Chapter 4: Day 1 - 8:25 am
"Could you just send someone? She needs help! …Thank you." Sam drops the phone into the cradle and turns toward Mary. He watches her, uncertain if she is asleep or awake or if they even differ, now. He almost speaks to her, something encouraging like, "help is on the way, Ree." No, not Ree; Mary. In another world, one where he might be capable of speaking to his wife’s still body (Corpse! his mind insists, to which Sam replies with another mental fist down his throat), he would have called her Mary.
Sam's gorge rises, hot and sweet on the furthest of his taste buds, and he stumbles toward the bathroom. He makes the toilet just before a massive geyser of bile erupts from his throat. He hangs his head in the bowl, urking weakly, then fumbles a swatch of paper from the roll. With trembling fingers, he wipes his lips, then the toilet seat, so Mary won't sit in anything nasty—
Sam vomits again, this one smaller and hotter, like puking up a Molotov cocktail. He spits long strings of drool until his mouth feels pinched and puckered. Sam slumps down on the floor next to the toilet without cleaning up and waits for the sirens. He cannot wait with Mary.
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Mystery / ThrillerMary cannot move. She cannot blink or swallow or ask for help. To the real world, she appears to sleep. But she is very much awake and aware of the torture she must endure. Mary suffers from a nightmarish condition—Locked-In Syndrome, a rare neurolo...
