To Light and Guard

Chapter Twenty-Eight

"I want you to touch her." Dr. Thredson's voice echoed through the room. He paced somewhere behind Lana, but she couldn't rip her eyes away from the frozen corpse in front of her. He had removed the blanket covering Wendy's nude body, leaving her splayed out and exposed. All the places Lana had once caressed and adored, once flushed pink when she licked them, held a blue-gray tinge. Her beautiful eyes fixed up on the ceiling, unmoving, unfocused. The two urges warred inside of Lana—one, ordering her to go to Wendy, to protect her, to cover her from this horrible man even in death; the other, shrieking its repulsion at the empty, soulless body and the faint scent of rot attached to it. She remained fixed on the spot, unable to approach her lover, unable to flee. "This is very important to your treatment, Lana. I need you to make love to her." Make love? A horrified, high-pitched noise hiccuped in the back of Lana's throat, something she couldn't have replicated if she tried. "Go ahead. She won't hurt you. She's the same Wendy you left at home. Just a little colder."

Another squeak, muffled alongside the stifled sob, shuddered from her chest. She brought a hand to her mouth. She's not the same. She's dead! She's dead! It echoed in her head, a mantra, as if the repeated words would make her more likely to understand them. She's dead! Yet the madman's eyes fixed upon her like horrible gleaming bits of coal from an open mine. They threatened to catch fire, to ignite her if she didn't bend to his will and approach the dead body of her lover, her girlfriend, her soulmate, sprawled out there on the cool cement floor. She scooted on her butt, propelling herself with her hands, toward the corpse. Her chin refused to cease its wobbling; her tears rolled down her cheeks in babbling brooks, dripping off of her face into tiny puddles on the floor.

She stopped beside Wendy's head. "It's going to be okay, Lana." She shivered from head to toe at the empty words offered by her captor. "You can do this. You are stronger than your disease."

With one cold hand, she cupped Wendy's cheek. The dry skin under her fingertips threatened to flake like thin paper. The lips popped open. Underneath, the bloody, flayed gums revealed the jawbone. "Oh, god," she said. It escaped in a deep, throaty voice. "Oh, god, Wendy..." She moaned it like she would have moaned the name in pleasure. Her feelings for Wendy were paralleled—love and love, one twisted by ecstasy and the other by grief. "I'm so sorry," she whispered. She brushed the brunette locks behind her ear. A handful of the brittle hair fell out. "Why did you do this to her?" The pained cry ripped from her where she didn't intend to release it, but she managed to lift her accusatory gaze back to him. "Why did you do this?" she shouted. If he killed her, she would be with Wendy again—wherever that happened to be.

"Don't worry about me, Lana. It's time to focus on you, now." He smiled. His rows of straight white teeth bared at her like a snarling wolf. How had she once seen benevolence in this facade? How could he appear so calm and collected while Wendy, her Wendy, her precious Wendy, lay in his basement, slowly rotting in an ice cooler? How long has she been like this? Lana had so many questions, but he would answer none of them. "Do as you're asked, and I'll put you to bed and give you a snack."

Lana's stomach flipped. A snack? She couldn't imagine hunger. She glanced back down to Wendy's face. What would Wendy say? Wendy would want her to live. Wendy would want her to fight. Wendy wouldn't want her to starve to death. Wendy would want her to do anything feasible to escape this and survive and write the story—the story she had wanted. So, cupping the cold face between her just as cold hands, she leaned forward, drawing nearer, nearer, and Wendy's jaws parted, giving way to the black hole in the back of her throat, and something screeched in the background as loud as the electric currents ripping through her skull, the bright ringing of a telephone magnified more times than she could comprehend—