Burlap

29 - Our Friend Lazarus Sleeps

I woke to the intense pounding of a thousand hammers in my skull, accompanied by rolling, swirling balls of bile playing bumper cars in my stomach. A loud groan escaped my lips while I tried to remember where I was and why I felt like I’d been hit with ten flus, all rolled into one. Even my muscles, usually limber and languid, felt stiff and achy.

“Don’t move too much. The sedatives have… lingering after effects. Wouldn’t want you to lose your lunch all over the new rug.”

The voice from my right added another hundred or so hammers to the group in my head, eliciting a pained whimper from my own voice. What had they tranqued me with? Elephant doses? My eyes, sealed together with a thick film, tried to open, but the tiniest amount of light sent lightning bolts of pain shooting straight to my temples. I squeezed them shut again and focused on trying to remember where I’d been before.

Marcie’s on the thirteenth floor… Robbie’s box of chocolates was a dead end… The gym… Power… The burlap sacks!

It all came crashing back down to me in one huge, weighty heap, yanking my breath from me and crushing my chest like an anvil being dropped from ten stories up. I’d fallen! Fallen from fifteen, maybe twenty feet in the air! I, Kate the Great, fell for the first time in over seven years.

There you go again, being dramatic. In case you don’t remember, you were drugged. Of course you fell.

Except it wasn’t me that fell. It was Power. Not that she’d call attention to that.

“We’re going to have a little chat, Ms. Thornton,” that darned voice spoke again. A thick shuffle of footsteps traveled across the room, followed by a quiet metal-on-metal click.

He’s locked the door.

The rolling in my stomach intensified. Nothing good could come of that. Bad things happened behind locked doors in this place. Fear made a trail up my spine, leaving a cold sweat in its wake.

“What’s going on?” I managed to ask with a hoarse, croaking voice. My throat stung and ached as I tried to find some kind of moisture in my mouth.

“I’m sure by now you’ve noticed the absence of your fellow ward mate. Marcie Greene, yes?”

Shilling, Power realized about a half a second before I did. You’re locked in a room with Shilling, and he knows you’re vulnerable.

“She’s been transferred to a floor better equipped to handle her and her… situation.”

“The thirteenth floor,” I murmured, more to myself than to him. But he heard anyways, smirking in demented satisfaction that I’d heard of the mysterious, menacing, and non-existent floor of the huge building. My eyes finally cranked themselves open against the agonizing light. Better to be in pain but watching the doctor than the opposite.

“Clever girl,” he mocked, walking in long, confident strides across his office. I looked around the room with wary eyes. Every time I found myself in it, there seemed to be more elegance worked into it. Cheap, basic furniture seemed to be magically replaced with expensive, opulent pieces little by little. Where was his money coming from? More residents?

“She didn’t do anything to get sent up there. Bring her back,” I demanded. Still, my voice crackled and broke over the syllables, as if I hadn’t used it in years.

Shilling stopped, turning on his heel to look back at me, an evil glint swirling in his expression that I didn’t like one bit. “On the contrary. Ms. Greene is under suspicion of murder, again. We’ve already established that you’ve heard of our dear Ernie’s departing? It seems his remains have been dug up behind the garden shed, and the evidence we have points directly to her.”