Chapter 24: The Things We Do

For a long moment, the room was still. Silent. Then a narrow ray of light cut through the darkness as the door creaked open. A sliver widened, and Sue's head appeared in the gap.

From the shadowed interior, the world felt claustrophobic. The air was heavy, stale, almost metallic. Dust motes danced inside the thin blade of light that fell across Elisabeth's back.

Sue lingered at the threshold, her eyes glinting, wide and shiny, betraying a storm of hesitation. She knew she shouldn't be here. She knew what waited in the room, what waited inside her own hands. But still, she entered.

Slowly, almost reverently, she crossed the distance and knelt behind Elisabeth. The sight before her was both fragile and grotesque. Her manicured hand trembled only slightly as she clipped one of the empty vials onto the puncture syringe. With the other hand, she lifted the bandage. The flesh underneath was swollen, bruised with unnatural colors.

Her voice was soft, almost coaxing, as if speaking to herself. "If you don't open the door when opportunity knocks," she murmured, "you won't get another chance..."

The words hang in the air as the needle slipped into the wound. Elisabeth's body reacted only faintly—a small twitch of the pupil, the barest flinch—as the liquid begun to drain. Sue didn't let herself look away.

Days broke, though inside the room time felt endless. The door cracked open once again. Another shaft of light. Another outfit on Sue's slender frame.

The floor was littered now with empty vials—carelessly strewn, like discarded shells after a battle. Elisabeth laid unmoving among them, and Sue paused at the threshold, her body stiff with hesitation.

She stepped inside, whispering: "Just one more. Then I have a week off, and we can switch."

Her manicured hand lifts the bandage again. The skin beneath had grown angry and grotesque. The swelling was worse, the puncture site was raw. Unease coiled in her chest, nausea rising, but she steadied her hand. The Matrix awaited her and demanded her.

This time the jab was harder. The needle resisted, sinking only with a sickening push. Her breath hitched as she forced it in.

The door groaned again. Another outfit. Another day.

Sue entered, but now she could barely look. The stench of infection filled the air. Pus oozed from the puncture site when she removed the bandage. The floor was nearly carpeted with glass vials, each a testament to her guilt. Her hands trembled as she clipped on yet another.

Her voice faltered as she knelt behind Elisabeth, trying to bury her horror beneath a mask of excitement. " I've got some amazing news," she whispered. "We are doing the cover of Vogue."

But her fingers betrayed her revulsion. They dug at the wound, circling, searching for entry, fighting against the inflamed flesh that pushed back against the needle.

Her voice wavered, pleading with herself as much as with Elisabeth. "It's just one more day, it's not a big deal..."

---

The bathroom was still, the pale tiles caught the muted daylight like a mirror that reflected nothing but silence. The door to the secret room hung slightly ajar, as though it, too, was holding its breath.

Then, out of the suffocating stillness, came a desperate gasp. A great, ragged breath—ahhhhhhhhhhh—dragged from lungs that seemed to have forgotten how to breathe.

For a heartbeat, the silence returned. Heavy, endless and then it shattered.

A scream ripped through the hidden room, sharp and raw enough to curdle the blood of anyone who might hear it."Elisabeth." Her voice trembled, breaking apart into madness."NOOOOOOO!"

The cry echoed, surging through the house like a shockwave. It filled the living room, bounced off the walls, and seeped into the corners, carrying itself toward the wide window with its view of the enormous, grinning billboard outside. The smile loomed over the glass as though mocking her despair.

Her voice broke again, this time further away, trembling, weaker, but no less piercing:"...nooooooo..."

The hiss came next. At first, a faint whisper—then rising, roaring, exploding down the hallway like thunder cracking through stone.

The bathroom door gaped open at the end of the long, dark corridor. From within, the sound of rushing water filled the air, mingling with steam that crawled outward, swallowing the hall like smoke from a fire.

Inside, the shower hissed angrily, the spray pounding the floor in a relentless cascade and beneath that stream stood Elisabeth.

Her body was trembling, eyes fixed on the tiles below her feet as though she couldn't bring herself to look anywhere else. Her pupils were glassy, lost. Dazed.

The water pooled around her ankles, tracing rivers down her skin—and over one leg that was no longer hers. At least, not as she remembered it. The flesh had looked rotten, withered by time's cruel hand. Blue veins writhed like worms beneath parchment-thin skin, crawling upward until they disappeared into her groin.

She brushed wet strands of hair from her face, but the motion revealed something worse: a patch of skin around her eye, collapsed into wrinkles so deep they seemed carved into her. A bruise that wasn't a bruise, a hollow mask of decay.

The water pounded her back mercilessly, streaming over a swollen infection that had spread from the puncture mark like wildfire. Her spine buckled under its own weight, vertebrae twisted and misaligned, dragging her posture into a frail stoop.

She pressed her palm against the slick tiles to steady herself, and the truth of it became undeniable: her entire right arm—hand, wrist, forearm, up to her elbow—was aged, shrunken, mottled with the same ancient decay.

Her voice came out as a raw whisper at first, then broke into a shriek."Not a big deal? … THIS IS NOT A BIG DEAL?!"

And then, piercing through it all, another sound invaded. The telephone.

At first faint. Then louder. Louder still but relentless.

Until it felt like the very walls were shaking with it, until the sound became a blade that drove straight into her skull, threatening to tear through her eardrums.