She flicks the switch waiting for something to jump out at her. Nothing - not even disappointment touches her. So it must still be working. Standing blankly in the doorway she checks her wrist - small, thin, and fragile-looking. A smirk, and she's left wondering why as she closes the door. The answering machine crouches in the shadows of the hall, it's light flashing frantic 911 as it beeps madly. How sad she can't be bothered. Cold and neat - far too neat like a hospital room. Abruptly the coffee table goes over - authentic teak from Sweden - paperwork angels take wing into origami pigeon flurries.
Vacantly she smiles as her watch beeps lcd display pulsing hypnotically. As she stares a message flickers pass- a cool glass sweats in her feverish hand. Glancing around at the hyper-real area she realizes she's in the kitchen light radiating from the peaceful white surfaces. White, white a miniature rainbow in her grey hand. Blue for happiness, green for healing, white for peace. Seven pills in her hand round, long, and small to tame the edges. They go down like tic-tacs and there's nothing - not even annoyance head as empty as her waiting hand. Like a magic spell or a shield or… Something - kind of hard to think with a head stuffed full of medicinal cotton, like juggling elephants in the space between walls.
Laughter - bright crystallization sparkling round her head - laughter. Pouring from her mouth like water and she's off. The calendar like a causality that just might make it hanging limply from the wall. She's off for a week more, more then enough time to make up something besides the area next to truth. Well, if she's honest she couldn't care less, but the doctor's say she's better - if she's better then she cares a lot - maybe. The couch pats her on the back. Nothing makes sense right now - hasn't made sense for a long time really. "Shut up, I can't think." Talking out loud to yourself is a bad sign more then likely. Horrible sign really. Like a hit in the head - fucking nurses.
She wants to go to bed, feels the dust-laden sheets beneath her knees. Stares at the ceiling naked on her back. With fingers brushing over chilled skin she wonders if perhaps she should be worried about the time between now and… Wonders until she focuses instead on her own narrow, clever fingers industrially working between her folds. Formulative and just as bloodless - no passion all messy when she's just cleaned house. There is a river rushing in the back of her head, the orgasm running down the medicinal drain. Still she's all better cause its obviously still working, right? The clock blinks red, so cold and predatory - she shivers. Under the knitted blanket shivering to thoughts of rough hands, whiskey breath on her nape. Sara doll tucked tight, small and patient - the hallways echo with silence. She watches the sun crawl across her bedroom wall.
They watch her warily like birds from trees, tiptoeing around her like people on stilts unsure of her balance. Always quiet she is silent now, a blue panel in a glass wall. Still they have nothing to complain about since there aren't any screw ups yet. In the drying room she sometimes snickers for days at a time; its funny walking about like some awkward oxymoron. Crazy sane or maybe just crazy, definitely moronic. No, that's negative thinking - she's better now and she'll stay better so long as her watch is set. Greg's mouth like a flower unfurling wants to know what's up with that. His face is a sun beam colored by the matte finish of her watch - and its none of his business, but she doesn't bite. Smiling feeling the sharp corners biting into her skull, flesh just a memory.
She practices in the bathroom trying to get it right. Her reflection does obscene gestures running away to get Grissom. They couple in the depths and she knows well enough how not to get caught - mirror shards down the toilet. At least she's nice, polite - aloof maybe? Counting tears and a presence like the ghost of tobacco pipes. Nick won't leave her alone, he doesn't understand she's better… she's okay it's just a thing or something - nothing. Unlike the shadows she watches flay him with whips braided from memory and loathing. He bleeds everywhere and yet they're watching her waiting for the final fall, but there aren't anymore complaints are there? 'Course not, it's still working.
Working perfectly - she the perfect investigator, co-worker, interrogator. Perfectly calm, all nonchalant shrugs, and careless grins unnerving suspects, co-workers, and former "love" interests. Unnerved, she can't feel the distorting grins - it's not so bad just a side effect. Like their worlds and actions sliding off the glass dome she lies under seeing everything. Amazing the depths to be plumbed without an inner maelstrom to navigate. Everything so much clearer without the fatigue of trying to comprehend herself - now she's finally aware in a frenzy nobody can see not even herself. "She's not a loose cannon, she's a time bomb set to implode."
She'd overheard them walking through the halls following the yellow brick road. Heard them - Ecklie and Sophia the conversation floating pass her perfectly calm face. She smiles gently watching the old Sara march in and ruin everything - always making herself the bad guy. Like the cat she becomes she sits by the doorway licking her emaciated limbs quietly. The light darts off her claws and her hands are full of pictures. Pictures mysteriously making the rounds of the lab, station, and soon the Sheriff's desk. The only things imploding are Ecklie's and Sophia's careers. She walks about with eyes closed to protect them from the song-like gleam in the lab.
They all wonder who destroyed Ecklie and co. Poor investigators they are unable to figure it out. Encapsulated in her pocket of calm she walks pass conversations like bees or flies crawling forth from their mouth, their eyes. She catches one quietly in her hand - it says I don't know. He watches her and she smiles at him as the bee stings the back of her eyes - making her want to cry. Catherine speaks to her a skull with skin and swords for teeth. Like a cat drinking cream she sneers and soon the lab is warier of Sara. The gap about her becomes a chasm as vast as the drain down which the water runs.
Her pills warm in her hand as the water runs. The chasm has become a canyon cutting off rescues that'd never come. Coolly she decides she'd like to kill her - Catherine, rat-faced slut. The pills quiver like worms in their eggs, as she watches the blood pour down from the faucet. She can see pictures of how she would kill Catherine, but it isn't real somehow without hate, without passion, without even rage to back it all. She dreams of killing her, killing all of them - the World, herself - as she might dream of snow or an endless sky. The pills have become worms, serpents, a single roach-like creature with a tiny screaming face. She isn't better after all, just fucked up some other way. Too late to turn back without dying; no where to go to - so there's no use going forward.
The roach-like thing has her own screaming face. She eats it with the others sitting cross-legged on her bed. The water is on in the kitchen and a body half-slumped to the cool floor head lost in the sink, but that was last month. She's here on the bed tossing up and catching the bottle filled with her white pills. The bottle glows as she toys with it. She holds it now looking at it long and hard - her watch is on the bathroom floor.
This is how it will be - no more questions, no more smiles, and no more job. She lies here in a dream that runs like a broken tape - fast forward, rewind, pause and play. It'll never stop - she's permanently catatonic as far as anyone can tell - however diagnosis of catatonic schizophrenia have been tossed around as well. They aren't sure how many of the little white pills she took - only that it was far more then the daily four prescribed. They are sure that she would be far worse off if he hadn't found her when he did. They suggest he relinquish her to the state for care, but he says she's had enough state care for one life time. He squeezes her fingers, but she doesn't squeeze back.