Page 54 of Mine

“Did you try to escape?”

She nodded, frozen in fear. Her hands clutched the bookcase as I came close. Her fingers were white. Poor girl.

“Well, at least you’re honest,” I said calmly. She must not even have broken the lock if my alarms hadn’t gone off. “Did you take anything?”

“No. I tried to get out through the waiting room.”

“Alright.” I stood next to her, arms calmly at my side. No sudden movements. She was such a scared creature.

“I broke… I broke…”

“What is it?” She couldn’t have broken the window; it was double paned and bulletproof.

“The globe.”

My mind went dark. She didn’t mean…

I walked into the operating room. Mr. Steadhill let out a torrent of shouting when he saw me.

“Killer! Fuck! Stupid bitch! You see what you did! You could have saved me! You fucking idiot piece of shit! Now he’s going to kill us all!”

I stopped at the medical cabinet, taking out a syringe from the drawer. Without saying a word, I went to Mr. Steadhill and injected him with the sedative. His screams died down instantly.

Now the room was quiet, so quiet that I swear I could hear Sara’s heart beating in fright. She followed me as I walked slowly to the waiting room.

The light I’d installed to spotlight my sculpture was shining on nothing. The globe had fallen to the floor. It had shattered. The plasticized claustrums were scattered across the floor. Some of them looked to be broken.

Gone. All my work of the past few years. In pieces.

I fell to my knees and began to pick up the shards. My little trophies. I could save them, I was sure of it. It would take some time. But I could do it. I had destroyed so much to create this one piece of art. It seemed impossible that it too should be destroyed. I brushed the pieces into my hands, collected them in my cupped palms. Yes. Only a few were broken. I could fix them. I would.

A piece of glass cut my finger as I reached for one of the claustrums. I only realized it when I saw the blood dripping onto the pieces I’d already collected.

“No,” I whispered. I used my shirt to try to wipe off the blood, but it only smeared the red deeper in.

“No, no, no,” I said. I tried to put down all that I had gathered up, but my hands shook too badly. Another piece fell and broke in two. I jolted back on my knees.

“I’m sorry,” Sara said. I turned to see her in the doorway. I had not seen her come there. Careless. I was so careless. Her green eyes shimmered in the dim light. I shook my head as I reached to pick up the broken claustrum.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, and then she was kneeling, her arms around me. “Don’t cry. I didn’t know—I was only trying to break the door handle. Please don’t cry.”

Don’t cry? Was I crying?I touched my cheek and felt wetness. I stared at Sara in mute disbelief. Silhouetted from the light behind, she was a dark shadow in the doorway. And the tears blurred the world, made her hazy like a Hollywood star in the 1950s.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know it was yours. I’ll help fix it. Look, go put a bandage on your cut. We’ll fix it together.”

“Go back to the library,” I said.

“But—”

“GO!”

I shouldn’t have screamed. I never scream. Anger, sadness—these are not emotions that cross my heart often. But I screamed at her, and let out all of the emotion at once. The sound echoed through the rooms as Sara fled, scrambling away from the monster who was bleeding on the floor.

Sara

It was an hour before Rien came back. Or minutes, I don’t know which. Time didn’t work properly anymore, and my heart was beating so fast that I was sure I’d die of a heart attack before he came back to hurt me.

The look in his eyes… my God. I had no idea that anyone could have so much pain and anger. It was like a door had opened up to show me all of the horrible things inside of him, then swung back shut as quickly as he had opened. The grief on his face when he saw the globe broken… I would have done anything to take it back. I didn’t know what he would do to me, but I knew that I had done something worse than I could understand.

---