he said he said where we're going i'm dead

[colla_voce]

But it still startles her; she spins around and her head swims, she spins and can't stop, tilting on her axis like the sun dying, crashing, whirling out of control --

- he left cause'a you -

"Please," Eden opens her mouth and Sarah's quavery stupid little voice comes out, hands flashing bloody over the walls, layered over the prints already there,

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[colla_voce]

You wake up and everything you've ever seen in your nightmares is true. Your hands are bound and there's tape on your mouth and there's a man you've never seen before staring at you. He looks like anyone, like someone's uncle, someone's dad, innocuous, even sweet with his little smile and his dorky glasses.

You wake up and the bruise on your head is like a gash in rotting fruit, like if you could just cut out the bad you could walk away and be all right. You wake up and you can't move, you're powerless and while there's tape over your mouth they could do anything, make you do anything. It's like drinking, like the coke you wish for right now, for that little bit of liquid fire in your veins to push you just right, just more, if you just had that you could tear yourself out of this chair - but you don't and what you're realizing now is that your voice, your pretty little mouth, that thrumming power under it, all your suppressed desire, all a little girl's dreams come to life, that's like a drug too.

You wake up and you're in withdrawal without even being sober.

But then he pulls the tape off of your mouth - is he crazy? Stupid? you don't know, you don't care, fuck it - and spit as hard as you can, fuck you, no one does this to me, not anymore.

"Let me go. Now," and you're putting more power behind that little word than you ever have, even without your power it would sting, cut, his eyes should melt and slither down his cheeks like wet clay under slick hands. Nobody does this to me, I'm not Sarah anymore, I made myself and you can't take that --

It does nothing - nothing at all. He barely even blinks, just takes out a hankerchief, which you didn't realize anyone even carried anymore, just old men who smell like cheap cigars and loneliness, the kind who smile at her in bus stations, sometimes sweet, sometimes like sharks. The cloth is clean and new and it wipes away all your anger, all your power like the words themselves are being sucked into nothingness, and the man in the doorway nods just once.

Just once is all it takes to make you Sarah again.

The screen flashes off with a snap, but not so loud that it covers the click of the door swinging open. Eden pulls back from the bank of monitors, touching her face, surprised to feel wetness there. Maybe she's bleeding again. Maybe...maybe nothing. She doesn't know. She's tired and her head hurts and god she wants a drink. Something. Anything.

When she opens the door it's in such a stupor she barely registers the way the sound of her feet (which was click-clack on the tiles just a minute ago) is muffled, muted, and then gone.