Chapter 30: The Sink's Red Throat

The sound was sharp, almost childlike at first — smack! Two blu tack balls slammed together, a meaningless gesture that reverberated like an accusation. You can't escape from yourself. The words echoed, not from outside but somewhere deep in Sue's chest, a truth she had spent years running from.

The world fractured.

A dirty, grainy image tore across her mind: a motorcycle hurtling out of the dark, head-on, unstoppable. It collided with the lens of her imagination, metal shrieking, shattering into fragments. The driver's body shot upward, limp and flailing, no longer a man but a puppet whose strings had been cut. She flinched as if she could feel the bones break in her own body.

And then followed a silence.

Back in the living room, the silence was even worse.

Sue's hands were slick, her fingers trembling in front of her eyes. The blood caught the light, fresh and glistening, refusing to let her look away. Beyond them, blurred as if the world itself wanted to spare her, Elisabeth lay in a dark pool that spread and spread until it seemed to swallow the carpet whole.

A shrill whine started in Sue's ear that was faint at first, then louder, shrieking, until it filled her skull. Panic rippled across her face, breaking through the mask she had tried so hard to wear. Vulnerability bled out of her eyes, raw, and naked.

She froze then followed a long beat.

The phone rang.

It was absurdly ordinary, that sound. A domestic intrusion in the middle of her nightmare. She moved toward it like a machine wound too tightly, each step automatic, rehearsed as her bloody fingers fumbled at the receiver.

"Yes?" Her own voice startled her.

"Sue? Is that you?" Alan's voice, tinny and far away. "I tried reaching you earlier, what happened?…"

"Oh, nothing," she said. The lie came quickly, too quickly. "Some practical joker or something…"

"You're reassuring me." Alan's voice was calm, but underneath it was a tension she couldn't name. "This is no time for nerves."

Sue glanced at the picture window. Outside, a giant billboard loomed of her own face frozen in a smile she no longer recognized. The text shouted back at her:

NEW YEAR'S EVE SHOW — TONIGHT 9PM

"I'll be in the front row to see you shine," Alan went on, as if nothing were wrong, as if blood weren't drying on her skin. "They're gonna love you!"

Sue let the words drift over her. She didn't believe them. Not anymore.

Slowly, she hung up the phone.

The bathroom smelled faintly of bleach, a sharp tang that clung to the back of Sue's throat as she stood over the sink. Her hands moved with unhurried precision, rubbing palm against palm, watching the faint maroon streaks coil into ribbons before vanishing down the dark throat of the drain. She felt a strange satisfaction in that disappearance, as if the sink swallowed more than just blood.

When she lifted her gaze, the mirror returned her image in fractured shards. A dozen Sue's stared back: one wide-eyed, another calm, one with lips pressed too tight, others lost in jagged fragments of glass. None of them seemed entirely her, and yet they all were. For a moment, she didn't know which reflection to believe.

By the time she stepped into the backstage corridor of the studio, the air shifted, electric, buzzing with the scent of sweat, hairspray, and panic. Assistants darted past clutching clipboards, headsets crackled with half-shouted instructions, and somewhere in the distance, a stagehand dropped a prop with a metallic clang. Sue smiled brightly, the kind of smile that belonged on a poster, but inside she was listening, attuned to every scrape of a shoe, every cough, and every raised voice. Stay calm. Breathe. Nothing's wrong. Nothing has to go wrong.The words circled inside her like a mantra she wasn't entirely sure she believed.

Under the lights of the fitting room, the diamond necklace winked cold fire against her throat. The weight of it was heavier than she'd expected, like a leash masquerading as luxury. The corset laced tight around her ribs until her breath came shallow, but still she smiled as people passed, murmuring encouragements. Their voices felt distant, muffled, as though she stood beneath water.

The cough started as a tickle. A slight catch in her chest. She raised the glass of water to her lips, cool relief sliding down her throat, but the tickle bloomed into something harsher. Again. And again. She pressed a hand to her mouth, apologizing, even as the fit returned, tearing at her lungs with a rhythm she couldn't control. Embarrassed, she excused herself quickly, her heels clicking against the tiles as she hurried toward the bathroom.

The corridors twisted and turned like a maze, painted in a sterile beige. Sue's breath echoed in her own ears as she passed the soundstage. Through an open door, she glimpsed Harvey, his voice already a storm:

"...you nail it, you GLUE it, or you fucking EAT it! But everything's gotta be perfect!"

His words cracked like a whip, and Sue felt the echo of them in her ribs, already sore from the coughing. She walked faster, keeping her head low, her pulse quickening in her throat.

Sue slammed the bathroom door shut and twisted the lock twice, her fingers trembling against the cold metal. The muffled thrum of the New Year's Eve celebration outside pressed at the walls, the sound of laughter and champagne glasses colliding feeling impossibly distant, as though happening on another planet.

The cough came suddenly, jagged, ripping through her chest. Once. Twice. Then again and again until her ribs ached and her eyes watered. She bent over the sink, clutching it with whitening knuckles, gasping between spasms, willing it to stop.

Something clinked. A tiny metallic note, sharp against the basin. She nearly missed it — almost watched it vanish down the drain. Reflex caught it: her hand snapping forward, fist closing just before it slipped away.

Her pulse thudded in her ears. For a heartbeat, she didn't want to know what it was. She held her fist so tightly it hurt, cartilage straining against bone. Slowly, fearfully, she uncurled her fingers.

A tooth.

Her own tooth that was white at the crown but ending in a jagged, bloody root that glistened wet in the sterile bathroom light.

Her stomach flipped. She lifted her gaze, eyes locking onto the mirror. For a terrible moment she hesitated, but her jaw seemed to open of its own accord, compelled by some dreadful gravity.

There it was.

A black void gaping where enamel should have been, obscene in the perfect row of her smile.

Her breath quickened. She reached up, touched another tooth. It wobbled too easily, like a child's baby tooth long overdue to fall out. She tugged. It came free with a sickening sticky pop.

A whimper caught in her throat. Still, her fingers moved again, to another, and another. Each yielded without resistance, as though her mouth were nothing but a brittle mask beginning to crumble.

Her reflection was no longer hers. Wide, wild eyes. A grotesque, toothless grin, dark holes like the reeds of a harmonica of an instrument made for breathing out darkness instead of music. A black hole into hell itself.

In her palm, three perfect teeth rested like artifacts freshly unearthed, their roots thick, veined, impossibly alive. They throbbed in her hand, or perhaps it was only her pulse echoing against them.

A knock shattered the trance.

"Sue?!" a voice barked from the other side. The assistant director. "They need you on stage. Lighting check."

Terror snapped her upright. She looked from the teeth in her palm to the face in the mirror, blood smeared, crazed, and she looked alien. She forced her lips closed, pressed them hard together, as though sealing the horror inside.

"I'm coming!" she croaked, trying for normality. A trickle of blood slipped from the corner of her mouth and she bent quickly over the sink, scrubbing it away before it could ruin her dress.

"I'll meet you there!" she added, louder this time. Her voice wavered but passed for steady.

For a moment she froze, breath shallow. Then an idea struck, sharp and bright. Her necklace.

She glanced down, eyes sparking with sudden resolve. With frantic precision, she rinsed her hands and mouth, washed every drop of crimson away. She curled her fist tightly around the teeth, hiding them like forbidden treasure.

One deep breath. Another.

Her fist clenched harder, pressing bone against bone. She turned the lock, lifted her chin, and opened the door.