88

Written by David Murdoch

10/14/15
 ONE

Her name is Eliana, but she goes by Ana.

Twenty-three years of age though the life she lives would have you guessing thirty-one at the
very least. The early morning light behind this young woman rims her frame with a golden glow
as she journeys down the sidewalk, careful to keep her eyes down while considering the value of
each step she takes.

Determined to block out everything around her she still lets her green eyes wander occasionally.
Ana’s arms are folded tightly over each other keeping her over-sized coat and hoodie together.
These old hand-me-down remnants swallow her petite body and sway just past her hips. An even
longer shirt beneath it all swirls around her thighs.

She's given thought to keeping warm, but more to keeping invisible.

Step by step she walks down this neglected sidewalk. Each flagstone is a character of its own.
Some shifted, some raised, some overly porous and weathered, some cracked and allowing little
clusters of weeds to climb through.

Ana passes house after house, block after block, each lined with once beautiful Victorian homes
now divided in to apartments. The streets are hedged with high-mileage economy vehicles that
lost their shine long ago. Affordable transportation to counteract the cost of the apartments which
are priced for their proximity to the city.

She walks in silence, in the silence.

There is a steady breeze that picks up for a moment here and there, no birds, and the occasional
hum of a vehicle passing on a nearby street.

For just a moment, the branches and sparse leaves in the trees move, washing over the quietness
with a wonderfully ambient sound like a gentle wave lapping the shore. Ana's strawberry blonde
hair drifts over her face and a strand of it clings to her lip. She removes one hand from out of the
fold and brings her frail fingers up to brush it away. Her nails, pastel shades of gray and yellow
dotted with chipped nail polish, have been chewed and bitten back. As she pulls down the strand
she is careful not to agitate the sore near her mouth. Small and a little swollen it's scabbed over
like her body has been attempting to heal it for some time. The pink mark is abstractly circled by
white rings of flaky dead skin.

She just can't leave it alone.

Unfortunately, the split-end of one hair in the thin strand grazed the irritation and brought it to
life. She swipes it away and scratches at the sore cautiously, sparingly.
This starts a chain reaction and the rest of the sores on her face quickly come to life one at a time,
all begging for a little relief from what remaining fingernails she has left.

Frustrated she hits her forehead with her palm twice and promptly folds her arm back in to the
other bottling the explosion. With a deep breath she makes an effort to keep from clenching her
teeth. Ana slightly quickens her pace.

This whole incident is short and quiet, the gestures are all slight and controlled. Ana is careful, as
always, to draw no attention to herself.

Several blocks behind her down this straight path a figure walks out of one of the homes, Ana's
home. Much too far to see clearly, but still close enough to be seen, he isn't anything more than a
blurred shadow. Reaching the sidewalk from a trot down three short steps, he starts his crooked,
limping walk in the same direction as Ana.

A vibration at Ana's side signals her to reach in to a large purse and remove her phone. She
wakes it up, locating and scrolling through whatever message is there for her.

The man behind her continues in her direction, faster, almost jogging.

Ana reviews the digital correspondence, responding with a bit of head shaking while the figure in
the background still approaches.

She glances to her right, towards the houses at her side, back at the phone, and then ahead.

Ana has only one more block to go.

This man in the distance, oddly enough, is running, sprinting, and dangerously close to her. The
intention in his acceleration is alarming.

As Ana reaches her destination she places her phone in her purse and makes her way up a short,
sunken path to a door of rotting wood layered in stripped paint. She pauses though, half way to
the entry. Dense clouds slowly choke the still emerging sunlight and everything goes cold and
gray. Ana doesn't seem to notice, she just stares ahead as the color leaves her face and the light in
her eyes is diluted with tears. She wipes them away with her sleeve and makes her last few steps.

Ana knocks on the door then gazes down the street in the direction from which she came and
there is no one there. No one at all. Ana stares for a moment as if she'd expected to see someone
there, some sign of life. The clouds move along and the sun begins to shine again. Her
expectation is disappointed and she is inexplicably relieved.

She feels now only a sense a sickness rolling in her stomach knowing where she is.
The home she's reached is weathered and worn much more than the others, although none of
them are too well kept as it is. Its insides are hidden by faded sheets hanging up behind broken
blinds in the windows.

The door opens and she's greeted by a sinister man.

He stands in the darkness of his home, at the door, examining the woman who's just knocked.
With a bit of a huff and a smirk he opens the door granting entry. The sunlight hits his glossy
skin. The sweat and oil coating his flesh glistens, defining the shape of his thin face and
describes it as chafed skin pulled tight over a skull. His jaw is edged with patchy stubble.

Ana ceases contact with his sunken eyes as she steps inside ducking underneath the arm he's
holding the door open with. She turns to face him, looking downwards.

The man, grinning, closes the door while Ana submissively descends to her knees.
 TWO

A brick house, Victorian, much like the others, nine blocks back from Ana's destination, is empty
and dreads her return. There is a short set of three steps from the sidewalk that lead to a stone
walkway that's been invaded by weeds. The walkway leads to the door. The weeds are the only
color that decorates the otherwise dead yard. The exterior is a rainbow of earth tones, patina, and
water stains.

The home is unwelcoming, warning of the emptiness it suffers and the disdain in its windows is
treacherous. It's a house begging for the yellow jaws of heavy equipment to tear it down as an act
of mercy.

This is Ana's home, surprisingly enough, and she's coming back to it.

Ana hurries while fumbling in her purse for her keys, turning her head to spit on the sidewalk just
before she hits the three short steps. At the entryway she manages to unlock the door and
shoulders it, forcing the distended wood to open.

The windows in the door rattle, it's been greeted by the impact many times before. She pushes the
door shut with her foot and goes from window to window, drawing the curtains. Ana is fortifying
the home, keeping herself safe from prying eyes and the light. She's layering herself in a blanket
of privacy and secrets while her heart pumps in anticipation.

The contents of her living room are positioned in a way to suggest they've been bumped and
moved over time, out of the places once previously assigned for the sake of aesthetics and
efficiency. Wooden furniture, each unique in the material used and decade it was crafted, here
and there throughout the main floor living space. It's not quite an open floor plan but each room
can be seen from another through arched frames.

All of her belongings were purchased for an assumed necessity yet most remain purposeless. It
isn't as eclectic as it is dime-store-budget accented with cobwebs and showcased inside nicotine
tinted plaster walls.

Bare shelves. Mismatched wood grains. A collapsed stack of crusted dishes in the sink just below
a cabinet missing a door that's exposing its emptiness.

If you were told this home was vacated in an instant eight years ago, immediately following a
catastrophic viral outbreak, you wouldn't question the explanation.

She sits down on a yellow sofa. Old mustard colored velvet speckled with spills and burn holes.
Buttons are missing on the backrest above the ragged blankets stuffed beneath the seat cushions
to make up for the broken frame's lack of support.

Ana clears off her coffee table brushing party debris and forgotten mail over to the side making
room for her lumbering purse. Both hands plunge in removing its contents.
She retrieves a tin case, originally intended for mints, from her purse and then a small baggy.
From the tin she retrieves her tools. She wets her spoon with a few drops of water, sets the drugs,
and liquefies it. It crackles over the flame. The aroma sends Ana's body in to a heightened sense
of excitement.

Ana carefully places the tip of the needle in to the milky freedom and the syringe drinks it up.

Ana's second floor bathroom is dingy. Cigarette stained subway tile almost entirely covers the
walls, framing in an even more stained black and white hexagonal checkered floor. The shower is
exposed with the semi-opaque plastic curtain drawn back. The details in the tile, in the hardware,
are outlined with lime deposits and rust.

The bathroom functions, and gives Ana enough room to stretch her legs a little after each labored
heave while she clings to the toilet, vomiting.

Her face is red from the straining. Mucus dangles from her nose, saliva from her lips. She breaths
heavy, anticipating more, gulping and gasping.

Inside of her bedroom, that afternoon, sunlight creeps in through the west facing window. Its
beams glow through the shoulder height ceiling of smoke drifting weightless in the air. The room
is painted with an orange hue cast by the curtain. Two queen mattresses, one stacked on the
other, dressed with case-less pillows and a variety of sheets and afghans, sit on the floor near the
window. The closet is without its door and the rack inside is adorned with hangers, most without
clothes. The clothes cover the closet floor, in a pile, fallen down and thrown in.

Ana sits on the floor beside the bed with a cigarette burning between her fingers, the ash is long.

Her eyes are glazed over, matte, barely reflective and lost. They're burned out stars withdrawn in
to the purple and red skin surrounding them. She's almost comatose there in the stillness, in her
peace.

Immeasurable time has passed. An hour, maybe many more. Maybe hardly any time at all.
Really, it's irrelevant. A generic, digital call repeats itself on Ana's phone according to the
reminder she programmed.

Time to get up and put on a happy mask. Time to join the land of the living.

She gets up and heads towards the closet.

In the bathroom she readies herself. She pulls her hair back, out of the way, and splashes water
on her face, drying it, applying concealer liberally. The amount of attention going in to the details
is covering only the basics, meeting the minimum requirements of what's considered acceptable
in terms of appearance by her employer.
Ana has perfected the routine and executes it without skipping a beat. She counts each step, four
at a time, in groups of four.

Ana counts under her breath as she brushes her hair, “One, two, three, four. One,
two, three, four. One two, three, four. One, two, three, four.”

Ana moves to the next section of hair and counts again, quiet, “One, two, three,
four. One, two, three, four. One two, three, four. One, two, three, four.”

Ana, prepped for the grind, managed all of this without looking in the mirror. Not once.

A few weeks ago she made the mistake of looking up from the sink and in to her reflection while
tugging a brush through a knot in her hair. She was fixated, frozen, disgusted.

When Ana looks in to the mirror she doesn't see the sum of her parts, only the parts.

She sees an incomplete thing slapped together with all of the leftovers that God must have not
wanted to use on anyone worth the effort. A monster. An accident. An ugly girl. When Ana finds
the mirror she singles out her nose, her chin, her cheeks. She examines the pores in her skin, the
lines and age that have emerged since the last time she made the mistake of catching a glimpse of
herself. She can't do anything but attempt to correct the overwhelming volume of imperfection so
she takes a pair of tweezers and picks it off.

She plucks at her eyebrows, her eyelashes. She creates symmetry one pinch at a time. She digs at
her skin, poking and peeling away whatever lack of uniformity she finds, pulling down the driest
threads of her lips. It stings first, then bleeds a little. She picks and pulls until the frustration of
failure overtakes her and she surrenders. She spends the rest of the day wondering what was left
untreated, wondering who can see what's wrong, wondering who can see the traces of what she
was doing. Ana wonders if she made things better or made things worse.

It takes only a glance from anyone at all to let Ana know that whatever the worst thing that could
be thought in any case is exactly what they're thinking, and that's enough to conclude that's what
everyone thinks.

She was late to work that day. Today though, she'll be on time.

With Ana gone the house is almost dead silent inside behind the locked door. Sunset light
scarcely lurks in through the windows, the air is still thick with smoke that has nowhere to go. It
feels like an aftermath under the roof. Hopeless and uninhabitable. Not a trace of life.

The same wood covering the main floor continues up the stairs, down the hall, and through the
rooms upstairs with the exception of the bathroom. Gouged, dull, slowly coming undone, it was
beautiful once upon a time.
Above the main level listlessness, in the hall, the wood floor bends. Just a little.

Then again in one of the rooms.

It's a drawn out creaking under a compounding, emerging weight. One of the bedroom doors
groans as it barely moves, closing partly, then it abruptly slams shut.

A deep, baritone moaning intensifies as its sustained for what seems like an eternity, growing
louder.

It comes from behind the door.

It's excited, anxious, terrible, and empty.

 THREE

The storefront call center.

Beige brick and large windows, twenty times more wide than it is deep. The brown aluminum
topping bares the silhouettes of long removed signage that kept the sun from fading the paint
behind it. This plaza was once home to a variety of local businesses, now just the laundry mat at
the end of the complex which is separated from the call center by two empty retail spaces and a
nail salon. The bulk of the building now belongs to the customer service specialists. There is no
name above the front doors, no logo. The company only ever publicly identifies themselves with
its address, and even then only when regularly hiring staff due to the high turnover.

Ana makes her way across the parking lot towards the entrance below the early dusk sky.

The workplace is buzzing with electronics. Phones ringing, a copy machine somewhere in the
background pumping out page three of the updated policies and procedures manual. The
machinery is underlined with the trill of keyboard strokes en masse and the same scripted
conversations mumbled a thousand times over. Ana intermittently passes a series of four-sided
pillars, each one home to one in a series of framed motivational posters. Achieve. Teamwork.
Success. Ana glows rhythmically as she walks underneath each rectangular fluorescent lighting
fixture, she hits the mark every fourth step as she counts them.

Ana whispers, “One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.”

Above her, the other three steps between each light, are pieces of the extensive drop ceiling
mosaic, boasting randomly stained and damaged tiles. It's a disposable piece of abstract art. The
far end of the center is not in use due to a lack of staffing. It isn't inaccessible so the management
simply has the lights turned off on that end.

For Ana, walking towards the darkness ahead of her is a poignant reminder of how miserable she
is there.

Shelly, a coworker of Ana's, steps out of her designated workstation and they collide. The short
stack of manila folders and their contents spill between them and all over the trendy anti-static
carpet tiles. Ana nimbly drops to clean up the mishap.

Shelly stands above her, domineering, framed in her corporate elite, dressed-to-kill and always
classic black and white suit. Arms knit together, head tilted to the left, she obstructs the view of
her highly personalized escritoire. Among the stacked how-to manuals and ink-jet certificates of
appreciation and accomplishment are a variety of cliché Christian ornaments inscribed with
cliché Christian phrases. Shelly isn't perfect, she's forgiven.

Shelly almost curses at Ana but manages to restrain it behind her lips, that way it doesn't count.
Shelly only said it in her head.
Shelly, trying hard not to tap her foot, unfolds her arms and places her hands on her hips
exposing the silver purity band on her left ring finger. She gestures her head back with the
slightest bit of a sigh, rolling her eyes, and shoos Ana away. Ana ingloriously backs off and
continues on to her desk, just about there. Muttering to herself, Shelly picks up the mess much
more efficiently than Ana would have been able to do because she’s making a point.

Safe in the seclusion granted by three and a half padded fabric walls, Ana sits in her cubical. The
computer awaits the entry of Ana's credentials, she stares blankly at the queue light on the phone
console blinking steadily at her.

With her elbows on the desk she sets her head on her fingers and closes her eyes. She presses her
forehead, dragging her fingertips over it to massage the tension. She replays the motion in
reverse, then back down again.

The droning symphony of white noise slowly fades out, giving way to the shrill pitch in her head.
 FOUR

The music is thumping, pulsing. Synthesized hooks and electronic textures rise and fall over
steady beats.

Tribal and grinding.

Lights and lasers rise up and bow down, circling, spreading wide and closing back up again in
sync with the rhythm.

Packed in tight, the patrons crowd the dance floor. Legs of strangers weaved one over the other
are anchoring swaying hips and swimming arms. Those not dancing surround the bar or make
their way to it trying to navigate the throng while not losing their companions.

Ana is already there.

She slams shots of cheap tequila with her fair-weather comrades. Mandy who is Ana's closest
friend is present, though slowly separating herself from the troop as she delivers clumsy kisses to
a suitor she's just met while attempting to work her free hand in to his pants. With the other, she
is spilling her drink.

Mandy looks back at Ana.

Mandy blabbers in-discernibly in Ana’s direction.

Ana responds somewhat confused, “What?”

Mandy increases the volume of the blabbering.

Ana, laughing at the inability to decipher Mandy’s bobbing syllables again asks,
“What?”

Mandy leans in and whispers in to Ana’s ear. Ana throws her head back laughing and gives
Mandy a wave goodbye. Mandy, with Ana's approval, leaves. Ana looks to her side and gives a
seductive look to the stranger next to her. Ana discreetly delivers a small cluster of pills to her
mouth and takes one last shot, eyeballs the stranger one more time and staggers in to the crowd.
It’s a bemused stride meant to bait the stranger.

It only works on those as fuddled as she is.

Next is that scene expressed in slow motion. Ana moves in to fray, her body is loose and moves
effortlessly in to the measured stirring of the people. The air is dense with humidity. The people
become a single body, a single motion, a single wave. Ana's eyes roll back as she loses herself.
The sweat on her skin sparkles like glitter each time the lights make their round.
Back in Ana's house, the party survives the club's closing hour. The entourage, including the
stranger, indulges itself in spirits while shaky fingers pick higher levels of numbness out of a
prescription candy bowl. Most of them are sidelined by the effects, a few still dance and stagger.
The house is full of noise. The pattern of music in the background battling against slurred
sentences, people laughing at how difficult it is to get them out of their mouths, and the
television.

Ana, in conversation, is standing on buckling knees and spilling her drink until the television
catches her attention.

Authorities today apprehended Donald Braun, a nurse at St. Dominic's Home for
Disabled Children, after receiving several reports of sexual abuse being carried
out against the very children he was charged with caring for.

Ana wears a crooked grin under her heavy eyelids. She shakes her head steadily, each turn gains
momentum and pulls her torso a little more increasing her sway until she becomes so unsteady
she's forced to step out of it. She makes some strides towards the old tube T.V. as if approaching
a stage to accept an award.

Ana slurs, “We can wash away his sins, make it all okay!”

When she reaches the set, she pours her drink over the top of it. The picture buzzes and the
electronics pop and smoke. Ana laughs, a few of the friends still sober enough to have registered
the event laugh and cheer, raising their glasses to toast the remark Ana made while conquering
the news story that made clear her utter disgust and lack of surprise in the report.

For a very brief moment, almost too short to notice, Ana loses the grimace and a bit of pain seeps
through the mask she never removes.

She teeters over to the sofa and plunks herself partially atop the stranger. He's hardly conscious
but enough so to grin brashly. She kisses his neck, her hand on his stomach. As her lips move
underneath his ear, her head leans, too heavy to hold, and relaxes. She blacks out.

In that dark moment, the sound around her is muffled, condensed.

It's an eternity the way that kind of blackness stares through your heart so quietly It's the kind of
deadness you can't hear or see but it's deafening and in it you're paralyzed.

Out of the muted sound there is a breath in her ear. It's so, so loud.

As it spikes the rest of the sound regains its acoustic like she's coming up, out of water, emerging
through the surface.

To Ana, it seems as if just a second has passed however the mood in her home is so thick and
muddied it's apparent that more time than what she perceives has gone by.
The pig she was attempting to arouse is midway through a make-out session with another girl
there at the gathering, a nobody and not worth detailing, Lauren.

Ana thinks out loud, “Seriously?”

Anger sweeps over Ana and she pushes up off of the sofa, one hand on a cushion, the other on
the cheek of the rejector, shoving his face. The make-out session is broken when his teeth knock
against the other girl's lip, cutting it, and getting hot pink lipstick on his lateral incisor.

Ana restates her thought now in blazing anger, “Seriously!”

The rest of the attendees observe the commotion. Ana rises to her feet, slapping the man on the
head. She grabs some belongs, tossing them at the couple. As she looks around to see all eyes on
her, Ana contemptuously orders them all out.

Ana, “Go! Go! Get the hell out!”

Not just betrayed by the stranger she coerced but by the friends who are obviously not looking
out for her best interests. She needed the stranger to use her that night so she could pretend for a
moment she mattered. They file out through the front door and in to the street. As Ana stands
there in loneliness, wrapped in haze and the fuzz from the speakers of the stereo, she hears a
male voice from outside, from within the group, laughing, prattling.

“No one wants a piece of that mess!”

The others chuckle and agree, and offer adjectives to flesh out just what kind of mess Ana is. It
was meant only to be heard by the company of the expelled.

One of the drunkards mocks her, “Seriously!”

Lauren echoes, “Seriously!”

Now everyone, having caught on to the game exclaim, “Seriously!”

Ana stares through the open door and fixates, shortly, on the night.

Snapping out of her trance, Ana lashes out. She slams the door shut. Everything in sight that she
can reach immediately is shoved or kicked, each object rattles and grinds over the wooden floor.
The bottles near to her take flight, one at a time, smashing against the bare and tarnished walls.

The fusillade ends.

Ana moves some hair off of her face and wipes some saliva from her lip. She wants to sob, but
more than sad, she is exhausted and irritated that the incident has brought a touch of undesired
sobriety. She turns to the front door and flicks the light switch.
There is still a light on in the kitchen which she ignores.

A few steps towards the stairs, walking along the wall for balance, she gives an old oak curio
cabinet a shove. Even though the piece contains no objects as it was intended to do, and even
though it's lighter than it ought to be, when Ana shoves it, the vacant display just barely tips and
then lands, rocking for just a second. The effort took the last of her energy.

She pauses and takes a breath, preparing to traverse the stairway.

It's a hushed moment.

The cabinet grinds over the floor, turning its back to her.

Ana glares in its direction but it doesn't quite register.

At first she is a little confused, but then huffs, brushing off the impossible. If she feels anything
it's soreness that she was just mocked. Too tired to be bothered with the oddity, Ana turns the
second floor hall light off at the bottom of the stairs as she heads up to bed. Ana mutters
something with each step she takes as if singing a lullaby. It's a woeful poem she chants almost
every night that she's alone.

Gently, and to the melody of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, she sings, “Ana, Ana, so
divine, softer than, a suckling swine. Close your lips, and never tell...”

In the frame of her door, Ana stares at the empty bed. It's like staring at a sad, abandoned corpse.
A nest full of cracked and purged eggs. She steps in to the room, closing the door most of the
way, but incompletely. She strips the mattress of its pillows and blankets and tumbles in to the
pile at the foot of the bed.

Her stinging eyes stare towards the window and the moonlight trickling in. She speaks the last
line,

“...how sweet you make, my fingers smell.”

She gulps in a breath, overwhelmed by disgust, about to cry.

Just before she closes her eyes she whispers through clenched teeth, “I hate you.”

Faintly on the first floor, the buzz of the stereo stutters and abruptly disappears.

Minutes pass. The house is filled with the kind of dead silence that gradually introduces a ring in
your ear the longer you listen to it.
As Ana sleeps on the floor, engulfed in cotton, under the moonlight, a single fly lands on the
blanket over her shoulder. It darts here and there, never touching her skin, and flies off. The
buzzing moves from one side to the other, then to the window. At the window the insect beats at
the glass. Tapping at it, looking for an escape. The song of its wings is shrill, louder now. It's
knocking against the glass so furiously it's almost causing it to vibrate.

At the end of the hall, at the top of the stairs, the silence throughout the house and the panic of
the fly is broken by a thump.

A draft rolls down the hall like a death rattle.

Down the hall, and just shortly closer to Ana's room is a softer step on the wooden floor. It is
quickly and quietly followed by another thump.

Another step.

Another thump.

Each step is patiently moving her way.

A small nightlight plugged in to an outlet in the bathroom glows a little more brightly for a
second, adding a little yellow to the lunar hue coming in through the windows.

The steps continue, drawing closer to the room.

One final pair of steps end on the other side of Ana's door casting a shadow underneath the
bottom of the it.

The shadow stands there, still, for what seems like an eternity.

As Ana sleeps, the door creaks open, it's barely moving. After just a few short inches it stops.
The crystal door handle turns one quarter of an inch, the brass mechanics inside the fixture chirp
sporadically.

It stops for a moment and then snaps back in to place.

If you look to the left of the door, you'll see an empty corner cast in shadow. Endlessly black,
bottomless. You can focus in on this darkness, its hollowness seems to render everything else
around blurry. The longer you stare the darker it gets.

The dark corner is looking back, watching her sleep.

 FIVE

Ana and Mandy sit together in a local coffee shop. The morning sun pours in through the tinted
windows, brighter still in the little spots where tint has bubbled and torn. The beams of sunlight
seem to glimmer with the dense particles of dust that wander through them.

The cafe is populated with ecologically minded hipsters, all fingering their tablets or thumbing
through their smartphones. It's a place that people can go to pretend that they don't keep
themselves as technologically isolated as they do because they're physically surrounded by
people. Unfortunately, the people surrounding any given individual are all as isolated as each
individual pretending they aren't. None of them really notice though, they're too distracted being
social.

Ana stares at her coffee. If she focuses hard enough, determining exactly how many colors there
are slowly swirling on the surface, she won't have to invest too much of herself in the
conversation at hand. She holds the cup up to her lip with both hands. It's hot and the sensation
warms the flesh of her hands through to her bones. She exhales through her nose and it forces the
steam of the coffee back up over her face. She does this every few sips and rather enjoys it. It
soothes the sores on her skin.

The girls recount the evening. It's a back-and-forth trading of hazy recollections, questions, and
assumptions. It's like watching someone write an impromptu fairy-tale.

Ana speaks in to her coffee, “I thought you’d make it over last night.”

Mandy lifts her eyebrows stating the obvious, “Welp, that didn’t work out.”

Ana agrees, “Nope.”

Mandy knows she spent the night with someone and doesn't have a name to accompany the
smeared vision of a face she can't bring in to focus. Ana can only speculate, connecting the dots
while quietly observing the abrasions on Mandy’s skin.

Mandy justifies her absence, “Hey, I’m nursing a hangover, my back hurts, had to
wash my hair twice this morning.”

A little taken back Ana responds, “Oh my God Mandy that’s gross.”

Mandy justifies her justification, “Must have been good. Not that I remember.”

Mandy makes that case that a hangover, stiff joints, sticky hair, and emergency contraception, all
make for a good night. There is nothing about the case that makes Mandy uneasy. Nothing.
Ana is uneasy and jittery.

Maybe it's the conversation touching something deep and unresolved inside her, or maybe it's just
the caffeine. Maybe it's sharing herself with someone that so willingly becomes what Ana was
forced to be a long, long time ago. Ana rolls her eyes.

Always trying to make light of things Mandy jokes, “On to plan B.”

Mandy finds herself amusing and laughs at her joke.

Mandy inquires, “Why, what happened with that guy anyways?”

“Ugh, I threw everyone out.”

“C’mon Ana, really?”

“Pig was making out with Lauren. I just lost it.”

“How’d he pull that off?”

Ana offers an excuse that’s intended to wall up what she really thinks, “I don’t
know. I blacked out.”

Mandy is chuckling, and while she finds this funny, she is also a bit put off by Ana’s mood.

Offering a bit of her apathy Mandy responds, “That’s not always a bad thing.”

“Yeah. Magical.”

Maybe it's that last night was an unsettling event that just drives in a lifelong knowing that if she
isn't available to be used in any degree by any person that there really isn't any reason for her to
exist at all. This is where Mandy would follow up with the “what is it with you lately” style
question, but doesn't, and instead just glares at Ana. Ana would elude, vaguely, that these are the
things going on inside of her head uttering only the most general dose of sarcasm while her soul
is screaming at the top of its lungs, begging to know there is something more, but she doesn't.
Her probing would only get responded to with the one-two punch of Mandy sighing and then
rolling her eyes in Ana's direction, or she'd be glared at, just like she is right now.

Mandy places an assured hand on Ana's knee and promises another night of chemical bliss.

“Look, I’m going to see Bobby later, he’s got something special for me. We’ll
meet up at the club later, get wasted, let it go. When are you off?”

“Bleh, I have to go. I’ll be done late, but yeah I’ll meet you there.”
 Mandy locks her in, “It’s a date.”

Ana leaves, passing Mandy. Mandy looks back towards Ana after she passes and shakes her head
just before turning it back and pointing her eyes at her phone. Ana approaches the glass door and
looks ahead at the reflection of Mandy behind her and then down, just before she catches her own
reflection in the exit.
 SIX

Later, in the lunch room, on her break, five hours after her shift began, Ana sits alone with a bit
of food that she has hardly touched and likely will not. A random male coworker walks past,
slowing down, not stopping, and asks Ana how she's doing.

Ana provides the automated response and follow-up, “Good! And you?”

And the coworker closes the conversation with just as much automation, “Good.”

He continues to the lunchroom door, careful not to maintain any eye contact that may have
accidentally been established while initiating the requirement. It's an automated ritual which one
must engage in to be perceived as a nice person and sociable.

In her silence she overhears gossip trickling from the lips of her Christian coworker Shelly and
her Christian cronies. She listens to their forked tongues flicker and judge some of the other
people in the room. She listens to the inappropriateness of their conversation and chuckles to
herself at the hypocrisy of these self-righteous people. Shelly is describing, in detail, some type
of oral, sexual maneuver she used on her boyfriend, Tom. Ana doesn't get the full, step-by-step
breakdown, but she knows by the number of quietly delivered syllables that Shelly's friends are.
This, however, is no violation of Shelly's purity ring since no actual penetration has yet occurred.
Shelly is fine with this; she believes this is the year Tom will finally propose.

The smartphone set before Ana on the table lights up and buzzes. Ana is so enthralled by Shelly's
conversation the notification almost startles her. She thumbs through a conversation on the
screen. Each timestamp indicates the latency with which Ana consistently delays her reply. The
last message in the conversation beckons her to a hospital.

She types, ''Later''.

It is promptly responded to, ''When?''.

Again, Ana responds, ''Later''.

A weight comes over her. Maybe it's something like the anxiety in an ICU's waiting room, or
having to face a judge.

The next question arrives with some specificity, “Today?”

Ana shuts off her phone, grabs her things, and promptly leaves the room.

Katie, Ana’s sister, stands in her living room looking in to her phone, near the front windows. On
the display is the same text conversation ending with Katie’s “Today?”
Katie is a black woman, just a few years older than Ana, in her late 20’s.

Beautiful, conservatively dressed. Enough so that you wouldn’t think she’d be comfortable being
at home.

She stands motionless for a minute and then lowers the phone. Katie brings her other hand up to
her forehead and rubs it, stressed. She realizes there's a terrible negativatity overwhelming her
and might be slipping through her body language for someone else to see so she folds her arms
and stares out the front window instead.

In a chair near the front door sits her purse, a jacket is draped over the back. She steps back,
deeper in to the room and away from the door. There’s a hutch near her. The shelves are clean
and neatly arranged. She turns towards the collection.

Katie observes a photograph of Ana and herself as children seated in front of their adopted father.
Katie’s face is reflected in the glass. She weakly reaches up and touches its side. Her hand drops
like it's died and her wrist hits the edge of the shelf. Katie gasps several times as if losing her
breath and begins sobbing. She hangs her head and brings up her other hand and regains her
grasp on the image now holding both sides of the frame and exherting more strength that's
neccesary, still crying. Her face changes, filled with anger, she scowls.

Katie turns fast, throwing the picture across the room like a Frisbee. It slams in to the wall and
the glass shatters. Katie gasps in shock, bringing her hands up and over her mouth. She
straightens up and looks towards the front of the house making sure no one saw her.

She wipes the tears away and shuts her emotions off with an uncomfortable amount of control.
She steps back cautiously, away from the debris, and turns towards the door. Katie makes a few
strides and collects her belongings from the chair and then heads promptly out the front door
slamming it behind her.

She passes the front window.

It’s dead silent inside the living room.

 SEVEN

Two drinks and three pills in to the evening, Ana, still not having returned home, peruses a local
shop. It's located inside of an old brick whatever it used to be. The location is more of a
statement than a matter of business sense. The boutique is a maze of waist-high bins packed tight
with vinyl for musical purists. Taller shelves stand against, as well as perpendicular to, the walls.
They're lined with secondhand books, stacks of loosely folded shirts, and a variety of fragile
oddities.

If you aren't looking at what's for sale, then you're viewing the incalculable number of photos and
concert posters plastering the remaining wall space. The store stinks a bit. It's musty, aged,
finished with a bit of body odor and patchouli. Unpleasant, but still any other smell would seem
out of place.

Ana makes her rounds, stalling, and then finds Evan.

It's a pleasant surprise. It's obvious by the greeting that they know each other. It's more enthused
than what you'd expect from acquaintances, enough so you'd make an assumption about how
intimate they were in the past. Neither could tell you with any degree of certainty.

Evan is an attractive man, dark-haired, about the same age as Ana. His attire is simple,
asymmetrical, and has seen better days. He wouldn't have it any other way. His eyes are warm,
hazel, and wise. They exude the most gentle sense of confidence and Ana finds for a brief
interval she is able to relax.

Ana’s happily surprised, “Evan?”

Evan looks up at Ana, realizing who it is, happy, “Ana! Hey!”

He sets down the item he’s holding and steps towards her giving her a big hug.

Ana smiles, “Wow Evan it’s been forever. You look good?”

“Thanks. You too, a little different.”

Taken back Ana asks, “How do I interpret that?”

“It’s a good thing. What have you been up to?”

Ana just kind of shrugs and raises her eyebrows in a “you know” sort of way. Evan cracks a
smile. Ana laughs it off.

Ana takes the attention off of herself, “I’m good. What about you anyways?
Where’d you disappear to?”
Ana dives in, prodding with genuine questions. She wants to know how he is, what he's doing,
and where he's been. He was part of the group which Ana still associates herself with. They
shared the same drinks, the same drugs, the same anchors.

Evan answers each question, elusively, putting more effort in to reading her than informing her.
Ana laughs at the mystery that he's constructing. She notes a difference, citing he isn't quite as
she'd remembered. He confirms it and credits his sobriety. Ana seems just as curious as she is
shocked, and she needs more from him.

Evan loosely explains, “You remember how we used to go out, constantly,

religiously, you know? Every night almost; it was like, steady drugs all day and
then just–a landslide. You know? Anyway I got to this point where it was like I
was living the same moment over and over. I felt like I was constantly outside of
myself just watching, looking at this person that I didn't recognize or even want
to. I'd have these moments of lucidity once in a while and they were, I don't know,
terrible.”

After a smile and pause, Evan asks, “Is this making sense?”

Ana nods short and quick.

Evan chuckles, “Yeah?”

Ana returns his smile.

He continues, “I mean I just ended up realizing that I'd lost all the relationships
that really mattered to me and I'd imposed this sort of exile on myself. I was
dying, really, in a kind of personal hell. I could see that the only thing I had left
was this darkness. But, you know, there, I realized that I had to get to that place to
kind of understand it, and get out of it.”

Evan smiles, again, he wants to lighten the mood.

Feeling it would be best now to shift focus Evan closes, “But, hey, I'm good now.
I have my bad days but, you know, much happier.”

Ana's face lights up a little, “Well, good--Evan. Good. I'm happy for you, that's
really cool.”

Evan turns a bit of the questioning to Ana, a little prodding of his own.

“So, really, how are you?”

“I’m good, I really am. Just fine.”

 “You still see Mandy?”

Ana is still smiling but it’s forced. Fake. “Yeah, yeah, of course. We’re meeting up later
actually. In a bit.”

“Just like old times.”

Ana doesn’t respond. She pulls back a little and looks away feeling it was a bit of a jab. Evan
looks down for a second, a little embarrassed. He see's how she took his remark.

He struggles to salvage the quickly fading conversation, “Sorry.”

Ana’s attempts to answer Evan are elusive, her facade is more of defense that Evan is all too
familiar with. As she fumbles to find the words to put a positive spin on her responses, or
keeping this interaction from becoming too awkward, Evan finds within himself a sincere
concern but he bites his lip. He also knows that the only thing he can do is act as if he believes
the things she's telling him which doesn't come off as naturally as he would have hoped. Evan
places his hands on his hips.

Ana can see something is running through his head and interprets this as disinterest. She responds
by looking at the floor as she folds her arms and takes a little step back. Their conversation has
unraveled after a minute of silence without anything else being said.

She very politely attempts to end the conversation and before she can pave her getaway excuse
Evan lets her know there's somewhere he must be.

Ana laughs, downplaying the discomfort, Evan laughs with her.

Ana decides the conversation is over, “I just, I’m good. I’ve got go though. Mandy’s
probably already waiting on me.”

“Oh, yeah, of course. No. Sure. I don’t want to hold you up.”

Evan does, though, give her his number and suggests that maybe some time they can get together
when it's more convenient for them. Evan passes his phone to Ana for her to enter her number.
After she takes it, he gestures for her's and she hands it to him.

Their brief encounter is over.

Evan concedes, “It was good seeing you Ana...really. Give me a call or whatever,
whenever, I'm always around.”

“Yeah, absolutely. Soon. Yeah.”

The reacquainted friends embrace, and part ways. Ana heads past Evan to exit the store.

Evan watches her walk away with an empathetic, somber expression.

He glances upwards quickly and then back down and utters, under his breath, “Idiot.”

Ana charges through the door, outside, quickly walking down the street with her arms folded one
over the other.

She pulls her hood up over her head and begins muttering to herself, “Get out of that
place...that place. What place?”

Ana's eyes well up with tears and she wipes them away with her sleeve, picking up her pace.

“Will you? You gonna get me out of here? Are you?”

Ana continues, folding her arms back together. She brings her purse around and opens it, peeks
in. She swings her purse back to her side, frustrated.

“Such crap.”
 EIGHT

Later that night Ana has returns to the routine of the club.

Every passing moment is a thousand ton rage moving through pitch black tunnel vision. It never
makes a sense.

Ana never fights it.

She stalks the club and finds a nobody. Another worthless piece of flesh.

They leave.

In the darkness of the parking lot after the club has closed, Ana walks away from a rundown car.
The engine starts, the headlights are engaged, the figure inside is barely visible through the
fogged glass. As the vehicle proceeds to leave Ana, still walking, thumbs through some cash,
counting, and shaking her head with disappointment.

She shoves the money in her purse.

Ana reaches her house, but passes it, continuing on with nine more blocks to go.
 NINE

Ana's off today. She's in the back of a cab staring out the window. Her blank expression is
reflected in the window as she viciously chews the nail on her thumb. She is ignoring the fact
that she's in the cab more than she is observing the scenery. The driver lets her know they're close
to the destination and Ana starts fumbling through her purse.

Inside the hospital lobby the receptionist acknowledges Ana with the exact level
of friendliness required by the institution’s customer service standards, “Can I
help you?”

Ana identifies her destination, “I’m looking for room 514, Clarke. I’m his
daughter.”

The receptionist gives Ana a peculiar look. Ana halfheartedly grins, she knows the look. The
young woman that’s been visiting for days now has also identified herself as Clarke’s daughter.

Ana explains, “She’s my sister. We were adopted. Is there are restroom down
here?”

Ana bends her knees, just slightly bouncing, as she establishes that the second question is really
only because she needs to pee. The receptionist gives directions.

There behind the privacy of the stall door Ana pauses to listen. Confident she's alone Ana ties off
her left arm and delivers a dollop of fresh cooked tolerance before she joins the intolerable.

Up on the seventh floor Ana forces herself through the elevator doors. It's taking everything in
her to come off as sober. She heads down the hall counting her steps, four at a time. She reaches
her father's door and looks in to the dimly lit room. The sunlight cuts through the curtain's edges,
the curtain helps the light over her father's bed shine a little brighter, both sources distract from
Ana's sister sitting on a chair in a dark corner.

Katie sits in the chair with excellent posture. Her coat is folded in half and set over her lap,
topped with her purse.

On Katie’s blackness and Ana’s whiteness, there’s a story behind their adoption.

Mr. Clarke one day found himself admitting to an intense craving for ice-cream. It’s an
indulgence that Mrs. Clarke would never allow up until the day she died but Mr. Clarke
had made this admission, to himself, quite some time before that day came.

Mr. Clarke decided, as a Deacon of the church and pillar of the community, he had no
reason not to eat ice-cream. Mrs. Clarke could no longer stop him, being that she was
now deceased and he knew no one would think he was secretly eating ice-cream because
he was just so upstanding.
 He went to the store to get his ice-cream and realized he found himself in a terrible
predicament not knowing if he preferred vanilla or chocolate.

Mr. Clarke decided to have both.

Katie’s being there seems to be more a matter of what's expected and there's a certain discomfort
she is trying to bury with propriety. Ana takes a few steps in through the door, far too slow to
keep pace with the beeps sounding from several devices monitoring and measuring her father’s
vital signs.

This is the floor where people go to die.

From her seat, Katie welcomes Ana as about as awkwardly as can be done, “Hey,
Ana.”

Ana just looks at her with a gaze that says, “Why are you talking to me? Just pretend I'm not
here, please.”

Katie ignores the soreness, “Well it's good to see you. How are things? I'm
guessing you're stilling holding down your job with how busy you seem to be.
Have you been able to find yourself a good church home yet?”

Ana stands next to her dying father, staring over his bed at her sister. Her only response to Katie
at this point is silence. She adjusts her glare towards the electronics, avoiding eye contact with
both relatives. Katie stares at Ana who is ignoring her with a stone face.

Katie forces a grin and keeps pressing, “So Jim and I have found a great place to
fellowship you know, the pastor there is a very anointed man. They have a great program
for young singles like you and it might be good to get involved with it.”

Ana's skin is crawling, “Like me? What's like me?”

Katie tries to salvage what was ruined before Ana even showed up, “You know,
young people just enjoying victory in the Lord.”

Ana mumbles something under her breath. It isn't clear but almost certainly contains obscenity.

There isn't much else for Katie to say. She fumbles with the words and phrases she knows best,
looking for the right key to unlocking her sister. Ana, at this point, drowns out her sister's
Christianese phrases and concentrates hard on the drugs in her system. She is convinced that
more would have been appropriate.

There is a secret between the sisters, it's the only one link between them. Katie has barricaded
herself in religion and pious practice. Behind the programming, the masquerade, she is frozen
inside a block of ice tossed deep in to a chasm twenty years ago.
The pariah, Ana, is the antithesis to Katie's defenses.

The conflict for Katie is that while Ana's obvious hatred threatens to expose her intricate
construct, her convictions require that she behaves in a way that directly contradicts the
resentment she is hanging on to. She hates Ana and cannot let anyone know.

Ana, deep in concentration, has managed to withdraw herself from the environment. She is
counting silently inside her head believing that once she's met the requirement of an assumed
number of minutes spent in the room she will have fulfilled her obligation as a daughter and then
be freed to continue on her way. These are illusionary chains that may never be broken. She is
counting to four, four times in row. She can't keep track of how many sets have been counted and
has to start over.

Her sister is mumbling something in the background.

Ana is holding on to the bed rail. She feels a cold fingertip glide gently between her index and
middle finger as if they were thighs. Her skin and muscles tenses as a chill races up her arm. Her
eyes open wide, startled. She sees the finger is her father's. His withered head turns on the pillow
towards her and his eyelids peel apart, opening to expose the abyssal sockets that look up at her.

Like a waking serpent he speaks, “Sssso ssssweet.”

Ana throws off his hand and takes three fast steps backwards. Tears are streaming down her face,
over the rage and fear. She would be screaming if she didn't think she was about to vomit. Three
steps back and she turns and runs. Anyone in Ana's path is going to get knocked down.

Katie is still in the room, having no idea what happened, she calls for her sister because she must,
even though she doesn't actually care all that much. Trying to be mindful of the other patients in
the hospital she keeps the potency of her shouting in check.

Sitting there in the dark Katie leans back in to her chair, sneering and shaking her head. She turns
towards her dying father and throws a pitiful, forced frown his way.

Outside Ana steals a cab that had stopped for another young woman and orders the driver to
leave, delivering only an intersection close to her house as the destination.
 TEN

Ana trembles, holding back tears and the urge to hit something. She can't hear much other than
the rumbling in her ear as she clenches her jaw. Only having traveled a few blocks Ana tells the
driver to stop. She throws a crumpled ten-dollar bill at the driver and darts out of the cab.

She slams the door on his shouting as he throws his hands up and runs in to the nearest business,
a local diner.

She can hear the flat line crying out from the hospital equipment.

Head down and arms stiff, Ana walks fast in to the establishment.

Ana moves quick from the front doors to the bathroom and doesn’t seem to be noticed.

She enters, locking herself in the pink and mint-green throwback. It stinks of potpourri.

Ana pours her purse out on the counter, its contents knock against the surface, spinning, rolling.
Some of it bounces in to the sink. Ana turns on the water and quickly opens a prescription bottle,
throwing a handful of pills in to her mouth. She cups her hands to catch the water and sips it. She
throws her head back to swallow the capsules and stares for a moment in to the mirror. The lights
in the bathroom flicker off. Not all the lights fade back in to life.

Ana stares at herself in the mirror, dazed and distressed unable to process what just happened.
Although she typically avoids this, the moment is one that Ana finds comes around from time to
time. A moment when she looks in to the mirror, writhing with hatred for the wreckage looking
back at her. It's a moment where she looks upon her image, outside of herself, as if what she sees
is a stranger. On top of the emotional tidal wave she is now irritated, knowing she will have to
wait for the pills to kick in.

She leans in to the sink and splashes water on her face in an effort to interrupt the cascade. The
water is still running and near scalding hot. Ana pumps soap over the spread where her father's
finger just slithered and begins to furiously work the soap in to a lather. She presses hard with her
thumb against the skin. The feeling won't come off.

A drop of blood then hits the water. It breaks her concentration and she pauses. Deep red, almost
black, it slows down and clouds the water after penetrating the surface. Ana looks up in to the
mirror to see what's bleeding.

Behind her a shadow is rising. Immense, thick. Its hands are against the wall propping its weight.
The shadow's rim is clear and the rest of its features are a blur in the darkness. The shadow is just
as human in form as it isn't. Its face is pale and out of focus. It's standing, taller, growling deep
from its guts.

Ana goes pale.

Inside the diner, from the rear looking towards the front door, the patrons sit here and there. The
dated eatery is drenched in yellow light.

Over the hushed conversations and the sound of silverware clinking against plates, a scream from
the bathroom shatters the quiet.

The conversations stop, utensils drop.

A young man busing a table almost drops the gray plastic bin he is balancing as he collects half
empty glasses.

One of the men in the diner stands up from the table as if to run towards the terror. Maybe to
investigate, maybe to rescue.

Ana bursts out from the bathroom and out through the door.

She runs past the windows and out of the scene as the patrons watch.

Once out of view, they look at each other, they look towards the direction she ran, and towards
the direction from which she came.

There is nothing in the air except for shock and confusion.

 ELEVEN

Ana is hammering on Mandy's door hard enough that if it continues she will probably hurt
herself. Mandy opens the door irritated by the insistence which quickly shifts to shock as she
finds Ana there.

Ana insists, “I need to come in.”

“Ana?”

Without waiting for invitation Ana again insists, “I need to come in. Move! I need
to come in.”

Ana pushes her way past Mandy before ever giving her a chance to answer. Obvious that
something is desperately wrong, Mandy looks one way down the street, then the other, then
closes the door.

That evening the two sit in Mandy's living room sipping tea by candlelight. Ana is huddled up in
the corner of a sofa, gripping a pillow. Mandy is relaxed, sprawled out on a chaise. Ana holds the
cup of tea up to her mouth staring at nothing in particular. Mandy sips her tea, starring at Ana,
and sets her cup down. There are thousand questions and statements running through Mandy's
mind which are mostly driven by the irksomeness caused by the Ana of late. She sorts through
them trying to decide what will best allow her to gauge the current state of their friendship.

Mandy leads, “You home?”

“Sorry.”

“Are you going to tell me what that was all about? You've been here all day and
haven't said a word.”

“My dad is going to die.”

“Finally?” she sips her drink and laughs, “Should be celebrating.”

“I saw my sister today.”

Mandy makes it clear she disapproves, “Oh that's good.”

There is nothing but sarcasm behind Mandy's teeth. She picks up her cup, shakes her head, and
takes another sip.

After instantly processing a myriad of explanations, none of which satisfy, Ana

draws a blank and asks, “Do you ever wonder if this goes anywhere?”
 “Ugh, damn Ana, did she get in to your head? If what goes where?”

“I don’t know.”

Mandy extends her unwilling ear to Ana in more of an effort to help her shut it down than to
actually listen.

Ana keeps quite about the whirlwind of emotion weaved through her being with the threads of
meaninglessness. It is a bleak tapestry that offers a peek at crippling uncertainty and underlying
misery. She can't explain the things she feels. The hollowness, the void ahead of her. She will not
share anything she's experienced, the condemnation for bringing anything like that up is almost
certain. Anything she considers sharing would only be shrouded in ambiguity prompted by the
knowledge that there is no real point in her saying anything to her friend who doesn’t actually
want to hear anything.

“I feel like there’s nothing left of me.”

Mandy wants to say she wished Ana would just go away but goes along anyways,
“Really?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Mandy is irritated.

Ana ends the conversation, “It’s stupid.”

Mandy is that friend that can only insist Ana simply needs rest followed by a binge. What's best
for Ana is what's best for Mandy. As for Ana's concerns she vaguely suggests that if concerns, at
all, become a part of their relationship there simply won't be one.

Mandy has no interest in being paired with anyone that does not support her lifestyle. Support in
both encouragement and engagement. The disconnected conversation falls apart and the tea has
grown cold. Mandy's counsel is just driving in nails and Ana realizes that she's just that much
more alone. Every word of Mandy's is just more weight.

Mandy, in her wisdom, eludes to an ultimatum with a laugh, and she finally
speaks from the heart, “You aren't making a damn bit of sense kiddo. I don't know
about you but I'm going to be living it up for a while, I've got a lot of party left in
me. Can't let this stuff get to your head Ana, 'why this', 'why that', bellyaching all
the time. No point living if you're not living. If you’re done with it, then be done
with it.”
She may as well have just handed Ana a pistol and a bullet.

Mandy takes Ana's cup and sets it down, and then takes Ana's hand, “C’mon.
Bedtime.”

She leads her down a short hall on the first floor and in to a guest bedroom.

It's almost completely vacant except for the mattress on the floor.

Mandy turns off the light in the room as Ana stands over the bed.

Mandy blows an obligatory kiss in Ana’s direction, “Get some sleep.”

In reality Mandy is just saying goodbye.

Ana settles in, and after a minute the light in the hall behind her grows bright for just a second.
 TWELVE

Ana is pregnant, almost full term. She is standing in a street at night and everything glistens from
a rain that must have just ended. The trees lining the street are bare, black, and soaked through.
Ana stares down the street. There are no cars on it, no homes to be seen beyond the trees. The
street disappears in to a fog. Ana just stands there, with one hand against the small of her back
while the other caresses the belly underneath her nightgown.

This is Ana's dream.

The dream jumps in sequence, much like they are remembered, moving from one scene to
another without any event connecting the two.

From the street she is seated in a living room, from the living room she is seated in a restaurant.

She appears, seeing herself, in and out of a variety of familiar locations. Places she knows but as
they are dreamt and if you were to examine the details, none of them really look like the places
they represent.

Each place she visits is dark and decayed. Windows are missing, leaves blow in from the outside.
It’s like the long abandoned future version of the world she presently inhabits.

In each place she meets with one familiar person. A wordless conversation takes place as she is
bound to the intensity of their eyes. Their eyes are the only feature she really makes out clearly,
each pair unique to each part of her life.

Each one of these people are telling her not to keep the baby with little or no reason behind the
advice. It's a pressing intent and will that is communicated through these eyes.

Every figure delivers the same barrage of anger, “Why did you do this? What’s
wrong with you? How could you? Who do you think you are? You’re going to
regret this! Don’t do it!”

She tries to retreat but can't and then finds herself standing in an eternal darkness.

A little light creeps in, just enough for her to see her father. He's twisted and immobile, sitting in
a great antique chair with tar oozing from around his wrists and ankles. The tar pools around him
and starts to run in Ana's direction. It crawls along the concrete floor slowly. From each one of
his bony wrists dangles a leash. Each leash leads to a tight collar cutting in to the neck of a pig.
On the right is a black pig, on the left a white pig. Each peccary is trying to lap up the leakage
crawling towards Ana.

He growls at her, “Cut that baby out.”

Ana sees all of the familiars she's encountered sitting around her in the darkness. They all look at
her with condemnation. They appear one by one from the shadow as if some dim moonlight
slowly begins to glow above them. A great fear takes hold of Ana as she feels she is trapped in
this tight space with them.

Deeper in the shadow, past the group, is a voice that sounds like Evan's and it begins washing her
in peace. Ana focuses in on the reassurance and everyone else there fades in to the darkness as
she clings to this one hope. She feels an unreasonable sense of confidence. Even asleep the peace
is something you can see on Ana's face.

But at the end of Mandy's short hall is the sound of a step, and a thump, and a step.

The pattern continues until it reaches the door, which then creaks open.

The door opens slowly and completely.

There is nothing visible in the doorway.

The next thump lands in the room and it bleeds in to the sound of wood bending, straining, as if a
great force in the doorway grows in weight.

The fine hair on Ana's neck and arms stiffens and stands up. It moves like tall grass in a cold
breeze. The shadows in the room move and bend, stretching towards the sleeping girl as if a light
were shifting, until they cover her. As they move, the blinds in the window are drawn closed by
an unseen force.

In the fullness of this darkness emerges the figure of a man and it's a shadow itself. It leans over
her and its form changes, becoming monstrous, deformed, and with very little clear enough to
define any given part of it.

The shadow places its hand is on the bed, its fingers grow long, extended, and it begins to seem
more physically tangible now than just a moment ago. The springs in the mattress groan bearing
its mass as it leans its head in to her ear.

The shadow’s throat shimmers with snakes swimming inside of it. Growling bass is whispering
indescribable speech through the room. It’s a thousand voices as much as it is one. A foul and
twisted mouth opens in the shadow next to Ana's cheek. Its lips are split and flaked and its teeth
are putrid.

Ana sleeps, but tears stream down her face cleaning it of the peace it wore only moments ago.

This mouth is a vacuum. The unearthly words it speaks are stealing and destroying hope. Each
command is a breath laced with the joy it takes in its power.
Ana awakens suddenly to the hatred that is surrounding her.

She’d be screaming if there was an ounce of air in her lungs.

Ana lays frozen, paralyzed with fear.

Her eyes dart in every direction, in an instant, and she is careful not to move.

Ana pulls her face in to the blankets and cries uncontrollably, gasps for air, and claws at her skin
still stinging from the rape of her soul.

She is alone there in the room.

 THIRTEEN

Ana sits solemnly in the sanctuary, slouched, guarded behind folded arms. Her face is washed of
color. Her eyes are swollen and circled in darkness, wandering through the church. She stares at
the warm glow around the stained glass windows. She examines the wood work at the front of
the church. She looks here and there while burning it all down in her mind.

She looks at the emptiness of the pews and then up towards the front at the back of Katie's head.

Ana looks past Katie at the portrait of her stone-faced father sitting next to his casket on an easel.
The borrowed pastor wraps up his address to the handful of attendees. They promptly file out.

Jim Katie's husband, rubs her back and glances back at Ana. He then whispers in Katie's ear. She
doesn't look back, but does shake her head. Ana watches and imagines them bleeding. Jim and
Katie are the last to leave and make their way down the isle without even a look in Ana's
direction.

Ana puts just as much effort in to ignoring them.

It's as quiet in the church as Ana's dead father lying in his padded box. In a fog Ana makes her
way up the three steps leading to the stage where he is being displayed. Ana looks down at the
painted face and tightens the fold across her chest.

Her emotions are reaching their peaks. Adrenaline flows through her. Ana's stomach is in a knot,
excited and sickened. Her feet are sweating and tears are welling up. The drugs in her system toss
around her ability to pull one cohesive thought together. She sways a little because the collision
inside of her is making her faint.

Behind Ana, half way down the isle is Katie. Past Katie, in the doorway, is the shadow. Katie is
watching Ana sway.

Disgusted, Katie says, “You have got to be kidding me.”

Ana pauses, she thought she was alone. She turns to look back and see only her sister standing
there. There is nothing in the doorway.

Ana whispers as she resumes her sway, “Don’t start with me.”

“You know I really shouldn't be surprised that you'd show up like this.
You're a junkie Ana.” She's wiping some tears away with an embroidered
handkerchief, “If you want to get anything from this Ana then it should be
a chance to forgive him. This is probably your last chance.”

Ana's eyes are stinging. She grabs a hold of the coffin and growls, “Him? Him?
Him? Forgive him!”
 Ana's neck is tense, along with every other part of her, and she forces her head to turn in Katie's
direction. She'd crack a tooth if she clamped down any harder.

Katie comes to daddy’s defense, “Ana all that poor man did was try to love us. He
made a mistake.”

As Ana's gaze falls to the floor she whispers, “Ana, Ana, so divine. Softer
than...”

Katie can’t hear her and continues, “God puts these terrible things on us so that we
can learn how to be victorious Ana.”

“...a suckling swine.”

Katie keeps piecing her argument together, “You know if you could have
appreciated what he did for us than maybe it might have stopped.”

“Close your lips, and never tell...”

Katie keeps fighting, “For all the grief that you brought to me, and him, when we
were growing up, you'd think you might be happy to even get the damn chance to
forgive him.”

“...how sweet you make my fingers smell.”

Katie gives up, “Goddammit Ana will you stop that blabbering and get yourself
right like I had to do.”

Katie has raised her voice substantially at this point and she's now stomping her foot. Her
swelling anger is fracturing her piety. She's getting profane.

Ana is taken by years of rage and of pain, “Go to Hell Katie. You're gonna stand
there and lecture me about how I'm supposed to live my life. Go to Hell! The only
reason, the only reason, he stopped screwing you is because you got too fat! And
once you realized it was over you spent the rest of your life kissing his ass just to
keep it from happening again! You've spent your whole damn life pretending to be
perfect and perfectly content just to keep yourself safe! You closed your eyes to
everything around you and pretended your life was fine, wrapped up in your
religious bullshit while I was right there with him between my legs.”

She is screaming, seething, vehemently. Ana's face is red now and she's almost
foaming at the mouth as she cuts herself free, “You are dead to me!”
 “Well then good riddance. I hope you enjoy your loneliness. Now that he's dead I
don't think there's anyone left that would want you anyways! Look how ugly you
really are!”

Ana hears her words and lets out a shrill cry, pure pain. She topples over the coffin. It hits the
stage hard and slides quick down the steps. The front hits the floor and their father's corpse spills
out. Ana grabs a vase positioned near the easel full of cheap synthetic flowers and throws it at the
giant crucifix on the wall past the stage. It shatters against Christ's face.

Through her shock and tears Katie screams, “You know what, why don't you just
do us all a favor and go kill yourself, you're probably going to Hell anyways!”

Ana storms out of the church, past the body, past her sister.

There is a storm circling Ana. It's a consuming and boiling torrent. Smoke and fire and ash has
stained everything.

Everything in the world moves in front of and past her in a blur while she stands immobilized in
the madness. She never even notices night fall over her.

Ana is nothing more than a means to an end in her friendships. A prop.

Unidentifiable in the stagnancy and slavery of her career.

If not her father's whore than the she is her sister's ruin.

In any way that anyone could want her, no one does.

In any way that she could find peace, it has never been there.

The only thing left for Ana is the darkness.

 FOURTEEN

In a slow, hard hitting rhythm Ana paces herself through the end.

In the black gape of her world she runs her routine one more time.

Ana's living room is dark, still, and in ruin. All its contents are moved and angled. The coffee
table is toppled. A small fluorescent light above the kitchen is sink pulsing.

The clothes Ana had been wearing are strewn out on the floor of the hall upstairs. The bathroom
door is open and a steady cloud of steam rolls out.

A wake for the girls' Father is taking place in Katie's house.

The funeral attendees stand around the living room in conversation.

Katie is sitting in a chair by the front door, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees, one
hand in the other. She has no expression at all. Katie stares in to nothingness, completely,
mentally and emotionally removed from the environment. Motionless.

Jim approaches and gestures as though he's speaking to her and pauses, dropping his hands to his
side. He stands there for a moment and then leans in towards her slightly and puts a hand on her
shoulder while gesturing again as if he's repeating the question.

Katie stares ahead blankly, unresponsive.

Jim removes his hand from her shoulder and walks away.

Ana is standing in the shower. The curtain isn't completely drawn.

Ana's hands are up part way as if she is trying to keep from touching something that would make
her sick. Motionless.

She has the same blank expression as is on Katie.

The water splashes against her red skin. It's scalding hot and she doesn't care.

In his apartment, Evan is lying in bed, asleep.

His bedroom is simple, but really just too dark to make out any details. His eyes open and he
wakes, fully aware. He exits his bedroom door in pajama pants and a t-shirt, rubbing his eyes.

Even walks in to his living room and reaches for a lamp next to a sofa and clicks it on. He rubs
his chin and jaw and stares towards the floor. After a moment he makes his way around the sofa
and sits down.
He sets his elbows on his knees, folds his hands together and rests his chin on his hands. He
glances up, towards the open window before him. A breeze moves through and the curtains lift
gentley. He closes his eyes.

Ana sits on a bench downtown, alone, staring blankly. Her lips are moving, barely, as she carries
a quiet conversation with herself.

Ana walks through the isle of a liquor store with a bottle of courage in hand and then out through
the door. The clerk leans over the counter shouting, waving his fist. As Ana exits he motions
with his hand as to not bother with the shoplifter.

She passes in and out of each motion giving each savior a chance to set her free without any
expectation and without any hope.

None answer.

The club's music just echoes in to one incoherent ringing. Ana can only stand still because the
hate and pain inside her is much louder.

The needle stings just the same but as high as she gets the pictures in her head are more clear
than ever and she can’t quiet the calling darkness.

The next stranger leaves her in the rain that's now coming down, in a puddle, with scrapped
knees. She’s too distracted to deliver and his insecurity is described with the back of his hand.

Ana's heart slows now. Each beat is heavy and tired.

 FIFTEEN

The drums are quietly chanting in Ana's house.

Sore with tension and burning eyes she barely clings to neck of her bottle.

Having come in from the rain and out of her puddle she stands entirely broken and weak. Her
hair is darkened with moisture, clumped and clinging to her face just as her frock is clinging to
her body and shifted out of place. Her jacket hangs off of her shoulders. The scrape on her left
knee is still bleeding a little and the deep red running from the damage is diluted by the drops of
water on her shin as it trickles down. The few tears she has left dangle from her jaw, their path
drawn with thinned out mascara.

The front door is still open, barely. As she stands there with her back to it, it closes, and the
shadows around her grow darker.

As the ritualistic sound repeats it is joined with a hidden breath. It exhales, huffing. Each breath
itself isn't a word you can define or understand but each breath itself carries a will and intention.
The mantra seduces Ana and she is carried, driven in to the arms of this romance and
surrendering completely.

She makes her way to the base of the stairs and pauses to look up in to the hallway. Ana is taken
with an overwhelming sadness and starts to breath heavily, frowning.

The lights behind her buzz and bend and die.

Ana can barely make each step. She ascends towards the hallway. Its light shines down at her and
the shadow cast behind her on the wall moves as if it is its own entity.

At the top of the stairs Ana looks towards her bedroom. The door opens slowly for her. From the
dark of the room the rumbled buzzing of a million insect wings serenade her. She proceeds down
the hall as a bride to this Siren, this death.

The chanting, the drums, the breath are all heavier.

Her shadow has peeled itself off of the wall and follows behind her. She can feel its footsteps and
knows they are not her own.

Ana passes through the door and the last footfall behind her is the clack of a hoof and the wood
wails, bending beneath it.

With what little lucidity Ana has left she hears it and her head falls back, her eyes close
tight, and she sobs, “Why do I have to do this? Why do I have to do this?”
In the middle of the room she collapses to her knees, trembling.

The chant stops at its peak and there is a brief silence just before the door slams shut cutting off
the light in the hall and sealing the darkness. It's so quiet.

The shadow behind Ana is in its fullness. The shadow, the agony, the demon moves towards her
and swells like water drawing the darkness of the room in to itself and wearing it like a cloak.
From the despair a long hand reaches gently for her back. The awfulness of this thing places its
pointed fingertip at the base of Ana's neck and gracefully traces her spine. Ana's hands contort
with intense and sickening fear.

She turns her head to catch of glimpse of this tormentor.

It isn't there.

She turns her head back to find it right there before here, leaning in. Hulking, clothed in ragged
night, the insides of the hatred are moving in a frenzy like trapped bats beating against a closed
window. It extends its crippled hand and opens it. An old razor drops down and lands in front of
Ana. The Thing places its fingernail on the tool and it pushes it across the floor towards Ana's
knee. The demon opens its face to reveal the long and corrupted teeth in its mouth.

It frowns at Ana derisively and growls, “Sssso ssssweet.”

Ebony bile dangles from its lips as it imitates a smile.

Ana deflates, dropping her clawed hands loosely at her sides.

She drags her right hand towards the razor and, turning her eyes towards heaven,
whimpers, “Please.”

Thunder answers her.

 SIXTEEN

The demon cautiously withdraws his hand as the frenzy inside of it subsides and from the bats
and winged horrors come the snakes and the worms. They crawl, increasingly faster, from its
core towards is back as the entire shadowed form slowly backs up.

Light creeps in underneath the door growing bright and bold. The hall is filled with the sound of
a thousand sharp winds racing through it.

The light grows brighter still.

The demon drifts backwards and binds itself to the wall behind it, clinging, looking desperately
in each direction for an exit.

The light climbs up the frame of the door as the door itself bends and swells. The fire of this
glory steadily permeates the fibers of wood until engulfing the entire thing.

Majesty pours in to the room and the illumination drenches the demon. It shrivels, thinning. This
bloated shadow peels and the flakes are drifting off of it like ash and dust are revealing its brittle
and impotent form. It bays a wretched plea howled like a tongueless spasm.

Climbing, fleeing up the wall, begging, the deformity is answered only by eyes of molten purity
opening inside of the light.

The room is aflame in blinding light, all but a corner reserving a black shadow for Ana to which
she retreats, hiding.

The form engulfed in the light moves in to the room.

From the light a foot steps on the pile of pills crushing them. It is bronzed, sandaled, and pierced.

The creature is plastered to the wall squirming underneath the crushing pressure of the light and
moving to the window.

From the light a voice of authority speaks, in calm power, one simple word, “Go.”

The demon evaporates through the window and in to the darkness of night.

The figure in the light turns His head to the still dark corner and kneels down, facing it, and
smiles. From that dark corner is the crying of fear, relief, confusion, exhaustion, all at once.

He says her name, “Eliana.”

The darkness of the corner is only answering with whimpering.

 Again He quietly calls to her, “Eliana, come to me.”

He extends his hand.

“I don't want you to see me.”

He smiles, lowering his hand but not withdrawing it, “I've always seen you
Eliana.”

From the shadowed corner, cautiously, Eliana steps out. She looks at him, unsure.

He brings his hand back up, and the other.

Eliana runs to his arms and they embrace.

“Where were you?”

He assures her, “Right here.”

“I needed you.” She pauses and then confesses, “I can't do this anymore.”

He assures again, “I will carry this for you Eli. We'll make a new way.”

They continue their embrace, Eliana is releasing her heartache, melting in his arms.

With his hand on her shoulders he leans back, with tears in his eyes now he
confesses, “I have something I want to give you Eli.”

“What?”

“Everything.”

They hold on to each other as light consumes the room.

 SEVENTEEN

The morning sun pours in, illuminating the peaceful quiet of the home. It's clean. Straightened
out. Litter free. The living room is kissed by the ambiance. Birds are chirping outside.

In the kitchen the sink is empty, dish-free. The coffee pot to its side is on with about three cups
left in the pot. On the windowsill is a flower in a vase.

The small table in the breakfast nook is neatly set.

The home is Eli's, no mistake about that, but the countenance has changed. There is a sense of
pride, a sense of hope and newness.

Eli passes through the home collecting her purse and coat from a rack near the front door.

She steps outside.

From her porch she observes a car parked on the street. The man inside is yelling at someone on
the phone, obvious by his gestures and expressions as he cannot be heard.

Across the street a couple walks beside each other, silent, each with their hands in their pockets.
A man thumbing through his phone isn't paying any attention and slightly bumps the woman. The
man she's walking with pays no attention, the man on the phone who bumped her doesn't either.
She looks quickly back and forth at each of them and keeps walking.

At one of the houses, a young teen girl is being dropped off. She stumbles out of the car drunk
and fixes her short skirt. The older man behind the wheel leaves as soon as she's shut the door
without so much as a glance while she waves good-bye.

A priest quickly passes a broken homeless man barely clinging to his cup, the priest doesn’t even
look.

It's a worldly noise that bleeds together and gets louder.

The noise quickly subsides as Eliana gently closes her eyes, takes a deep breath.

A voice from the sidewalk asks, “Are you ready?”

There stands Evan holding a cup of coffee in each in hand with a book tucked under his arm. He
gives a reassuring smile to Eliana.

She opens her eyes, looks at him, and exhales.