Dear God, I was hungover. Vision blurry. Stomach queasy. Every nerve ending frayed. Justifiably paranoid. My grainy eyes craved sleep. Muddled thoughts needed psychiatry. Life-sustaining molecules required H2O. Here I am stumbling down this residential street like the first zombie of the apocalypse, and I have no idea what I’m going to tell Cassie when I see her. Turns out I didn’t have to worry about that. Her car was missing from the driveway, and when I went to unlock the front door, someone else opened it from the other side.

“Jesus Christ, Jess.” Standing in the doorway was Al Tanner, my sponsor from AA, shaking his head with a look of such concern I would have shed tears had I moisture to spare. “Thank God you’re okay.”

“I’m far from fucking okay,” I said, pushing past him. That two-mile walk had felt like a marathon. My feet were stuck in concrete blocks. Seeing Al here was equal parts comforting and disconcerting mixed in a bowl of confusion. “Where’s Cassie?”

The house was blessedly cool, air-conditioning being among the greatest of mankind’s inventions. I was less than twenty-something steps from my Sleep Number bed, which was up near the top as well. The door closed behind me. I stumbled a few steps and collapsed onto the couch in the main living room. Turns out my bed was too far away.

Al walked over and looked down on me. “Was it worth it?” I heard him say.

The last thing I needed right then was condescension, but it was to be expected. “It’s not what it looks like, Al. I was fucking kidnapped. Held against my will. They made me do it, I swear.”

Rather than pull out his phone and call the police, Al crossed his arms and sighed. “Fuck,” he said. “Okay, look. Sleep it off. We’ll talk when your head’s clear.”

I wanted to get it all out right then and there. I had questions of my own, and time was of the essence. But the couch cushions had the gravity pull of a black hole, dragging me toward unknown depths. This pending sleep was a singularity beyond which I could not see. “Where’s Cassie?” I asked again, but my eyes had already closed and I could feel myself drifting away.

Al, that sweet bastard, laid a blanket over me, and placed a pillow under my head. “Shhh,” he said, and that was all the encouragement I needed. The house could have been burning down and it wouldn’t have mattered. I fell into a nightmarish sleep where dark seeds planted during that terrible experience began to take root.

* * *