Chapter 7: Sisters are Forever (3)

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The guy never chased after me.

It didn't even seem to matter that I had his severed finger. It was Shanna who he thought he wanted now, not me, and he didn't want to risk losing her by chasing me through the streets.

The last thing I'd glimpsed through the hole in the wall before turning to flee was his pale, sinewy back as he moved toward my sister. Shanna lay on the mattress, her wrists bound by wire, too weak and disoriented to stand after expending so much effort on screaming at me to run.



I must have made my way back to our apartment in a stupor.

The amnesic affects of the ketamine must have already begun taking affect before I'd fled the basement, because I remember now that even when the guy had first dragged my sister to the mattress I was already confused about how we'd gotten there.

By the time I was halfway home I couldn't even remember where my sister was, or why I was filthy, or why I was bleeding.

I knew only that I had to make it home. So I just kept walking and walking through the night.

When I reached our apartment, of course I had no key. But somehow the fire escape ladder in the alley had been pulled down—I had no recollection at all that it was me who'd lowered it—so I climbed in through the window.

For a while I just sat on my bed in the dark, confused about why my sister's bed was empty. By then, I didn't even remember that I'd just climbed up the fire escape. I didn't remember that I'd left the apartment at all.

Mostly I was just wondering why I was holding a cigarette box in my hand.

And I was extremely tired. I remember having a feeling that the cigarette box was somehow important, and that I shouldn't lose it, and that I needed to make sure it was in a safe place before I fell asleep. In a daze, I stumbled into the bathroom and threw the box into the hole behind the sink. It was the safest place to keep it that I could think of.

By the time I made my way back into my bedroom and collapsed onto my bed, though, I couldn't even remember the cigarette box at all.

Then I fell into a deep, deep sleep.


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