Stolen

Part 1: Bloodbath

The blood rose up fast, leaking from around the shard, which was already slick and wet with the stuff. Marilynn drew the glass out again, and it slipped from her hand, slicing a stinging line across her palm. Her breath shuddered, and she felt dizzy, seeing that much red everywhere: on her hands, the floor, soaking through the fabric of her top, in between her legs, and probably dried on her face, too.

The pain hit her just then, a profound throbbing in the deepest part of the cut. Marilynn felt sick. So, so sick that she shook with the feeling, and her wrenching sobs only made it worse.

Oh, God, why did I have to do that.

Somehow, though, a part of her didn't regret it. Told her she deserved it. Told her that absolutely everything and everyone she was involved with would be better without her. It was strange, but not unfamiliar, that her thoughts reflected the exact opposite of what the ignored survival instincts, the pain permeating down to her bones, screamed at her.

Her head spun so bad that she almost couldn't see, especially through the darkness that filled her vision in brief pulses.

Feverishly, Marilynn dragged her hand across her brow and felt the sheen of sweat that lay there. Even that one action took a mountain of effort, and she couldn't stop her arm from immediately falling limply to the cold, hard floor.

Even her lungs felt weak and weren't breathing nearly enough air. Or was it that the bathroom had next to none?

She suddenly heard a voice, Davis', nearly right outside the bathroom door, saying, "Hold up. I forgot my driver's license." Her mind snapped back to attention for a brief moment, allowing her to hear his footsteps heading back down the stairs, the door opening, then a heavy voice saying, "Is Everly Wallace in here? We have evidence to suggest his involvement with the disappearance of a missing person at this location."

Police. The police were here. Marilynn clung to the side of the toilet with her uncuffed hand, but as soon as she tried to draw herself up, a bout of dizziness overpowered her, and she cried out at the open wound stabbing her nerves all over again. She didn't remember sinking to the floor, but after she opened her eyes, there she was, on her back and staring up at the lurching ceiling.

Distantly, she heard the door burst open and felt Everly's hands on her shoulders. He must've heard her cry out, because the next thing that happened, he was shaking her and sending a glance of fuzzied pain through her body, stemming from the cut in her stomach. At this point, the pulses of darkness in her vision lasted for so long each time that they blinded her. Marilynn heard his words, though barely, over the ringing in her ears, but they seemed incoherent and garbled, and spoken as though from afar.

Whether Marilynn was screaming her lungs out or merely crying softly at this point, she couldn't tell. The physical and mental seemed to now morph together into a kind of surreality. The indecipherable, agonized thoughts which had previously raged loudly and taken over every corner of her mind, faded abruptly into background noise as an extraordinary vision of radiance dawned upon her.