Page 36 of Wicked Vile King
Worst of all, there's no door in front of me, not where it counts anyway. No, I see the window above the bathtub and her body, my only means of escape.
Tha-tha-thump, tha-tha-thumpskips my heart in my chest.
I can't breathe, and just like before, closing my eyes does nothing for the coming hysteria.
I scream for help, or I try to, but the sound is choked and coughed. No one comes. Just like no one came back then.
And I relive the terrifying moment my hand slipped from the broken doorknob, and I held myself, shaking and quivering in the darkness.
I curl on the floor, just as I did all those months ago, because here and now, it's the same. The bathwater still spills, running pink and bloodstained up and over the tub, down the sides and following her limp arm to where her fingertips touch the floor.
Dusk has arrived on the horizon, bathing the bathroom in woven gold, and I need out of here—I need toleave—but I can't get up off the floor. I'd have to climb over the bathtub, over the body and what's left of her, and I can't stomach it. I dry-heave again at the remembrance.
How the motion sensor light my mother always complained about went dark when I was too afraid, too scared to move.
How nightfall turned the room to black.
How no one heard my screams, not until the maid came nineteen hours later.
I am back in that bathroom with my mother's body decaying in the bathtub a few feet away from me. The world smells like cinnamon and sugar and the bitterness of blood.
But that can't be right.
Snap out of it!!!
I can't. I curl further into a ball, as the water runs cold and wets my clothes, as it continues beneath the doorjamb and out into the carpeted bedroom.
I need to move—I need to scream for help—but I'm too scared.
"Help," I wheeze as I lay there. I feel my mind fracturing. One-half of my brain exists in this world, in this chamber with the dripping water and the old secrets. The other is with her body, on the floor, catatonic, and locked in my head.
I am two people, trapped together, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to put myself together again.
Drip, drip, drip.
I open my mouth to speak, but nothing escapes except a raspy breath. My mind is severed, and my body locks down. You can't live in two worlds, the past and the present. It's one or the other and always has been.
The past wraps its talons around my ankles and drags me down with it.
Drip, drip, drrrrriiiippp.
I blink into the nothingness, just like I did back then, wishing for it to not be real.
But it is real. It's the thing that tormented me through countless sleepless nights. Every time I shut my eyes, I was back there, watching night creep over her body, scared shitless, and unable to move. I couldn't climb over the tub.
What if I fell in with her?
What if her cold flesh touched mine and it killed me too? I didn't want to die, not then anyway.
Her mouth had opened in death and her eyes stared at me, pinning me where I lay. When the tub gurgled, I tried to scream, but no sound came out. Even in death, she commanded me.
Stay. Be quiet. Be a good girl.
Here, I stay, once again.
I don't know how long I am there on the cold floor of the hidden passageway.
Or not there, not really, but back with my mother, nightshade spilling shadows along her pale skin, her faux tan from the salon drained out of her from the cuts on her wrists.
