Chapter 15: Deflation

Sue leaned toward the mirror, the harsh bathroom light spilling across her face. The stick of lipstick trembled slightly in her hand before she pressed it to her lips. Crimson swept across them in slow, deliberate strokes, a color too vivid to belong in such a drab room. She paused, tilted her head, and studied the reflection that stared back at her.

Her eyes caught the glow, that secret ember she tried to keep hidden. It flickered brighter now, burning with something reckless — sensuality, unrestrained, creeping into every line of her face. She almost startled herself with it.

Outside, horns blared in the street, distant but intrusive, tugging her back to the world beyond these tiled walls. Sue lingered, holding her own gaze in the mirror, as if daring herself not to look away.

With a small exhale, she crouched beside the matrix in the hidden room. The bag of food rustled as she spread its meager contents out with careful fingers, stretching scraps into a meal.

"I'm not coming back late," she whispered, her voice low but resolute. "So you just wait for me. Don't eat too fast."

Her words dissolved into the heavy silence as she pulled the door shut. Darkness consumed the space, save for the faint glow from the air duct. Through that sliver of light, a pair of high heels clicked across the tiles, each step pulling her further from the secret and closer to the night. A switch snapped, and the bathroom surrendered to darkness.

On the street, the world was already alive. A puff of exhaust coughed from a convertible, its red taillights blazing like molten coals. Laughter and whistles spilled from inside the car as Sue slid into the back seat, her lips now as bright as the brake light that flared behind them. Dancers pressed against her with the careless joy of those who feared nothing.

The engine roared, a cannonball of speed and neon heat, and the city swallowed her whole.

The apartment lay in silence. Shadows stretched across the living room, caught in stillness so absolute it seemed to listen. On the wall, a faint rectangle of lighter paint marked the absence of a picture frame that looked like an empty space where memory had once hung. Now it was nothing but a scar, a reminder that something important had been removed.

Darkness claimed the room.

When the moonlight returned, it had shifted its angle, a pale blade slicing across the wall in a different place. Hours had passed, though the room itself had not changed. Silence endured, thick and unbroken.

In the hidden chamber beyond, Elisabeth's body rested in its quiet prison. She lay motionless on the cold floor, her eyes wide but unseeing, glassy windows opening into nothingness. Her chest rose faintly, rhythm without awareness, while the nutrition bag beside her drained away in slow surrender. The yellow liquid crept closer to the line marked SWITCH, drop by patient drop, as if time itself were conspiring to run out.

A sound shivered through the air — faint, muffled, almost imagined. The kind of sound that might be mistaken for the house settling, yet carried a distant echo of life beyond the tomb-like walls.

On the stairwell, life returned in chaos. Sue ascended with the unsteady energy of the intoxicated, a man at her side whose leather jacket reeked of night air and gasoline. He carried a helmet under one arm, with the other, he clung to her, pulling her against him whenever the stairs gave them a pause.

Their kisses were urgent, messy, their laughter spilling into the echoing stairwell. Their balance faltered, and more than once they nearly tumbled, holding onto each other not out of affection but out of drunken necessity.

At her landing, he pinned her against the apartment door, lips crushing hers, his hands claiming her body without hesitation. His fingers pressed into the sleek fabric of her catsuit, the leather amplifying every touch, every squeeze, until her breath caught with a rush of desire so sharp it startled her.

For a moment she let it consume her — the hunger, the dizziness, the raw aliveness. Then, with effort, she pushed gently against his chest. Her lips parted, not in surrender, but in retreat.

The last drops drained from the IV bag, a thin thread of liquid disappearing into Elisabeth's vein. The plastic pouch sagged, wheezing faintly as if even it were exhausted. Elisabeth didn't stir. Her skin was pale under the sickly glow of the overhead light, the needle tethering her to silence.

From somewhere beyond the walls came the creak of a front door. A muffled thud. Then voices, one low and gravelly, the other pitched high and sharp, like glass struck with a fingernail. Laughter spilled through the floorboards, careless and intoxicated.

A crash followed. The brittle shatter of glass.

Sue froze where she stood. Her toes brushed shards of a whiskey tumbler scattered across the hardwood floor. The sharp scent of liquor burned her nostrils, mixing with the faint metallic tang of blood she thought she imagined.

He was there, the bottle still in his hand, his posture caught between aggression and surrender. His eyes glistened with drunken haze, searching hers for something she wasn't sure she could give.

She laughed instead, too loudly and too suddenly. A bark of release. Then she collapsed onto the sofa beside him, and when his arm found her waist, she didn't resist.

The room spun gently as she straddled him, their mouths colliding, teeth knocking. His tongue grazed the slope of her neck, and she felt goosebumps rise as though her body were waking before her mind could catch up.

Somewhere in the background, a sound persisted. A faint crinkle, almost like paper being crushed but steadier and more desperate. The IV bag in the secret room was collapsing in on itself, its plastic lungs deflating.

Blood dotted his white T-shirt. At first, Sue thought it was a trick of the light, or a spill from the broken glass. But the droplets kept coming, warm, red, and insistent. They trailed down his chest as though something inside her was leaking out, uncontainable.

Her heart thundered. Boom. BOOM. Boom. BOOM. The sound was no longer in her ears but in her bones. She clawed at his shirt, ripping it away, frantic, her hands trembling as they traveled down his body.

The crinkling, the heartbeat, the ringing in her head, all of it rose until she could no longer tell what was real.

"Are you alright?" he asked, voice slow, distorted, as if spoken through water.

Sue staggered to her feet. Her pulse raced faster, a drumline out of control. She clutched at the wall for balance, fighting nausea, the room flickering in and out like a faulty projection.

"Just—just give me a minute," she gasped, and stumbled into the hallway, the pounding in her chest chasing her every step.