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Like any other time Tina was writing she preferred to be left alone, and completely isolated herself into her office. She purged and purged until her hands stiffened and cracking the knuckles no longer gave her relief. That’s the only time she stopped, even then sitting in her chair facing the fireplace she was never able to shut her mind off. She’d close her eyes and they would all come swimming into her consciousness and she’d sit in silence and watch each memory like a movie in her father’s private studio. It was in these moments she didn’t mind the silence, in fact she needed it, each thought and recollection had its own sound, each strike left a resonating chime in her memory and replaying those helped her feel and attack the paper with a need to purge every bit of these memories.

She’d fallen asleep in her chair, the drink she’d poured herself ten hours ago still on the armrest nestled in her hand. She hadn’t so much as sipped it, when she wrote she didn’t need to drink but the smell of it alone comforted her. The weight of the heavy glass in her hand as she paced her office, watching as the liquid coated the sides and ran down the walls of the glass slowly, always drew her in, enough so she could focus on her hands. There were times when even writing gibberish on the page made her feel better so long as she could focus on the movement of her hands.

In fact that’s where this one particular dream had left her, the image of a hand, palm first, closing in on her face forced Tina’s eyes to open with a jolt. She didn’t move but she was frightened, her hand clinched around her glass and her mind finally registered what it was that she was hearing. The mail that was gathering at the floor of her front door was being pushed aside as the door opened.

Bette jerked her key out of the lock as she held onto a bag of groceries. The mail that was piled at the front door was three weeks’ worth of Tina ignoring the outside world. She could see Tina’s head above the back of the chair, she might’ve been sleeping or maybe today would be the day that she discovers her body, she really couldn’t gauge Tina’s state of mind lately. She exhaled when Tina’s head jerked to the side, she really was full of anxiety about coming into Tina’s house.