SECOND DRAFT: Hard Bank Left

19

Cold sludge poured down the back of Krys's throat, she coughed, choked. She didn't know how long she'd been there, lying on a stiff bed, her eyes bound, her hands strung tightly over her head. Her elbows ached from the strain. She found herself shaking as she attempted to move, to breathe. Three times now she had woken choking. Whomever had been trying to force feed her whatever liquid-like substance was sliding down her gullet, must also have had a secondary intention of killing her.

The hushed voice of a Romani woman spoke to her, close to her ear, stroked her hair. Had she been picked up by one of the gypsy bands roving the Badlands? How far downstream had she been washed? How far north had the gypsies traveled? No, that didn't make sense. So, why was there a Romani woman whispering in her ear?

Whatever hand had been stroking her hair ceased, the voice stopped speaking, and she was forced to drink the rest of a small wooden cup of that thick, cold sludge. She swallowed, the acrid taste of pine and oregano almost made her want to vomit. Almost instantaneously a cool relief rushed over her, as though she had been on the verge of panicking, but hadn't noticed. The dark recesses of her mind spun, winding through dark tunnels and unseen passages until she found herself in a familiar room.

The room of her mind loomed black in all directions save up. Above her a crushing weight pushed down. Krys ducked, hunching over. She tried to push up, to force the untold weight back to a tolerable height, but it was impossible. Bending over, she shifted her weight so that the ceiling rested on her back. There the pressure stopped, not forcing her to her knees, but not relenting. If she let go the force would crush her. She stood, helpless, a titan holding up the world in a realm of darkness.

As always, she could see a light, soft and blue, filtered through a door somewhere ahead of her. It skated across the black floor, the pool of light coming just shy of her feet. She looked up, hopeful, desperate. She knew he was there, Graham, his forehead pressed against the wall next to the door. It was just a fact of this dark unconscious space. Another fact: she had invited him in, many times. That's why he was there in the first place, hesitating, unsure of how to act.

A deep, raw ache gnawed at her very being. Everything hurt, every muscle, every breath. She needed him. She needed him to come in and put her arms around her. She needed him to hold her. That was never going to happen.

Dropping to her knees, the ceiling followed her, pressing until it felt like her kneecaps would burst. It forced out the light, covering it in a stone shroud. She cried. She couldn't help it, he was gone. He couldn't come in anymore, even if he wanted to. The door was gone, the light was gone. She was alone under the incomprehensible weight of everything she now had to bear on her own for the rest of eternity.

Her sobs caught in her throat, gumming up around her voice box. She couldn't breathe.

Opening her eyes, Krys was greeted by the same blindfold as before. Her arms were still tied above her. She ached everywhere, down to her soul. She found herself crying. No sludge poured down her throat, no wooden bowl pressed against her lips, no Romani woman caressing her hair and speaking hushed foreign words. Where were these anticipated things? Where was the soothing coolness of the paste she could barely swallow? She needed it, she needed it now to go back into the dark room and let herself be crushed by the ceiling. She needed it so that she could stop thinking about him.

Time pressed on, Krys awake and not drinking the sludge she'd come to expect. Her arms shaking, her breaths coming short and broken, Krys felt the panic set in. It wasn't something she could control, wasn't something that she had even come to expect. The instantaneous reaction to an intangible perceived threat hadn't occurred often enough in her waking hours for her to notice it coming on. There she lay, exposed, vulnerable, tied in a way reminiscent of...

The word "no" repeated in her mind ad nauseum, it wasn't able to go beyond that, and she couldn't get it out. There were no other words to be said. She was back there, she knew it. There was nowhere else for her to be. No one else would bother tying her up and drugging her. No one else took such sick pleasure in her lack of control. It had to be him. It had to be. He had survived, somehow. He had survived other things. He had lived a life longer than any other she'd known. Now he was here and he was going to have his way with her again. No. No. No, Gods please, no.

A familiar sensation ran up her arms, prickling and stinging as it traced its way up her limbs till it reached the base of her skull. Ice dug into her head, consuming everything with a blinding, searing pain. It was coming, the fire, it was going to consume her clothes, the table, most of the room. In the end she would let it consume her. There was no point in fighting it anymore. What could the fire do to protect her? It hadn't protected her up to this point.

She could feel it, the cold burn, racing over her in successive waves. Her hands clenched, her back arched. She gritted her teeth, expecting pain but feeling nothing. She screamed, wrenched at her restraints. Burning through her restraints could prove useful if she had the presence of mind to think of that. As is, she barely had the presence of mind to realize that fire couldn't do any damage to her personally.

No, thinking clearly was not something she was liable to do given her current state. She'd given up being rational, given up thinking clearly. She knew only three things: Dustan was going to kill her this time, she would burn this place to the ground before that happened, and she needed Graham.

His name escaped her lips, "Graham," and quickly became all she could say. She repeated his name over and over until she was screaming and then crying. "Please," she muttered behind scorching tears. "Graham, please save me."

"Oh quit your blubbering, you useless flammable prat."

Krys stopped, relaxed, tried to wipe her face against her arm. "Lia?" What was her sister doing here? "Lia?!"

Ice cold water cascaded over her, dousing any fire. Her breathing came in sharp and fast. Some of the water got up her nose.

"The fuck?!"

"Drink."

A shallow wooden cup was placed at her lips. Krys drank greedily. The acrid pine and oregano overwhelmed her senses, calmed her nerves, relaxed every muscle almost instantaneously.

"You're right," a voice said, male, North American. "Seven minutes without her regular dose and she went ballistic."

"Yup, full on human fireball."

So, they were testing her? This was all a drill? "What's... what's going on?"

"Quiet you. You'll find out soon enough."

Krys couldn't fight anymore. It wasn't worth it. She had nothing left to fight with. All her strength had fizzled in that last outburst. "Graham," she muttered. "Graham." Her mind was gone, sucked into the void and finally unconscious.