There wasn’t any exhilaration in it. No relief in the dopamine hit. It hurt in the fucking worst way, to the point tears came to my eyes.

But I didn’t have that sign, that mark, that wrongness.

My entire body trembled. Blood dripped from fingertip to white snow.

I floated up onto the railing, and I moved far enough away that all was clear.

Thank you for helping me back there, I thought. I activated the Wretch.

The snow blew around me, gathering on the Wretch’s surface. Tracing outlines, forming a shape.

I could hear my mom talking to Crystal with a raised voice inside, muffled by the intervening door.

The Wretch didn’t grasp, writhe, or swing blindly. The faces it wore weren’t contorted or angry.

I lifted my hand, and it moved nearby limbs. I turned my hand over, and it mimed me.

My hand trembled. The Wretch’s invisible hand was as steady as a rock.

Time to face the day, I thought. At least you’re with me.

It’s going to be a rough one.

Sundown 17.2

What got me was how fucking quiet it all was. I could look out the window and except for the highway, I couldn’t see the lights of a single car. Snowfall muted everything, and the city wasn’t quite awake yet. No work to go to, not enough people around to talk to. The very real possibility there was no future.

Only the moments, now. People elsewhere packed up. They got in their cars. They drove to some far away place. They put their life’s possessions away in this new place. They slept a bit. They got food in a horrendous lineup. Their days went on.

I stepped away from the window, still drying my hair. My finger without the fingernail hurt like fuck. I got dressed while still in the washroom, then tended to basic don’t-want-to-look-sick makeup and other ministrations. I passed Crystal, who floated in for her shower. No sound, no footsteps, even.

Crystal flew, and I floated just enough to keep my steps light, because I’d overdone my physio before my nap, overextending the underside of the foot I’d cut a week ago.

Carol was still working on her hair, which she had been doing before I started my fifteen minute shower, finished post-shower ministrations, dressed, and stepped out. Golden hair parted, slicked close to the head at one side below the part, a roller removed from the hair at the brow, where it gave her hair some wave as it swept over one corner of her forehead. Every strand with a place, but the short hairstyle wasn’t the sort of thing that required fifteen minutes.