TITLE: Breathe
AUTHOR: Anansay
SUMMARY: Sara finds evidence.
RATING: PG—for implied violence.
DISCLAIMER: These characters are not mine.
I only borrow them here and there.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Response to Unbound Challenge. First and last lines were given.
No more than 1,000 words.
BREATHE
by Anansay
February 1, 2005
An upside down photo lay tattered on the floor. Its angry ragged edges forewarning of the madness to come. She didn't care. She picked it up anyway and turned it around.
A single wide eye met her surly ones and she stopped. The piece became fuzzy in her trembling hand and she let it fall to the ground, to its mates. Squatting she picked up more.
The other eye, as wide…
a gaping mouth, tongue pulled far to the back of the mouth in an eternally torn scream…
a bloody ear, its earring having been ripped out upwards…
Her breath shook and her body tingled with renewed furor.
Somewhere in the house lay a torn body. She could practically smell it—the acrid stench of hatred and blood mixed together in one putrid pestilential pot of pain. A tingle scurried down her spine, feeling more like the slithering of an angry snake. It coiled at the base and prepared itself.
Grissom was still crouched in the corner, his case open beside him. Something in the carpet had caught his eye. She allowed her glance to rest on him a moment longer and then disappeared from the room. The stairs beckoned her. As she stared up the long, narrow steep flight of stairs, the snake shifted and tensed, urging her onward and upward.
Taking care to leave the railing alone, she took the steps carefully, waiting for any creak to announce her arrival. Surprisingly, there was no telltale sound and she drifted upstairs, her eyes never leaving the corner. Nothing moved. No shadows scurried back into darkness. No dust floated disturbed in the scant light. But it was uncannily cold; her skin tightened with goosebumps.
A thought flittered in her mind about calling back to Grissom, letting him know where she was—as per protocol—but she didn't. Instead, she kept her eyes peeled to the second floor and continued to climb.
The dust on the floor lay undisturbed and she stared at it a moment, her keen eyes seeking out any telling hint as to what might lie in wait.
Three doors and only one of them opened. Rusty old doorknobs, looking like they might fall off with a breath, adorned each door. Her large hand neatly covered one, the coarseness of the rust gripping her skin roughly as her hand covered the knob and she pushed it open some more.
The room had a faint odour of being closed up, the dry air seeping moisture from lungs. She hitched up her shirt around her nose and breathed in her own scent and let her eyes wander around the room.
It was empty. But there were footprints, many of them. As she crouched down, she immediately recognized two sets—one wearing shoes, and one not. The barefoot prints were smeared, pulled and dragged, elongating themselves or widening out.
A struggle. She could practically hear the gulping sounds of terror as the woman tried to scream while trying to steer clear of clutching hands and lecherous breath.
Her stomach lurched and she grinned beneath her shirt, her eyes shutting tight against images better left to rot someplace else.
It was the scurrying of feet, panting and hitching of breath that she remembered so well. There'd been no reason to call out, nobody would have heard them so far out on the bay as they were. It was all moot. Just fend for yourself and hope for the best.
With a violent wrench of her face, she pulled her head from her shirt and took a deep shuddering breath, her hands clenching tightly by her thighs. One word came to mind in her frozen fear.
"Grissom!" she called out and was surprised to hear a strong, controlled voice coming from her.
It took a moment—an agonizing, fearful, I'm-all-alone moment—before she heard footfalls on the stairs. She stayed in her crouched position, her legs too cramped to push her upward. He stood behind before coming down to rest beside her. She felt more than saw his glance her way as he, too, peered around the room.
"Sara?"
His soft voice flowed over her, his concern evident in his voice as the lack of evidence struck him.
"Here," she told him, her voice a hoarse whisper. "It happened in here."
He waited, his eyes searching her face. "What happened?"
She took a shuddering breath and began to scour the room, as though seeing the struggle all over again. "She fought. Dressed only in a thin nightgown, her bare feet barely catching on the worn wooden floor. He had big heavy work boots on, good for keeping him planted. It was no use. He caught her easily by the arm and dragged her to him. She didn't bother to scream, not out here."
Grissom watched her as she spoke, his own demon awakening in him as his own hands fisted at his sides. He fought the next words, but they came out anyway. "There's no evidence in here, Sara. The room is bare."
Slowly her head lifted and turned toward him, her eyes wide, lips parted. She stared at him incredulously, barely breathing. It was his hand on her arm that finally brought her back and with a sudden breath she fell limp against him.
He scooped her up like a rag doll, one cherished to one's heart, and carried her down the stairs. His footsteps echoed hollowly in the empty house and the slam of the front door was but a dry snap that disappeared in the rolling surf.
He made her as comfortable as he could in the front passenger seat before sliding in next to her and taking the wheel. With one last look at the broken down house with its shuttered windows and banging front door, he pulled out and headed down the road.
When the city lights began twinkling on the horizon, he pulled out his cell phone. A harried voice answered, voice tight with concern and fear.
"Jim, I have her," Grissom said. "I'm in California."
The silence on the other end was telling—there was always a crass remark somewhere. Not this time. "So she finally broke?"
"So it would seem."
THE END