Love in Death

Are You Okay Allison?

            A week later I found myself back down in the kitchens kneading more bread dough. And once again I was working alone with Allison. Now is as good a time as any to ask her if she's all right I suppose.

"Allison?" I force myself to get her attention, not wanting to bother her too much by asking again so soon.

"Hmmm... yes Samantha?" She looks up to me, pausing in her movements, her hands in the dough.

"I'm sorry, it's just, how have you been feeling lately? You've just seemed, I don't know, a little off this past week or so." I admit while asking the question.

She blinks at me, her blue eyes boring into mine. "I'm fine." She shrugs, "Maybe I've been a bit more tired than usual, I haven't noticed anything unusual."

"Oh, well that's good that you're still feeling fine." I nod, turning my eyes back to the mound of dough in front of me. I begin to knead it again and become hyperaware of the silence in the room. I look back up, green eyes locking on blue, and find Allison is still looking at me strangely.

"You're about ready to pop, aren't cha?" She cocks her head and her eyes travel down to my swollen belly.

"Um, yes. I suppose so." I take a deep breath as her stare begins to unnerve me, the look in her eyes unsettling.

"Who's going to take care of that darling little baby once they send you off to jail? You can't raise a baby in there ya know." She slowly takes a few steps, walking around the island she is working at and towards mine.

"I'm going to be released. I'm not guilty." I tense as she takes another step.

"You really think that?" She snorts, "They're more likely to release me than you. Even that boy, Kit, or that crazy sex addict Grace have got a better chance than you." Her voice now sounds crueler than I've ever heard from her. She usually sounds so nice and calm, now her voice is enough to make me think she might actually be crazy. "Who's taking that baby?" her eyes look back up to mine, now they are hard and cold.

"I've asked Magda." I take a step to the side, still working on my dough. Not sure what she would do if I moved much more than that yet.

"Oh, come on now," she sneers, "that old nurse? Really, you might as well just give her to that crazy pin head who drowned that baby. She'd be just as good as dead either way." She reaches out, a friendly motion with her arms open. Her smile is soft but her eyes still frightening, "You should really just give that child to me. I'll take good care of the little one, don't you worry a bit Sammi dear."

"Oh, no, I couldn't burden you with that." The lie slips through my lips as we maneuver ourselves around the small counter, her trying to get closer and me trying to keep distance.

"Oh, but I insist. I love babies. Always wanted one myself, but Jared took that from me." Her eye twitches, memories hitting her. "I had a baby once, a sweet little baby girl. Meredith. She was beautiful. Eyes greener than grass, and silky brown hair. Just like her daddy." She stops and stares unblinkingly at me. "He took her from me Sammi girl, he took my little Meredith. He cheated on me with that little slut Christine, and when he got her pregnant he left me for her and took my little baby from me. He ripped my whole life apart. They had to go, you understand? Mother's instincts." She shrugs, "I knew I had to kill them. But they got me locked up in here before I could. So, that little home wrecking whore still has my good for nothing husband, and my baby girl."

"Babies are a lot of work you know." I tell her, trying to stay calm. "I'm sorry about your Meredith, that must have been devastating." My hands rest on my stomach, gently stroking the place my own baby was growing.

"Oh, it was, it is." Her eyes refocus, "But you're going to give me your baby." Her blue eyes look almost dead, void of emotion and I want to flee as she picks up a knife that the orderlies must have not seen left out. "I'll kill you if you don't."

"That's really not necessary." I hold a hand up in front of my, now defensively holding my stomach.

"It is." She steps forward and my back hits a wall as she raises the knife. I shriek as she lunges, and I manage to duck out of the way but the blade knicks my arm. A trail of blood begins trickling down from the cut as she advances.

"Allison, stop. Please." My fingers drip with my blood as I hold my hand out, trying to appeal to her again.

This time when she lunges she manages to knock me to the ground, and I struggle to try to get her knife. The blade is pressed to my neck and tears stream out my eyes as the blade begins to cut my skin. As I'm shrieking, screaming, and crying for help suddenly she is pulled off of me and is struggling against nothing. Nothing but a shadow. That strange feeling of serenity and death seeps through my body, down to my bones and I can do nothing but stare.

My senses kick in and quickly I scramble backwards as I watch her shriek now, until suddenly she is still and staring above to the ceiling. "Allison?" my voice is shaky as I call out, slowly crawling forward as I hear orderlies rushing through the hall. "Allison?" I try again, shaking her now as they come into view.

Both of us are grabbed and I am pulled away from the room, forced back to my own where I am set down in darkness and left there. Alone.

"What was that?" I whisper to myself, not knowing what on earth I could have just seen. It was the same thing I saw the night Christopher died. Taking deep calming breaths, I lay back down on my hard bed, pulling the thin sheet around myself for comfort. My dreams that night are different than the one nightmare I'd been having for months now. This time, although it still includes the previous events, now also has Allison, this shadow and the accompanying feeling of death.

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