And then she halts. Stop thinking of him or else I’ll yank harder! Or else I’ll rip! She winces and sighs and walks over to her mattress, dragging her feet across the concrete floor. She collapses down onto the stiff padding and leans against the wall, rolling her thumbs around each other. Her body is exhausted and her mind is bored.

She stares at the door and zones out, receding into the strange comfort of the silver and gray blotches, trying to think of anything else but her daddy.

For how long she rests in that blurred zone she does not know, but she can tell it has been a while because her thumbs ache and her vision takes longer than usual to realign. She stops rolling her thumbs and reaches her arms out in front of her, stretching her limbs back to life. The stretch in her muscles feels energizing; with each muted crack she feels more and more revitalized. She yawns, blinks a few times, then turns to the wall behind her. She bites her lip and places her hand out in front of her. Her fingernail scratches the concrete slowly at first and then more confidently, hoping for a response, almost certain one will come. But there is no scratch in return. She tries knocking a few times to get the scratch’s attention, but it’s no use. There is nothing.

She grunts at the wall and crosses her arms, turning away from the vacant disappointment. Her vision slingshots around, automatically pulled toward the metal door. The tugging creeps back into her stomach and she quickly looks away to the center of the room. She sees her toys and gets up, shuffling over to them and sitting with her back to the door. At least this way she can avoid the temptation to look.

She ignores her spine’s want to rotate on its hinge and wraps the stethoscope around her neck. She picks up the stuffed blue dog and checks its chest.

Nothing.

She frowns and squishes the dog in her hands, shaking it lightly as though she might be able to force the thump out of it.

Still, nothing.

Sighing, she picks up the syringe. Despite the beginnings of learned futility, it still feels heavy and magical in her hands. She is about to stick it in the dog’s neck, puncture it with the tip of the needle, when her mind coils around a new thought. The holes she found on her own body. On her wrist. The two purple dots that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, inexplicably popping out from beneath her skin.

She turns her arm over, but it’s bare. The dots must have healed—or, at this point in her state of mind, she wonders if they were ever even there. Wonders if she simply imagined the veins and the blood rising to the surface of her skin as if to say hello, climb out of her body, and play with her for a little while . . . then grow and grow until they became ten-foot-long, slithering things, dripping in her gore and suffocating her with their affection—