Chapter 16: The Body Between

Sue slammed the bathroom door behind her, twisting the lock with shaking fingers. The sharp click echoed in her skull like a gunshot. She leaned against the sink, gasping, blood dripping steadily from her nose and staining the porcelain a dull rust-red.

The room swayed. Her ears screamed with tinnitus, a piercing shrill that made it feel as though the world itself was coming apart at the seams.

She didn't need to look, but she forced herself to anyway. She opened the narrow door that led to the hidden chamber.

And there it was.

The nutrition bag, wrinkled and hollow, collapsed in on itself like a starved lung. Elisabeth lay tethered to it, her skin so pale it seemed translucent, her chest rising shallowly as though her body was clawing for sustenance that wasn't there.

The sight gutted Sue. She hunched over the sink, gripping the porcelain, drops of blood pattering onto her trembling hands. The nausea wasn't just physical, it came from the sight of Elisabeth herself with her body lying limp and empty. That body. The one Sue had no desire to inhabit again. The one she hated for its fragility and its lifelessness.

Her pulse roared. She has to switch. The thought slammed into her chest with suffocating inevitability. Fuck. Fuck, fuck! Of all times—now?

The anger boiled up, hot and helpless, spilling over her trembling body. She wanted to scream, to smash the mirror, to claw herself out of this reality. Instead, she froze.

"Are you alright?" the man's muffled voice bled through the walls, his tone laced with the casual drunken concern of someone who had no idea he was hovering at the edge of an abyss.

Sue's eyes lifted. The mirror threw her reflection back at her — wild hair, bloodied lips, pupils blown wide, the face of a woman unravelling. Yet behind the panic, something flickered. Something like a spark and a thought.

"Yes!" she called, with a bright voice that sounded sharp. "I'll be right back!"

Her gaze cut to the bathroom cabinet. Her hand tore it open, and her movements were automatic and frantic. Inside lay the instruments she knew too well, the puncture needle, gleaming under the harsh light. The second nutrition bag that was meant for her own body.

Her foot pressed the trash pedal with a mechanical certainty. The lid sprang open. Seven small vials clinked softly at the bottom, their emptiness glinting like accusation. She stared at them for a long, unbearable moment, with her shallow breath as her chest heaved..

Then her fingers closed around one.

Sue's manicured hand trembled only slightly as she clipped the empty vial to the puncture syringe. Her pulse thundered louder than the faint hiss of oxygen from the secret room. Elisabeth lay there, motionless, a ghost caught between breaths.

Sue then rolled the body gently onto its side. For a second, her eyes lingered on the bandage covering the familiar spot at the base of the spine. She hesitated. Just for a heartbeat. Just long enough to let the dread settle into her bones.

Then she tore the bandage away.

The needle glinted in the light. Her last doubts flickered, then vanished. With a steady hand, Sue slid the long needle into Elisabeth's spinal column.

Elisabeth's glazed eye stared at nothing, a single tremor flickering across the pupil as the plunger drew back. Transparent fluid seeped into the vial, drop by drop and shimmering faintly under the sterile light.

"Just a few more hours," Sue whispered, her voice both plea and promise.

When the vial was half full, she unclipped it, and without hesitation, jabbed it into her own thigh.

Her body welcomed the injection instantly. Her pupils dilated, and the ringing in her head dulled to silence. The storm inside her chest slowed, her heartbeat descending into a steady rhythm that felt almost like peace. For a few fragile moments, she let her eyes close, absorbing the reprieve.

Then, quickly, she plugged the second perfusion bag into Elisabeth's arm. The tubing filled with a thick, sluggish liquid. A bubble climbed toward the vein, followed by a slow, steady trickle.

Then Elisabeth's chest lifted as Sue's breathing grew deeper and steadier.

Sue exhaled, her whole body trembling with relief and revulsion.

The man's eyes fluttered open. For a moment he wasn't sure if he was still dreaming—Sue was above him again, straddling his chest like an apparition conjured from the dark. Her face hovered inches from his own, so close he could feel the warmth of her breath tickle his skin.

He blinked, struggling to reconcile the vision with memory. Hadn't she looked different before? Softer? Smaller somehow? But now, now her beauty was sharper, almost unbearable, as if some hidden radiance had been turned up while he slept.

"Mmm," he murmured, needing a moment to reconnect, to anchor himself. His voice cracked with a blend of desire and unease. What did you do? he thought, though the words slipped out between his lips, barely a whisper. You seem even more beautiful than before…

Sue didn't answer. Her mouth descended hungrily onto his, her kisses frantic and greedy.

His hands rose almost on instinct, finding her thighs. The leather beneath his fingers was cold and unyielding, but beneath it he felt the curve of muscle, pliant and alive. He kneaded her slowly, then let his palms wander higher, drawn upward by a force he couldn't name.

Meanwhile, in another part of the house, far from the warmth of the living room, silence draped itself over the secret room like a burial shroud.

Elisabeth's thigh lay heavy against the cracked tiles, pale and unmoving. Her foot dangled loosely, swaying once before settling into stillness. The IV bag above her arm drained in patient rhythm, a second pouch of viscous food pulsing through the clear tube. With each sluggish drop, her body seemed to sink further into absence.

Back in the living room, his hands climbed higher, closing around Sue's waist. Her body pressed closer as his fingers found the zipper at the nape of her neck. A shiver rippled through her or was it through him? As he tugged it downward.

The sound of the zipper was impossibly loud in the quiet room, each metallic tooth releasing with a click like a countdown.

Then the fabric yawned open.

And everything that had been inside Sue spilled out at once.

It was not the fabric at all but flesh, not cloth but a cage. Her skin came apart down the middle as if unzipped by invisible hands, and from within, her organs poured in a molten torrent. The sound was obscene: a wet splotch as viscera struck the hardwood, a sickly splash that painted the floor in shades of red and black.

The man froze. His breath caught in his throat as the impossible image consumed him—Sue's beauty unraveling into a grotesque bloom of gore.