Mrs. Venable: Sebastian said, ‘Truth is the bottom of a bottomless well.’

~Suddenly, Last Summer; Tennessee Williams

The room had become brighter. The morning sun reflected off the white tiles, illuminating the room, forcing Spencer to squint, her eyelids blinking frequently. Her memory of the past hours had come flooding back to her in patches, like the quilt her grandmother had stitched for her before she died. Each square piece of cloth containing its own pattern, the various colored threads weaved together; each an original idea, yet the quilt forming one coherent thought.

She needed to move. It was obvious that the silence would soon be broken, and this intimate moment in time would be shattered, the bits of broken glass shards exploding, the next few hours spent digging the miniscule pieces out of her skin with a sanitized needle. Spencer silently grinned, amused that her thoughts had included such an act of cleansing and healing, having spent the last year pushing a dirty metal blade into her body.

The body behind her shifted, forcing Spencer to lift up her right leg. Her butt was asleep and her shoulder blades throbbed, but that was not enough. She would move from this position when Ashley awoke, only to find Spencer’s back pressed against her front, both their bodies strewn about Ash’s back supported by the cold porcelain tub.

The towels still lay in a heap near the toilet. Tiny puddles of water remained near the bowl’s base, unable to evaporate, reminders of a few hours past, when Ash had poured cold water down Spencer’s back and front to cool her off.

The pills tended to do that; make her body hot to the touch. Spencer’s throat was raw, stinging acerbically as she forced saliva down it, her mouth sticky and sour from constant regurgitation.

Sighing, she leaned her head back, the pressure of Ashley’s shoulder at the base of her neck, providing a second of comfort before the back of her head smacked against the edge of the porcelain tub. The impact rang through her head, echoing through caverns of confusion and fatigue, her mind unable to fully grasp the seriousness of her current situation, though she knew it was bad; Very bad.

Spencer was torn between two forces: The part of her that desperately needed to flee, to jump up off the floor, grab Ashley by her arm, and drag her unconscious body down the stairs, her tangled limbs bumping painfully against each tile stair, only to be threw out the front door onto the lawn like a bag of trash, the door slamming violently behind her, cut off from the world that only Spencer was allowed to reside. This place was not for Ashley. Not for anyone. It was a secret, one that only Spencer kept.