Not far away, there was a woman screaming in abject horror and in some distant, long - forgotten room of the doll’s mind, there awakened an idea, yawning and blinking sleepily, that this anguished and desperate sound was coming from the doll’s own corpse body. The doll did not realize she still had such a scream inside her. It took blood, did it not? hot and heavy, thick and racing, to scream — and she’d already been drained clean of it. Plugged me through and through with a little pen knife held in. . . Oh, but whose hand had it been? There’d be a collapse of shadows and mortar had rained down on her head, turning her golden hair to ash. Something in the doll had broken, perhaps some bone, perhaps the ceramic replica of a heart. Against the cold walls of the dilapidated house of her mind, she watched the shadows play it out again, the invasion of steel past soft flesh and cotton, but could not make out the shape of the hand that held the knife. Yet there it lunged again — and again, and again! The screaming she realized was not pouring from her throat and mouth, but from the wounds about her torso, where flesh had been twisted and removed, twisted and taken away. The doll felt a pressure build and rise. Yes, it only made sense: for if the screaming poured from where she should be bleeding, then the blood would have no choice but to exit
from her mouth, bloody spittle sprang forth as Charlotte woke herself up in a violent coughing fit. The force of the cough pained her, seizing intercostal and thoracic muscles, and refused her any release. Something, it seemed, needed to get out before she would be allowed to draw a breath in. More blood, more spit. It all had to go. With what little presence of mind she had, Charlotte lifted her left shoulder, wanting to get herself onto her side; it all had to go! But there was a void to her right and the agent would fall, crying out as she did, both from the sudden descent and the sudden searing pain this small action caused. There was no catching herself as she rolled right off the backseat and into that cold, dark space that delineated the back of a car from the front. No safety features down here. Just a bit of dust and now, me, my blood, and I. “ Fuck. ” Her arm had twisted beneath her and her head forcibly turned so that the car could add insult to injury in the form of a bruise, right smack on the cheekbone of her pretty face. The agent rolled her gaze about, straining the limits of the muscles that held her eye - ball in place, until it landed on the driver. She could make out little more than a long torso and a hand on the wheel. “ Hey. You’re not taking me to a hospital, are you? ” / @singerblade
