i don't know where the blood goes. [ au & rw ]
"Hendrix? HENDRIX!"

Jesus fucking Christ, she’d turned around for two seconds to grab something from her room and when she came out the door again her idiot brother was gone. Fucking perfect. Sadie grumbled to herself, masking her worry as she stomped down the hallway, rapping her gloved knuckles on doors and barging in to see if he was hiding from her. They were heading down to the Danger Room, or at least they had been talking about it and now he’d been fucking kidnapped by ghosts or abducted by aliens or ninjas or whatever. Sadie rounded a corner, still intent on her hunt and stopped in her tracks; something about the hallway seemed awfully familiar but definitely not part of Xaviers. Two elevators stood side by side, they had red doors and art deco type lights above them signalling the position of the car in the shaft that was out of sight, a wooden floor spread out on front of them, replacing the carpet she had been walking along; the walls were panelled halfway up to match, white paint took over and extended to the ceiling. For some reason she felt like she knew those doors but her mind was fogged by fear and refused to place them. With a dramatic double thump her heart lurched into her throat, the door on he left was opening. Out of the crack gushed a torrent of blood with an almighty crash against the floor, something that looked like a body making a wet splash as it tumbled out of the crack. Sadie didn’t even have time to scream, she was too busy sucking in a deep, shocked breath.

Sweating with panic, vision blurring with fear she turned around to run away from the blood surging towards her. Only there was a wall where the end of the corridor had been. No! Sadie wailed and thumped her gloved fists against it. Someone had to let her out. Someone had to hear her. Panting she turned, her back flat to the wall that had sprung out of thin air. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. The blood was still flowing out of the door, it was lapping at her feet now. Bubbles bloomed on the surface and she heard the most horrendous thumping sound over her own heartbeat. Countless hearts beating in time to one another and still the blood kept flowing. Up to her ankles now. Then her knees. Sadie was frozen in horror and panic. There were hands in the blood, twisting and turning reaching for her with disconnected voices accusing her of murder. It wasn’t my fault, she sobbed hotly, shaking her head but feeling the doubt in the back of her throat, scraping through her desperate words. There would always be an ounce of doubt there, always; she had chosen to take the Cure and hadn’t she always known that nothing that seemed too good to be true was worth trusting? For a chance at normalcy she had thrown away all the life lessons she’d scrounged together in her short, rocky time on the planet. She should have known. Nothing is ever that simple.

Blood at her waist now, shuddering with fear she started to wade towards the other door in the far wall. Surely there was a way out of here. There had to be. Had to be. There was no way she would drown in here. As her breathing shortened, becoming uneven and haggard fingers rose from the blood to catch the edge of her skirt and Sadie batted them away with shrill, strangled cries. At the closed elevator door she slapped her sticky palm on the button. The light flickered and died. She scrabbled around the edges for a way to get her fingers into a gap or a nook so that she could try and wrench it open but there was nothing. No escape. Nowhere to run.

Still the crimson liquid glugged into the room; it was at her shoulders and still rising, tears streaked down her face, tracking black deltas of mascara over her cheeks.

The blood was at her chin, she was standing on her tiptoes; then she was treading water.

It was so thick and she couldn’t keep afloat, couldn’t keep her head above the thick, syrupy fluid. Warm, spicy copper was slick over the back of her tongue as it invanded her mouth when she dipped a little too low, it was in her hair, splashing against her face, getting in her eyes. Sadie felt herself tiring as the ceiling drew closer and the hands grabbed at her ankles, her knees and hips. They were dragging her down now, taking her with them. When the crown of her head touched the ceiling she screamed, a thin peel of sound and a wasted breath split into sobs as they dragged her under.

All she saw was red and then nothing.

Sadie woke up screaming.

[ narrative ]