The bathroom is a cell disguised as a sanctuary. A windowpane above the toilet, too small for escape but large enough to suggest the possibility. Madison turns on the faucet—white noise to drown out what matters. The sound of running water becomes a barrier between worlds: the world inside this tiny room and the world beyond the door where Faith waits.
Madison settles onto the toilet lid, magazine spread across her lap. Her finger traces the word "ESCAPE" splashed across an advertisement—not reading it so much as communing with it, like a prisoner might touch a smuggled file. The coincidence of the word seems too perfect, a wink from the universe.
Faith's voice penetrates the door, ”How are you feeling?" Her concern layered over something harder.
Madison cracks the door, and peers into her bedroom through the narrow opening. The queen-sized bed faces a dresser topped with stuffed animals—childhood totems rendered obsolete by circumstance. Her desk holds a jar of pens, a lamp, and a framed photograph: younger Madison flanked by Faith and Richard. Their faces frozen in a moment when smiles came easier. Before everything broke.
A collage of magazine pages and boy band posters blankets one wall—her attempt to cover the emptiness with noise. Two moving boxes remain unpacked on the floor, their contents still in limbo, as if waiting for permission to belong here.
The dusty outline of a cross marks the wall above the door, a reminder of what's been removed but not forgotten.
The phone cord snakes across the floor like a lifeline, disappearing under the bathroom door. Madison grips the handset like a talisman.
"Don't come in my room!" she shouts, anxiety sharpening her voice.
"Are you feeling better?" Faith's voice hovers outside, persistent as a ghost.
"Yeah, just washing up for bed." The lie comes easily, practiced.
"Can I get you any—?"
"Can I have some space?" The question is a demand wrapped in politeness.
Faith's footsteps retreat, light returning beneath the bedroom door, a sign of temporary reprieve. Madison closes the bathroom door fully and then turns to face her reflection in the mirror. The girl who stares back looks older than she should, with shadows beneath her eyes like bruises.
"Okay... what was I saying?" she says into the receiver.
"Couches." Erik's voice crackles through the line, a bridge to another world.
"I mean, if you think about it, when you visit someone, and sit on their couch, you know they've had sex on it. People don't clean their couches on the reg. So, you're like, sitting in a blend of sweat and cum. It just weirds me out.”
***
Miles away, Erik sits in a bedroom transformed into a makeshift drug lab. The sharp chemical smell has long since ceased to register in his consciousness. Taxidermy animals watch from shelves with glass eyes that miss nothing. A mound of white powder sits on the coffee table before him like a miniature Everest waiting to be conquered.
Erik's plump fingers grip a scalpel, the skull and crossbones ring with ruby eyes catching the light as he cuts into the belly of a dead rabbit laid out in a stainless steel pan. The blade slices through fur and flesh with clinical precision.
"Girl, ya should be here with me," he says, parting the incision to reveal glistening organs beneath.
Madison's laugh is hollow. "I'll just grab my cape and fly right over."
Erik removes intestines and sets them aside with the detached interest of a butcher. He abandons the scalpel in the rabbit's body, the blade standing upright like a tiny monument. "Aight then, I'll come to you."
"Yeah, right. Stranger danger." Madison's tone lightens, but the words carry weight.
"Come on, ya know me."
"I know your profile and who you claim to be. How do I know I can trust you?"
Erik's face twists momentarily with anger before sliding back into practiced charm. "I'm just a good boy, tryin' to make his mama proud."
"Sure, guy. Look at your lifestyle."
"Bet. I'm a self-made man. Always told Ma I'd be successful." His voice rises to a shout. "LOOK MA I'M A CHEMIST!"
A woman's voice calls from another room: "Look at what? You need something?"
"Nah, Ma!" Erik calls back, then lowers his voice. "I'll look the Devil in the eyes, and flip him off."
Behind him, a girl with innocent green eyes approaches the table. Jenni—so young her face still holds traces of childhood—leans over the pile of white powder as she uses a fake ID to chop it into lines. She snorts one, then freezes. Her eyes roll back, drool escaping her lips as her body begins to convulse.
"Ya gotta be kiddin' me!" Erik pushes the tray table aside and rises to stand over Jenni as she seizes on the floor.
***
Madison pulls down on the skin beneath her eyes, watching it stretch before snapping back. She sighs, unaware of the drama unfolding on the other end of the line.
"Damn it!" Erik's voice carries panic now.
"Something wrong?"
"I'm surrounded by idiots." His voice shifts, as if talking to someone else. "Ya shoulda listened to me."
"Listened about what?" Madison's question hangs in the air.
"So hell-bent on havin' a good time that you ended up dead."
A tense silence lingers on the phone.
Confusion washes over Erik’s face. "Hello?"
"You're scaring me." For the first time, Madison's composure cracks.
***
Erik kneels beside Jenni, fingers searching for a pulse. "My, um... my dog, she... she got into some chocolate."
His voice hardens. "Bad dog!"
"Did she eat a lot?”
Erik stands, looking down at the girl with clinical detachment. "Yeah... quite a bit, but I, uh, think she's gonna be okay..." He sighs, a sound that carries too much weight. "I'm losing it. I can't take much more. I'm gonna snap. I need to get away from all this craziness."
***
Madison stares into the mirror, no longer seeing her reflection. "Oh, yeah? What do you have in mind?"
"Girl, I'm an angel. Let me come swoop ya up, and take ya to heaven.”
Madison’s mind floated somewhere beyond the conversation, beyond the bathroom, beyond the house. A fugue state of exhaustion and the mellow aftermath of weed. "Are ya there!?”
Madison’s reality snaps back into focus. "Sorry, I zoned out. I'm still groggy from that dose I drank.”
***
Erik watches Jenni twitch and foam at the mouth, a spectator to her final moments. "Imagine if you had used enough to kill her?"
"Kill her!? She's always around. I, I only wanted her to fall asleep. I only wanted to run away." The words spill out, confession and justification tangled together.
Jenni's eyes widen in a final moment of awareness before going still.
"Ya say tomato, I say tomato." Erik's voice is casual, even conversational.
***
Madison rolls her eyes, then reaches for the toilet tank cover. She flips it over, revealing a plastic bag taped to its underside—her private vault in a house with no privacy. "Cute. I just can't with you, I'm too tired. If I don't get some real sleep soon, I'm gonna collapse."
"I want you to collapse - right into my bed." Erik's voice drops lower, suggestive.
"Stop."
"Start."
"Come on!"
"That's what I'm sayin', girl. Cum on me!"
Madison presses the handset to her forehead and laughs—a genuine laugh that cuts through the darkness for a moment. Then, a faint click through the receiver. A third presence on the line.
She returns the phone to her ear, suddenly alert. "You're nasty.”
***
"Ya like it." Erik sits beside Jenni's body, unmoving now. "Girl, ya definitely know what ya doin'. Got me all riled up."
***
The toilet tank cover rests upside-down on the tank, the plastic bag now open in the sink. Madison counts out her treasures: a stack of bills, a tube of lipstick, a scale, and the bag of marijuana—relics from another life, currency for the next.
"Nothing I can't handle." She applies the lipstick with practiced strokes.
"So, ya think you can handle this big, fat—."
"Okay, let's take it down a notch."
"Tease."
Madison examines her reflection, puckers her lips. "I gotta get ready for school. So over it. I think I'm gonna drop out. Why the hell do I even—?"
The phone cord jerks violently, yanking the handset from her grip. It clatters to the floor, skidding until it shatters against the door. The light beneath the bedroom door vanishes, obscured by Faith's shadow.
Silence falls, sudden and absolute. Madison stares at the door, terror crystallizing in her chest.
Knock, knock.
She scrambles to hide the evidence, shoving everything back into the plastic bag and securing it to the tank lid.
"Just a second."
The lid drops back into place. She throws a towel over the magazine.
Knock, knock.
Madison's eyes tremble, fixed on the door. Each knock sounds like a nail being driven into a coffin.
Knock, knock, knock.
"I'm almost read—"
The handle rattles, Faith's attempt to enter thwarted by the lock.
Bang, bang, baang.
"One second while I—"
The handle rattles again as Faith pounds on the door, the walls shaking with the force of her rage.
"Let me wipe!"
Madison frantically wipes off the lipstick, her hand freezing in mid-motion as the door splinters open under Faith's kick.
Faith stands in the threshold, phone cord pulled taut between her hands like a garrote, her eyes holding a promise of violence that words cannot contain.
Chapter 3