Saving me

JACK:

These prison gates won't open up for me

On these hands and knees I crawl

and oh, I reach for you.

She was there before him and he was too far away to touch her. She surrounded him, frozen in pictures, captured in camera lenses, a thousand reflections cast in a thousand different mirrors. And still he was alone, watched by infinite pairs of expressive azure eyes, unable to grasp her.

His pulse began to race. The blood screamed in his ears. He bared his teeth, growled low, fists clenched. He stared into the computer screen where Samantha stood, immobile, blonde hair sweeping forward, eyes locked on his in an infinite tableau. Caged beauty, a hothouse rose, so frustratingly, achingly close.

He swiveled his chair away from the screen and stood. He prowled the room, a panther pacing out the limitations of its cage. It was a manic day, the kind he had come to dread, when nothing would satisfy but the contact he craved, the presence of Samantha gathered from the shadows, his blood boiling with heated pleasure. His patience was falling away, his carefully crafted plans threatening to tumble down in shards around his feet unless he could retain his control.

Jack grabbed a pillow from the enormous bed and pressed it to his face. He screamed into it until his voice was hoarse and raw, fingers clawing gouges in the fine linen, arms shaking with strain as he grasped the only tangible thing in the room and bellowed out his frustration and pain.

Only Samantha could save him now.

SAMANTHA:

I'm terrified of these four walls.

These iron bars can't hold my soul in.

All I need is you.

Sam sat in the middle of the living room, out of range of the cameras, and cried. It wasn't the usual quiet tears that overtook her in waves in the middle of the night– it was shuddering, heaving sobs that threw her entire body into spasm. She doubled over, arms curled protectively around herself, rocking slightly as tears sluiced down her cheeks to patter onto the rug.

There was no reason for this, no cause for the lapse in her own control. It was simply the terror of being alone, of living with the Hieronymous Bosch visions of hell that splattered the inside of her brain pan. Tonight there was no one to distract her from them, no case to keep her mind otherwise occupied, no grieving family to worry about. There was no demanding child or disapproving best friend to keep her mind centered on the mundanities of family life, the recitals, the grocery lists, the TV shows to be taped and library books to be returned. All that was left to her was her own night terrors.

How had she wound up like this, afraid of the dark, afraid of the silence, afraid of the empty rooms in a house locked, shuttered, and barred? When had she become so utterly afraid of her own home, her own mind?

GRACE:

Show me what it's like

to be the last one standing.

"That's the third night this week!"

Grace cast her husband an exasperated look. "Morgan, I'm going to work. It's not like I'm going to the movies or shopping. I have a dead body waiting for me."

"They can't do it without you? You don't have a staff?" His tone was petulant, that of an unhappy three-year-old rather than a forty-seven year old businessman, and it grated on Grace's already raw nerve endings.

"Dr. Jenner has a five-year-old daughter."

"And you have a two-year-old son, in case you'd forgotten."