She stumbled along the aisle.
It was so dark, she could barely put one foot in front of the other, her hands out – helping her feel her way forward – her hair soaked, skin slick, clothes matted to her body. When she got halfway down, she stopped and looked back. It was like she was adrift in some vast black ocean.
The window she’d crawled through hung in the shadows, like a picture frame, glass still ragged along one of its edges, the rest shattered on the floor beneath it. She could hear rain on the roof – a relentless, mechanized rhythm – and see lightning flaring in the sky: whenever that happened, her surroundings would briefly strobe into life, giving her the chance to try to make sense of what was around her. She needed food, a change of clothes. But more than either of those, she needed a mirror and a sewing kit because the blood wasn’t just leaking into her eyes now, it was running all the way down her face.
Wind shook the bones of the building.
She was terrified. She was hurt. Worse, she was totally and utterly alone. Just give up. Something tremored in her throat.
Drop to the floor and give up.
She squeezed her eyes shut, pushing the voice away, waited until the next fork of lightning, then made a beeline for the back of the room. In the darkness, she fumbled around, knocking things over, but soon had her hand around what she’d been looking for.
A flashlight.
She switched it on.
A dazzling white glow skittered ahead of her and she saw how small the place was: it had seemed massive in the pitch blackness, but it was just thirty feet across.
She swiped a candy bar from the nearest shelf, ripped open the packaging and took a bite, ravenously hungry. Then, as more blood ran into her eye, she switched her attention to the other side of the room, where boxes of Band-Aids were lined up. It wasn’t until she was right on top of them that she realized there was a first-aid kit too, half hidden at the back of the shelf. It had everything in it she’d need – scissors, antiseptic, sterile dressing, butterfly closures. But no needle and thread.
Her strength faded – and then something caught her attention close to the counter.
Fishing equipment.
Under the glass was a bait needle, on the counter a selection of fishing lines. She scooped up the thinnest thread she could find, plucked a Zippo from next to the cash register, then returned to the first-aid kit.
Nearby there was a mirror on a rotating stand of sunglasses. She shook off all of the glasses and adjusted the stand so that the mirror was at eye level. Unravelling the fishing line, she fastened it to the needle, then used the scissors from the kit to snip off about six inches of thread. She took a breath and leaned into her reflection, tilting her head, so she could see the wound next to her right eye. She’d glimpsed it in the windshield of her car a couple of hours ago – maybe three, maybe four: she had no idea what time it was now – but the dirt on the glass had helped conceal the severity of the injury.
Another wave of emotion hit her.
‘Why is this happening to me?’ she said softly, her voice barely audible above the rain. She sterilized the end of the needle with the Zippo, readying herself for what was coming, but then her eyes filled. Tears mixed with blood, pink trails casting off down her cheeks, like coloured roads on a map.
She could suture in her sleep, so it wasn’t the idea of stitching her face together that was overwhelming her.
It was something much worse.
‘Please let there be someone else here,’ she sobbed, her words smudged. She raised the needle to her face, her hands shaking. ‘I don’t want to be alone in this place.’