Blood back in her hands, she does it before she realizes it –

She punches Harriet right in the ear.

The little Napoleon stumbles out of the tub, clutching the side of her head. Miriam struggles to clamber over the lip of the porcelain and falls to the tile floor, shoulder-first.

"Maybe you're not clear," Harriet growls, "on the definition of docile."

She grabs Miriam by the hair, slams her head into the side of the tub.

Miriam's world rings like a goddamn bell. It barely even hurts anymore. It's mostly a dull thudding, like she's just a bag of sand that someone keeps hitting with a cinderblock. Part of her thinks, the pain is over, at least, but it turns out that this is an entirely inaccurate sentiment.

Before she knows what's happening, Harriet's got her on her wobbly feet, and Miriam wonders why she sees herself standing in front of her. Is this a near-death experience? An out-of-body moment? She stares into her own eyes for a moment, blinking.

Then she rushes to meet herself, like maybe she's going to give her own lips a drunken, sloppy, blood-bubbled kiss –

Crack.

Her skull feels like an apple that's been split with a camping hatchet. It occurs to her: Harriet just slammed my head into the mirror.

Sure enough, she sees herself fractured into a thousand little shards, the spider in the center of a jagged web. Pieces drop away. Blood soaks her face.

Harriet – now surprisingly gentle – rests Miriam on the floor, face up.

"There we go," Harriet says. "A docile little girl."

Miriam tries to say something, but she only blows bubbles of red spittle. Her wet lips smack together. Sound reaches her ears too late, or distorted, like she's in an oil drum. And every time her heart beats, it's like someone pounds on the outside of that oil drum with a sledgehammer. Miriam's a piece of ruined meat. She feels raw.

She tries to push herself up, but her hands won't even get underneath her. They just slide away, spread eagle, fingers curling in like the legs of a dead bug.

Her head tilts, cheek against the tile – an act that occurs not of her own volition.

The floor is cool, and she wants just to lie there and close her eyes and curl up there forever. Maybe I'll die here, she thinks, and not far away she sees one of the blank pages from her diary halfcurled against a radiator. Maybe this is the end of the line.

Maybe that's okay.

A heavy weight suddenly rests on her chest.

Groggy, she tilts her chin and sees Harriet above, smiling.

The gun is on her chest. Every time her heart beats, the pistol trembles.

"Consider the gun a present," Harriet says. She sounds like she's speaking to Miriam from the other side of a burbling fish tank. "The diary is done. Your trucker boyfriend will be dead by dusk. You hurt all over. Make the pain go away."