In Constant Sorrow

Chapter Seven: New Chains, Same Shackles

Scrim felt the bed next to him, searching for Abilene under the covers, only to find a warm spot and a missing woman. The duvet felt like it was heavy and made of wool, providing a certain resistance against his body as he tried to move from the bed to search for her. Moving through what felt like thick jello, he tried his best to walk from the bed to the door.

"Abilene," it didn't sound like his voice.

His hands felt sweaty and his muscles ached, his body protesting as he tried to open the door. He kept trying and trying but his hand kept slipping around the old brass knob.

"Abby," again his voice was distorted and not his own.

A feeling of dread crept up through his stomach and into his throat. He shook the door handle now with a sense of urgency.

"Baby, open the door!"

It slowly swung open on its own, the hallway before him seemed to stretch on forever into the dark house. The soft glow of the stove light beckoned him forward. What felt like hours he walked, pushing through the invisible force trying to hold him in place. The glow of the stove light seemed to flicker and dance further and further away as he got closer to it.

The floor of the hallway was covered in something, small soft plastic things littered the floor and stuck to the bottom of his feet. He pulled a small blue baggie with his branding of $B embossed on it filled with a white crystalline powder up and held it to the far away light. He looked down again to see thousands upon thousands of these bags strewn across the floor.

He followed them to the kitchen.

The kitchen light was bright and cold, sterile. Like the lights in a hospital.

Abilene was on the floor with all these little baggies scattered around her. Her stomach was swollen with a child, her hair tangled around her on the floor.

A flash of grizzly faces before him and then back to Abilene holding a baby on her hip as she tended to something on the stove. He watched as a man walked through the front door and into the house to greet her, it wasn't Scrim. Chetta turned to look at Scott and then back to Abilene.

Scrim was frozen in place, his stomach twisted and his chest ached.

Another flash of faces.

Abilene's limp body laid on the floor again, blood seeping from between her thighs, and one little empty blue baggie laid next to a plate on the kitchen counter. He watched a different version of himself now, trying to wake up the incapacitated Abilene.

"Baby wake up, Abilene wake up," the man pleaded as he patted her face trying to wake her.

Her eyes rolled open to look at the version of Scrim watching the scene before him, "you did this," she whispered.

As if the other man didn't hear her, "wake up Abilene, please."

Scrim's stomach twisted and turned as he watched Abilene's eyes roll into the back of her head and eyes flutter shut. Bile rose up from his stomach and into the back of his throat. He blinked and was now the one holding onto Abilene.

"Please," he pleaded, "please wake up."

Her eyes opened for a second, her pupils tiny tiny little pin heads of black in her deep hazel eyes, "I'm sorry."

"It's ok baby, it's ok, you just have to wake up," he cried trying to smooth her hair away from her face. "Please just wake up."

"You did this," came a ferocious little voice from behind him.