Author's Notes: Forgive me if there are any errors in spelling or grammar, which I'm sure there are, but I don't really have enough time to proofread tonight as it is as I'm going out in only a couple of minutes and need to get ready, and my brain just conked out on me to boot. I don't think there's anything too severe, but I'll fix them up as soon as I notice them, because I do that. Enjoy the update! I find it substantially more accurate and enjoyable than the last one as far as characterisations and reality in general.

This one is for all of you! bow

Chapter Two,
The Arrest:
Part Two B – JD’s Doesn’t Grow Flowers
“Who are you?” – Spencer

Suppressing her reluctance, Spencer’s intuition led her to restrict her search for the whereabouts of her estranged best friend to naught but the most obvious location; the main lounge room, connected to the slightly raised kitchen area by a couple of stairs. Her prediction proved to be accurate as she found her slumped on the couch, blankly gazing out into space, no doubt flooded by an endless stream of worn-out images flashing in all manners and directions throughout her head. As her hand touched the banister, tightness on her forearm beneath the layers causing her lips to twitch into a wince, she wondered whether the girl was praying for the film-reel to snap and burst into flames or whether sitting there, watching it repeat forever, was the only thing that kept her going. Perhaps it was some sick contradiction combining both opposite desires simultaneously.

Paradoxes were cruel, but they were life itself.

Stepping down from the platform with a repressed apprehension, she made the decision to remain like a blended, blurred figure, painted into the background, and come no closer unless the emotional wreck delivered her explicit permission to do so first. Her mind was at a loss for how to approach this tense, enigmatic silence anyway and she didn’t particularly want anything thrown at her head today. Her caution had a reason to it; violence was a common third party in their interactions. So she stood, imitating the inanimate. Even her vital functions were sucked into this lapse and slowed immeasurably as she fell out of step with the chronology present across the universe.

The mansion had no sense of time to it. All the clocks had either stopped when their batteries expired, been smashed in a tirade of fury or been interrupted by a blackout and then never reset. Whenever she was in there, her stay seemed to have moved in a different pace in time than the rest of the world outside. It was like a dream. And, in the eternal yet instantaneous emptiness, she swayed on the spot there, back and forth, caught in the stagnant vortex which had fastened itself to the flimsy fabric of her clothing, ready to be stripped off like Velcro when she was finally invited to do as she sorely wanted in offering her expendable brand of help.

Although she couldn’t exactly rely on her senses to deduce this, it didn’t seem as if she had to wait for very long to be addressed.

“I can’t stand this.” Whispered Madison, staring deeply ahead at the wall, the gravity of the images projected on its surface trapping her delicate spirit and refusing to let her intense concentration drift away, drawing her into the singularity. Spencer looked up with a short questioning tone, wordlessly requesting some elaboration if she was referring to anything specific, also just letting her know that she was indeed involved. “It just keeps getting worse every second that I spend without her,” she continued, her shoulders shrugging less than an inch and her head shaking slowly, tilting from side to side hypnotically, visible over the back of the small sofa, “Knowing that the only place I can be with her and my baby is in dreams. And I don’t care that it isn’t real; it’s still better than life. That isn’t saying much, though.” Breath was expelled from her body in a chilling sigh, condensing in the air and falling to coat her body in the layer of frost that barbarically restrained her. Even sunken, starved and in disrepair, she was beautiful, like the last lingering petal on a rosebush being blown from its stem and delicately tossed about in the breeze until it landed in the virgin snowfall, daintily dozing on the soil. It was a struggle not to envy it every now and then. “Whenever I’m awake, it’s just…this…”

Inclining her head by the scarcest few degrees, she took a step down closer to her, the impact seeming to resonate through her whole body, dispelled at every extremity, her fingers loosely curled around the hilt of the banister, ignoring the tingle silently whispering through her nerves, telling her that they were aching to wrap around the thin cylinder of a cigarette. A twinge tugged on her lip as her discipline proved its limitation and fragility. She silently cursed, wishing that she had a greater control over her urges, or at least enough to convince herself that she wasn’t harbouring a known addiction, because she was better than that. And it was not for the last time. But she hid her minor slip by attempting to finish her broken sentence, as she’d intended, trying to establish some sense of the connection that had dropped from their hands, if not actual empathy. “Emptiness.” She ventured, stepping across the border which she considered to mark the edges of her acquaintance’s vast personal space.

The pale, greying form flinched forwards out of the confines of motionlessness, as if startled into awareness by the sudden noise. A spectral breath entered her body, as if she’d been stripped of her need to inhale since she drifted off into the silence – like a stranded voyager at sea – drained of oxygen. Slowly, so languorously in fact that one might have thought that this was simply some unintentional sway, Madison glanced as far to her side as she could be bothered to go, which was scarcely any distance at all, in acknowledgement of her presence, perhaps leaning towards some faint stance of approval that justified Spencer’s existence upon this plane. She wouldn’t hold her breath for that, though. “That’s one way of putting it.” Her voice floated softly across the room, as if she would loathe disturbing the dormant atmosphere, and yet silence was not a viable option. “You can come closer, you know.” She said, providing an invitation for her to come down and sit somewhere, probably just because she didn’t have the strength to project her volume or repeat herself too many times.

There was never a good reason behind anything she did or said anymore, even if it had seemed totally harmless to begin with. Her moments of peace were always foreboding with the threat of a vicious storm verging out of sight on the horizon while she foolishly focused on the light, hence why she chose not to take the adjacent seat and merely stood behind her, bracing her hands on the soft, padded material of the couch, examining her friend, perhaps even gauging her sanity. “How else should it be put?” asked the blonde, if purely to keep a conversation going. She hadn’t come here solely to experience the golden joy of silence, nice as it was – that’s what smoking was for. No; she was here to figure this girl out, listen to her, and establish a new connection in place of their old one.

She heard a soft sound, like a hum, as her small frame seemed to sink into the back and bottom of the sofa, which made her appear even more puny and delicate than she thought she was already. Through it all, she still managed to maintain some deeply ingrained aura of dignity and poise, but it was without the strength she so long ago used to carry with her to the point where she had shone with invulnerability that all were convinced had been real; now she looked so fragile that it was as if the stroke of a feather would disintegrate her body into no more than a fine powder. The beauty in that equation had lost its allure rapidly. This was no work of art and nor was it something to envy; her deterioration would never be anything other than hideous, once she got over the initial astonishment and snapped back into the real world.

“I guess you don’t need me to tell you the answer to that,” she muttered, clearly as evidence that she was bound to repeat everything she’d already told Spencer about her pain, although something about her present demeanour caused whatever she did or said to become all the more significant, “But you are a complete idiot, so…” Her thin, clammy fingers left their tracks through her damp, matted hair, a gentle groan revealing that her head lacked the energy to form coherent conscious thought. “All I want to do is die. Fuck, I’m so beyond ready to take my own life that it’s the only urge I have left.” The morose and dark girl sighed in sorrow, weary of eternally wanting for something it felt like she might as well never have. By that point, it didn’t even frustrate her like it previously had. “But I can’t. It’s my only option and I can’t fucking take it.”

The blonde nodded, finally getting the chance to engage in discussing something about her that she was already able to empathise with beforehand. “Because you’re Catholic.” One of the few things that they still had in common – and, indeed, always would – was the religion that had raised them. And she completely understood what she meant when she believed she couldn’t. It was the same reason most of her family and numerous close companions didn’t attend her Grandfather’s funeral after he committed suicide due to depression and senility.

Just as she’d expected, Madison confirmed that she was correct. She hadn’t needed to; she already knew. On this matter, or those of the sort, at the bare minimum, she could relate to her position a great deal more than the widow typically said she could. “As distant as I’ve become from my family and The Church, I was brought up to be strict in following every aspect of my faith, including that suicide was the ultimate sin. It’s been drilled into me that, if I commit it, I’ll never see either of them again because I won’t go to the same place in the next life and…will never get out.” She explained, not because she thought that Spencer didn’t know her beliefs, but because it was her only excuse and there were days when she wondered if that diminished the intensity of her love. Absolutely, her life was redundant from here until death. “I just can’t take that risk. Even the most miniscule chance is…it’s too fucking great, you know?”

“Yeah, I understand that.” She replied, sympathising sincerely now that she’d ceased messing around and blankly admitted her conundrum. For a split second, she remembered the girl she knew so very long ago; how they’d gone to each other for comfort when the conflict of sexuality versus religion had slapped them in the face and left them to question what they thought had already been handled. Before the accident, they hadn’t been that different at all. In fact, it was probably because of their shared wealth of unresolved issues and subsequent exile from their families that they’d virtually become sisters and had genuinely considered each other as such. The relationship they’d formed together took the forefront of her memories, awakening the residual traces of the affection and attachment she once knew before a little too much of everything caused her to become jaded in order to protect her own sanity. And she recalled precisely why she was she was here and would continue to be for as long as it took to get her well. She cared about her and she damn well had to take care of her; she was bound to her as deeply as if the same blood ran through their veins. No, nothing could push her away. “…Can I get you anything?” she asked, self-manipulated into a moment where she was prepared to comply with any request.

Resisting the urge to answer with ‘a set of steak-knives and a slingshot’, seeing as it wasn’t going to happen and, honestly, she was tired, worn-out and beginning to get sick of being so wretchedly sarcastic at that moment in time. It took far too much effort. She was so over everything by then. Madison didn’t want to be herself anymore. Maybe she hated it, maybe not, but frankly she was just done. “Jack Daniels and a bucket.”

Precisely why this request surprised her she’d never really know, but Spencer’s eyes bugged out widely and a noise of startle got caught it in her throat. “Are you kidding?” it shouldn’t have shocked her, really. She already knew that Madison’s two food groups were liquor and mouthwash, now that she’d refused to ingest her third – the prescription medications for her seizures and anxiety attacks – but, then again, it never really sunk in as fact, seeing as she never actually saw her engaging in those behaviours, aside from once almost immediately after Kelly’s death, and she considered that something of a one-off. Although, that was the first and only time that she hadn’t kicked her out long before anything revealing happened. So she didn’t get to see too many aspects of her everyday life.

“Oh, right, because I’m a habitual barrel of laughs and utter hilarity every other instant of the day.” Scoffing, she sent a dry glare up towards her uncertain companion, who was not only confused but also had yet to make the awkward decision about whether or not to comply with the request. Fed up as she was with it, her sarcasm was still eternally present on the tip of her tongue, and there it would remain. Of course, the taller girl knew she had a point and conceded with a glance aimed directly at her own feet, a voice in her head spreading the consensus that she could be quite the moron. Already more than a tad belittled, it didn’t help her feel any better when the pale woman rolled her eyes and groaned like her idiocy was painful, a sneer escaping her lips which sounded remarkably similar to the word, “Fag.” which was the standard insult ever since she’d been endowed with the name ‘gay boy’.

Immediately looking up when she registered the insult, eyes narrowing with a fairly superficial level of annoyance, she exercised self-control by keeping herself from reacting in a manner that she previously would have in happier times, or if she let her mood get the better of her maturity. “Sorry, straight girl,” she said with obvious insincerity, stepping back from the couch and making her way up to the level of the kitchen, “There’s no need to get huffy. I just meant that it’s, like…” feeling a need to be at least partially accurate in her criticism, she slipped a hand into her pocket and pulled out her watch, which she kept there because putting it tight around her wrists had caused some serious pain and irritation in the not-too-distant past, “Eight thirty in the morning, for God’s sake.”

Of course, the grieving hermit had a response to that as well, just like she always had a comeback to every insult and could muster up something relevant and substantial to contribute in any situation without tensing a brow. “Well I was planning on sleeping until happy hour on Saturday, but you’ve fucked that right up, ain’t you?” she quipped, as if she were prepared to take her on and perhaps verging on throwing some generic glass objects if she didn’t hurry up. No; she hadn’t lost any of her unique qualities that once might have been her strengths. Their purposes in her life had just changed dramatically.

“Hey, back off; I’m getting it for you.” Spencer interjected before she could ridicule her further and completely waste the opportunity to be real and progress somewhat by turning it into another tug-of-war, where they verbally pushed and pulled until one of them went through a door and shut it behind them until the next round started up in a few days. A little exasperated, she turned her back and began rummaging through the cupboards and cabinets, simultaneously trying to locate her stash and to let the mood calm down a bit more, except a part of her mind was rebellious against the latter cause and, pride offended, detested the principle of allowing Little Miss Ad-Lib get the last word in, like she always did, thus resulting in her attempted peacekeeping being sabotaged by intentionally letting her quiet muttering remain loud enough to be heard clearly across the room. “For someone who claims to have had her soul ripped out of her body, you always seem to have plenty of vigour when there’s a chance to make my life miserable.”

Lying down on the sofa, curling up against the armrest, the Hispanic woman – whose skin had indeed adorned a pale and cinereous complexion in favour of the tan, which made her ethnicity a challenge for a stranger to judge – retorted her attempt at securing some pathetic imitation of a victory, coming as close to enjoying this little back and forth spat as she had in months, which wasn’t saying anything, really. “You told me to distract myself with goals; I aim to piss you off.” And it was true. She did. It was actually a bit of fun and, literally, all she had to occupy herself with besides the contemplation of death, drinking herself into the next day and throwing up so damn much that her digestive acids were corroding away parts of the metal sink. “It’s not my fault you’re easier than a whore who OD’d on aphrodisiacs. I think I’d like you more if you weren’t too ridiculously weak to fight back. But thanks for doing most of the work for me, fuckwit.”

Closing the cupboard door a little harder than she meant to, she sighed out her growing stress and held the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. “Don’t push my pity limits; I’m in a bad mood.” She warned, although she was actually putting it on. Sure she wasn’t quite as comfortable with sitting quietly and swallowing the abuse that was flung at her as she normally was, but she wasn’t going to be affected by it to the point where she did anything stupid or got angry. If anything was pissing her off, Madison was the least of those on the spectrum, when it came down to it. In fact, trying to find this elusive bottle of Jack Daniels was causing her a great deal more strife than the person whom it was for. “Which cabinet is it in?” asked the blonde, glancing over her shoulder.

“Your left side up the top.” She directed, not requiring so much as a glance in order to know where Spencer was in relation to the liquor she craved dearly, and the other girl followed, turning left and glancing at each of the three cabinets in turn. “The middle one.”

Stepping forwards and opening the specified cupboard, her eyes were met with a wealth of spirits and intoxicating beverages of all kinds. “Oh, I see.” She had quite a collection; enough for someone to start their own personal bar, should the interest strike them. Some of the items were clearly dated by the appearance of their bottles where the layers of dust accumulated over the years had seemed to fuse into a fine sheet that wasn’t simply around the glass, but merged with it. However, she suspected that the vast majority of this overwhelming quantity was purchased relatively recently, including the designated drink itself, sitting right up the very front and centre of the display until she took it from the shelf. “Got it.” When she could have got it was a mystery though, seeing as the only time she went outside (apparently) was to visit the grave of her lost lover. Quickly she decided that it wasn’t worth her trouble to think about it. “Anyway, stuff isn’t exactly going my way either.” Said the student, who hurriedly made her way out from the U-shaped kitchen counter and jumped over the steps and onto the floorboards.

Madison squinted and raised an eyebrow, meeting Spencer’s gaze with an expression that meant, ‘What the fuck?’ in body language. “Why are you telling me this?” she asked without any bullshit to conceal the blank look in her eyes or the numb iciness behind her words. It was sad that she felt nothing at all, but she still wasn’t yet convinced whether or not it was better this way, with indifference, than it would be if she utterly despised her to the core. This sort of thing was hard as all hell to determine. “Do you honestly believe you’ll get sympathy from me? Even though you’re a retard, you know perfectly well that all you’re ever going to get from me is another flavour of ‘don’t care’.” Drawled the shorter woman, locking eyes with the person she had once considered to be far more of a sister to her than any of the six – Wait, isn’t it seven now? Was it always seven? No, I don’t think so, but I’m sure that Whore Senior had another one on the way, last I heard. How many of the crazy bitches are there? Fuck; I lost count. – that she’d been bestowed with in her family, and unquestionably closer, as she walked in between her and the small coffee table in the centre of the lounge furniture. “Seriously; not even my hand wants you to talk to it, so what the fuck do you expect from me?”

“I don’t expect anything from you.” She sighed in response, moving to put the bottle of whiskey down on top of the glass table, only to have a small hand yank it out of her grip before she could do so and opening the bottle before she had even reflexively uttered a quick, “Hey!” due to her acquired fear of being touched on the injuries beneath her sleeves and, when she did, the only response to her protest was the one-finger salute. But she let it slide, because there was nothing to do about it, and picked up her important – if a little over harsh – admission where she left off. “If I did, you’d just be a cataclysmic disappointment until I got tired of your endless lack of improvement and, by now, I would have washed my hands of all this old bull.” She folded her arms, calling Madison’s bluff, if it in fact was one, and willing to play along in order to give her a little bit of satisfaction for a brief moment if it wasn’t faked.

Fortunately, it was the impression that the latter was the case when she sat up and raised the bottle in her direction as if offering a ‘cheers’ and some of the spite dropped from her features, which was an achievement she’d begun to think was impossible. “That’s the spirit! You’re the gay boy so lay into me with more of that bitchiness you queens are famous for!” she encouraged her in a show of her approval, patting the empty spot on the couch next to her with her free hand, gesturing for her to sit down. “Cuss me out and quit being such a fucking pussy!” she took a swig of the off-orange liquid as Spencer accepted her invitation and slumped down next to her, aches in her joints pestering her to take notice of how exhausted she was, running on insomnia and nicotine cravings. “Jesus, when you are, I just want to wrap my fingers around your throat and squeeze until I’ve juiced a fucking bowl of punch out of you.” She half-sneered, but as hateful as it sounded, there was most likely humour tucked away in there; it was perpetually brutal and sardonic now, and it was hard to tell the difference, but she had to find it at least partially amusing, right?

As she swallowed a much deeper swig, the burning sensation of hard alcohol hit her, heavy spirits scraping down her oesophagus. It was almost cleansing, like purification by the taste of fire, except there came with it an intrinsically linked sense of sordidness that was incessantly inescapable and possessing her sole remedy for the symptomatic desolation that was her companion. If only for a scant selection of disjointed episodes on centre-stage, it seemed to resuscitate the paradoxical splinters that had once been the components of which her personality was comprised, now nothing higher than scoria; scum created in the aftershocks of the disaster. And she drank even more to push her subconscious doubts away.

“So then you do want me to abuse you?” she wondered aloud, predominantly speaking to herself, though, in an effort to try and determine definitively what her actual role was supposed to be in helping this poor woman, and she looked over to her side with the desire to engage in a proper conversation at some point in this encounter – face to face and meeting her eyes in an expression other than a homicidal glare at least once – but then she saw her, cradling that bottle like it was her only crutch; the lone earthly support structure she had to make this long, straight full-throttle race towards the finish bearable for the far too drawn-out duration. Was all that kept Madison alive anymore, at least for long enough to die of natural causes, an addiction? That was what it was, right; an addiction? Did that render everything she’d tried to do for her completely meaningless and, if she continued despite knowing this, was it naught but a selfish act to assuage her own guilt?

In that silent, internalised moment, Spencer bit her tongue to keep her face from growing sour and revealing the manner of thoughts which were floating through her head. She had to remain impartial and friendly and not expendable as everybody else in their life had been up until that point. Realising the severity of this situation, she immediately deplored her actions, feeding her unhealthy habits when her body was already so close to giving out, but then again, taking her side on at least one aspect of her mourning process was a necessity if she wanted to be let in enough to make a difference. Acting like some embodiment of a strict and disappointed parent certainly wasn’t working, so a new approach was in order, so maybe it was time to act more like herself, whoever that was now. Certainly, she had to give a little in order to receive the gift of being openly presented with the truth of her decline. Loosening her tongue didn’t exactly hurt that goal either, even if she felt uncomfortable being around her in such an uninhibited state for a completely separate reason to anything that had occurred post-tragedy. It was nothing new, and it had been around for ages, but this breakthrough was far too important to trivialise with her own silly embarrassment and private humiliation.

“Pfft,” she shrugged, either unaware that her companion was having an analytical reverie or choosing to ignore her as well as she could, putting one foot up on the table and folding the other leg over the top of it, “I don’t know. I don’t want anything.” She drank some more, closing her eyes and shaking her head quickly as it went down this time. “If I did,” there was a short pause when an expression not unlike disgust spread out from her tongue across the rest of her facial features, “Your stupid project would be way more…” whatever she originally meant to say obviously didn’t suffice because she replaced it with something a great deal more appropriate at the last second, “Done.” Indeed, that assessment was apt for, if she wanted for anything, then she had hope, and hope was essential to life. And then she tilted the booze horizontally against her lips for another sip, finding it hard to keep swallowing significant quantities of the spirits.

As the sober blonde recalled, she was always pretty bad when it came to handling her drinks – not that she’d consumed on this level with any regularity before shit happened – and, with her stomach currently empty, it wasn’t going to take much to get her trashed. That much was clear. Since she developed this virtual alcoholism, there was little doubt that her tolerance would have improved at least somewhat but, then again, her self-sustaining starvation and ensuing plunge in body mass would, at the sheer minimum, balance out her ability to handle it, if not outweigh it as she rationally expected would be the case. But she quickly but a stop to all the questions and answers running through her head; she had to be present mentally for the duration of her time here. Keeping herself out of her head was proving to be a challenge she’d glossed over in foresight.

Her head fell downwards, watching her hands as they fidgeted idly in her lap, trying to figure out if there was actually something, or anything that Madison could yearn for or, optimistically, maybe subconsciously did want, aside from the obvious, morbid options. However, the only experiences she had to draw on for ideas were ones that involved or related to her. Frankly, she had little or no clue as to what actually went on when she was absent, aside from the information that the delicate demon shared for the purpose of intimidating her, and Spencer wasn’t prepared to make the judgemental leap of faith which accepted that all of it was said in honesty. That was definitely a risk, and she didn’t know which – if either – was better to find out; that it was true or every story had been fabricated.

This was fucking hard.

Eventually, her mouth began to move, practically of its own accord, as she drew on the most obvious conclusion to reach from their encounters. “You want to make me angry, or feel your pain or…fuck off or whatever, though. That’s fairly obvious, and you tell me so yourself.” She said, meeting her friend’s eyes, matching the blank and enigmatic nature of her stare as best she could so that it might prevent her reading something unfavourable when the subject at hand was already a precariously balanced blade dangling over their necks. This was a crucial moment. She needed to understand this girl whom she was desperate to save instead of just making excuses for her behaviour and what it represented. Even if she had to seduce it out of her, she was going to get a reply to the essential question. Was she real? “Or is it just a means of expressing all the bitterness you hold over still being alive?” she asked, because she had to keep questions flowing instead of just making statements that were likely to be way off target. This was a search for answers, not retorts.

A hiss of contempt which sounded eerily similar to a sardonic laugh passed through her teeth as she shook her head, far beyond caring why she acted how she did. “Pick one. Roll with it. Put it in your thesis and have it framed up above your mantle piece.” She replied with a bit of a shrug, picking at the black label which was tightly stuck to the glass and focusing on the task of getting it off despite her apparent boredom. There wasn’t really any rhyme or reason behind her these days, period. With increasing consistency, she thought that she wasn’t even doing whatever she did anymore; everything just happened. Those were the best of times, because it seemed imaginary and, for a moment, she felt so much less alive. Unfortunately, they were also the moments where she most resembled having emotions. It didn’t appear that she was any closer to feeling them, however.

“But you have pushed everyone away,” said the taller woman, and it was perfectly true, although she didn’t really know what reaction or response she was endeavouring to elicit, because being granted a revelation that unleashed a deep insight into her psyche was just not going to happen, “And you express the desire to do the same to me. Why?” she asked, persisting further even as the Latina appeared to realise where she was headed with all of this, clearly unwilling to participate if it continued. Even the blind could recognise that she exceeded being fed up and was ready to get up and walk out of the room if she condescended her like she was some mentally disabled adolescent in the school counsellor’s office. “What do you think I’m going to do that makes you resist me so much?”

It was at times such as these that she gathered all the evidence she needed to cement the fact that her irritating small-town associate was, as she claimed, a complete and utter moron into justification and reality. “I think you’re going to annoy me, and look at that; I’m right again. Hint, hint; shut up, prick!” she snarled at her, channelling the attitude of the rather ghetto bitch she used to be in high school. Spencer deserved her hate then and there. Did she honestly think that flaring her ire up was going to inspire a zest for life in her? Fuckwit.

“There you go again.” She pointed out, prompting the widow to flip her off and then give her one of the most hateful glares she’d witnessed in all her life – the worst, of course, being the one that Madison wore upon the mention of Ashley’s name. That was pure fury whereas these eyes were frozen. “You keep covering yourself up from me in the hopes that I can’t be bothered anymore and I’ll just walk away.” She continued to probe, unfazed by her displeasure and moving closer when the sickly girl turned away, her body language suggesting that she wasn’t listening. “What are you scared of?”

A mocking snort cut her off, interrupting her attention. The deadness of the ashen features caused some difficulty in determining exactly what she was thinking, but she figured that she got enough of an impression to vaguely interpret her meaning from the scoff in itself. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” She muttered entirely to herself, following up under her breath with what sounded an awful lot like, “This is absolutely ridiculous.”

She probably should have realised that this wasn’t going anywhere pleasant. After all, the girl was doing everything in her power to make that as obvious as a heatwave to a snowman. But, naturally, it wasn’t in the student’s repertoire to give up on this so rapidly, especially considering that it was actually provoking quite the reaction out of her. Of course, she didn’t know that it was actually resulting in her starting to close up inside of her defensive walls and making her think a great deal less of the blonde than she ever had previously.

Trying to focus her withdrawn attention back onto her questions and maybe to restore some eye contact with each other, Spencer reached out and touched her on the shoulder. Immediately, Madison’s forearm whipped up and slammed hard against the offending limb. A sharp, high-pitched squeal was torn out of her throat as pain ravaged her already horrifically wounded flesh. Searing pain shot through her nerves as the bandage was pressed tightly into the damage, sending her mind back into the absolute agony of the first night’s treatment. She cradled the arm into her chest as it shivered weakly, resisting the urge to hold it with her other hand, knowing that contact only made the pain unbearably worse. She swallowed the tears down before they could surface, demanding that she hold herself together and toughen up and take the pain. An unintelligible curse forced its way out amidst a wince, so distorted that she might have said anything, or nothing.

Meanwhile, her assailant just observed, almost as if entertained by her severe suffering. A glimmer in the pitiful stare aimed her way suggested a feeling of violation mixed in with the no doubt overwhelming pain, but it didn’t disturb her perfectly calm and content demeanour. If she was expecting her to apologise or offer up some sort of explanation then the physically wounded girl was clearly left delusional by her anguish. “I ain’t sorry for that shit.” She shrugged, allowing yet another sip of the inebriating liquor into her bloodstream.

After staring fearfully for several more seconds, frozen in place, Spencer backed up, leaning against the other arm of the couch, staying with just enough distance between them to convince her body that she was safe and could feel a little bit more comfortable being there. “What are you trying to hide from me?” she persevered, not afraid enough to back down from what she was dedicated to finding out. “And why? I mean, are you scared that I’ll figure you out and then you might not want to die anymore? Or that I’m not going to leave until I catch you in a moment where you can’t help but let me in?” by that point, all the reactions she was til recently provoking had stopped. The person she was trying to rescue from the edge was proactively ignoring her, acting as if the whiskey she was nursing made for more interesting conversation than she did. But there was still more that she could draw on, including things that were supposed to remain unspoken. Until now, at least. “Or is it…you know…” her eyes darted up and down anxiously, her second arm curling up to join its afflicted counterpart in hiding against her chest, wary of getting attacked, which was a frequent occurrence, “…The other thing…with us.” She whispered cautiously, a submissive and rather embarrassed expression on her face, feeling guilty the instant that the thought had entered her head.

Her gaze shot up with pure, undiluted fury, her hands smashing against the back of the cushioned seat, her body lurching forward and her feet slamming simultaneously against the floor, like she was a snake injecting venom into a prospective predator. “Never!” she shouted, although it wasn’t physically possible for her to yell and it came out as more of a forceful whisper. Still, it was enough to make the blonde flinch, although her trepidation quickly evaporated once Madison began coughing, her limited volume betraying her. No; she couldn’t feel threatened by her. “Great; now you’ve gone all wannabe shrink on me and won’t take a fucking clue.” She sighed, shaken by the principle of what she’d just brought up, but shocked out of it by her own futility. “Look, I’ll give it to you plain and politely; don’t even bother. Seriously, it’s a waste of your time striving to convince yourself that I’m better than I am.” That was the problem; no matter what she did or said, this stupid girl always thought too fucking much of her. She honestly thought that there was something there to understand and build from. Didn’t she get the memo that she had no soul to speak of?

Confidence restored, she had the nerve to feel a little affronted and respond accordingly. Frankly, she was tired of herself acting like a total pussy too, so she didn’t plan on doing that. “Well, maybe if you were more cooperative I wouldn’t have to resort to assessing you like this. I can’t get any information about your state through any method because you make them all impossible to employ.” The inflection in her tone made it rise rather high, not unlike she was complaining. Finally, she was expressing her exasperation. And she felt no better for doing so whatsoever. In fact, she felt like shit. “I know it’s not working, but what the heck am I supposed to do aside from my best?” she asked rhetorically, answering her own question before it could be met with some smartass remark. “Damn it, I don’t even know what that is! Right here and now is the only opportunity I’ve had in these last four months to actually get something genuine from you and yet you’re still hindering my efforts to know where you’re at.” Spencer stood up and stepped away from the couch, slowing her pace and then whirling around, hands in her pockets and shoulders rising and falling helplessly. “Do you think I like being totally useless? And you sure as hell aren’t going to help me get anywhere, are you?”

To a lot of people, that appeal might have made sense. Coincidentally, all of those people would have to have been utterly stupid in order to agree with the student’s pussy logic. Fucking right she wasn’t going to give her a false impression of her reality by feigning contentment and helpfulness. “My humouring you won’t make your cockamamie theories any more correct. Really, how does playing along with your bullshit in order to make your life easier give you an accurate depiction of who I am?” Madison reasoned, quite smug in the knowledge that she was significantly more rational than a person who was both sober and sane, which she herself was almost definitely not, by contemporary standards. “And why the fuck do you think I’d want to do that for your benefit anyway, mamabicho?”

Removing her hands from her pockets and moving them out to either side of her body, somewhere between a defensive stance and a challenging gesture. “Alright then, since you won’t show me, why don’t you tell me?” she basically dared her to step up and put her in her place if it needed to be done so badly. If Spencer was going to have to stand there and take all of this crap about how she was way off the mark and didn’t know shit about her situation then, fuck it, she had earned the privilege of hearing it straight from her mouth exactly what she was supposed to have thought. “I’m sick of grasping at straws and assuming what your actions mean and feeling dumb as shit. So how about I just get everything there is from the source? No more patronising crap, none of your illusions and no interruptions from me. Come on; enlighten me.” The taller woman compelled her, damn near begging her to speak and say absolutely everything that she’d never been allowed to find out on her own. She half-stormed towards the couch and sat down on the coffee table, ready to hear what she had been holding onto all this time. Since Madison was convinced that she could do so much better than she’d done thus far, she was going to give her the chance to prove that she was right, and then they could both be done with this. And yet, she knew in the back of her head that she couldn’t do anything that surpassed her own efforts, and that was precisely why she set her up to reveal that fact to the both of them. “Who are you? What is going on inside of your head right now?”

The formerly tanned girl hid behind her bottle, masking her complexion and, once more, curling up against the back of the couch. She could feel the alcohol starting to take effect, working its way into all parts of her system, particularly her vision, which seemed to have trouble staying focused on her surroundings as she moved. That was a good sign; it meant there wasn’t long to wait before she got wasted. But, first and foremost, she was more than a little pissed off that the blonde had successfully put her in a spot where she was meant to talk about her state, and she was supposed to, in order to prove that said blonde was as air-headed as the rest of her kind. And she would show her.

Who was she? …Well, that was a pretty simple question, wasn’t it? Of all people, surely she knew what she was thinking at that very moment. And that was…wait, what the fuck was she thinking? Spencer stared at her, awaiting a response; she could see her distorted image through the clear neck of her Jack Daniel’s as one second turned into many, and then became a minute that stretched on for far too long. Eventually, the conclusion she’d been waiting for entered her utterly deserted head; there was absolutely nothing to say about her. Anything which placed her above that was mistaken, because it was operating under the assumption that she still maintained basic human qualities. The answer to all those inquiries was that she was already dead inside and the rest of her was simply taking too long to catch up.

However, her mind didn’t register that long since accepted fact in words, which left her at a loss for those that she was supposed to speak to fill the silence. That bitch was still staring at her. “…I don’t know.” Madison admitted, turning down her eyes in defeat, growing cold and quiet. She wasn’t even a person. She was just…gone. But she was still being watched, not that she cared enough to figure out why or what her thoughts were at the time. She just wanted to be left alone to decay like the corpse she was. “Don’t fucking look at me.” The girl murmured, drinking some more, hoping to numb herself to the point that she became completely incognisant to the presence of another person there with her, so she could pretend she was alone and slip into an ideal but false reality, or simply forget that she was asphyxiated within this one.

For once, Spencer complied with her request and went one step beyond it to do what she wanted and needed. Just as Madison’s thumbnail managed to slip underneath the black and white label, peeling the corner from the glass, she got up and walked out of the den. She decided they both needed a few minutes of alone time; a break from all of this chaos happening between them.

At last, as she closed the door behind her, she knew that she’d done something right.

It was a shame that the only positive contribution she could be sure she’d made was to walk out and leave her alone.