Dark City

40.

It began snowing again as Tom drove Alex to the ER. She felt strange riding passenger in her own car, but she didn't have the mental focus to drive herself. Alex said nothing until she stepped out into the wet slush outside the hospital.

"I guess I'll call you when I'm done?" she said.

"I'm gonna park. I need to give them my DNA."

"Why?"

Tom frowned. Alex began to understand his reasoning and she felt her heart drop in her chest, hard like a fractured crystal. She realized they had to exclude his DNA from a potential rapist's. She felt so unclean that it made her sick. She wanted to die or sleep or shed her skin. She looked at the ground to hide her tears.

Everything was a fog in her mind. Denial was easiest, but it wouldn't help her cope for long. The doctors seemed worried that she might have been slipped a roofie. They did a tox screen and said they would let her know when the results came back. She didn't want anyone to know what might have happened to her, not her closest friends, not her parents, and not Nathan in a million years. But she couldn't think about that yet. All she could think about was the paralyzing effect of not knowing what happened while she was unconscious. Along with the morning after pill, the doctors gave her antivirals. The fear of HIV came flooding her mind. Maybe nothing happened, she kept hoping.

That night she went straight to bed. She told her mother she didn't feel well. Being alone, she had to listen to her own thoughts about herself and her choices. She longed for the silence of oblivion, where she could just sleep without feeling buried in shame.

At three in the morning, as she lay in bed crying, she picked up her telephone and nearly dialed Nathan's number in one final effort to unbury herself. Before she could complete the series of digits, she cleared the phone.

Aethelwulf whimpered from the end her bed, slinking his head down against his paws. Alex dug into her pillowcase and reached inside the fold for her oxy.

She swallowed more than she'd ever taken with her mug of cold tea and cuddled up to Aethelwulf, stroking the beast's fur. A sensation of airy death overwhelmed her, sucking her out of her body. Aethelwulf's fur slipped through her fingers as she spun out into the black waters of euphoria.

______________

Music: Cole Porter "In the Still of the Night"