said, and the tears returned to her eyes. "Gaze." Marion could barely utter her friend's name without sobbing.
"Marion?" Fear was rising in Gaze's voice. "Honey, are you okay?"
