Chapter One - Consciousness
A room swam into focus, blurry and muted shades of grey. Slowly it became industrial ceiling tiles surrounding flickering fluorescent lights, and when her head rolled to the left, there was a wall, with a rectangular opening in it. Not a door… a reception desk. There were two people in front, and a woman behind it, wearing a bright fuschia outfit that burned her eyes.
Her head rolled to the right and she peered out of a frosted glass window that showed blurry green shrubs, and a sunset (sunrise?).
Next to the window were wide double doors, painted an army green. As her vision focused, she leaned down a bit and saw a multitude of black scuff marks on the metal kick plates that had been bolted to the bottom portions of the door, and reflected glare from the fluorescent lights above her.
When her chair shifted forward under her off-balanced weight, she jerked her body straight and leaned her head back against the wall, which thumped with a flash of throbbing pain. The people had stopped talking, and her eyes rolled into their direction.
"Hmmmmmmnn…" she groaned loudly.
Murmur murmur murmur room?
Talking again. This time, she swung her head forward on her wobbly neck, catching her forehead in her hands, her elbows resting on her knees. When her vision stopped swimming, she inspected her shoes. They were gaudy things with black sequins and high heels. Glancing back to the metal kick plates on the doors, she studied her reflection. Black leggings and a long black spangly shirt to match her shoes, cinched with a wide silver belt. Her fingers scrunched through her dark brown hair, which was cut in a shaggy shoulder length style that fell in her face to hide her hazel eyes, which were currently dark with kohl eyeliner. Her head pounded, and her eyebrows scrunched together in pain. As she massaged her temples, the conversation to her left began to reach her ears.
"Yes, just… dry her out, please. How long does that take?"
"We keep detox patients in for three days, assuming there are no health complications. If you'd like, we do offer a 28 day inpatient rehabilitation program…"
…
"What do you think, honey?"
"I think we should let her decide. Once she's, you know, coherent. Robert, I don't want to pay for something she's not going to be serious about."
Moving her head slowly this time, she looked closer at her surroundings. It was clearly a lobby, and her father and step mother were standing in front of a fuschia monstrosity of a woman. The sign bolted to the wall read "Westwood Rehabilitation Center", and with those words, the straggled memories from the last few days pierced the fog in her brain.
Sarah had left her downtown apartment on Friday afternoon, ready to skip past the velvet ropes with a smile and seek the vibrating bass and slinking lights and strong drinks she knew she could find at the clubs. For that matter, she usually had her senses out looking for a different distraction, one with a few muscles and no name to remember, for a few unsatisfactory moments of intimacy, and an awkward morning of stumbling from an unfamiliar residence with the sunrise jabbing through her eyelids.
As she struggled to remember more, a miserable thought floated to the surface: This is every night for you, Sarah. You don't need specifics – not only are they important, they don't exist. This is your daily life. Her head dropped back into her hands, and she heard fingers typing on a keyboard, and a printer whirring to life.
"If you could please sign these, Mr. Williams, we'll get a bed ready for your daughter."
"Yes… right here? Okay. What's today's date?"
"It's August 18, Wednesday."
The date struck Sarah as odd, but it did not shock her too terribly. This was not the first time she had lost track of a few days, though this was certainly the longest she had gone. She shifted her shoes uncomfortably on the scuffed linoleum, and ventured another look into the reflection of the metal kickplate.
After searching her reflection thoroughly, she reached out her hand and laid her palm on the dirty metal, a pleading look entering her eyes. Her lips moved without sound – I need you – and after a breathless moment watching her hopeful face in the reflection, her fingers dropped from the metal and she withdrew her arm into the middle of her hunched form. She rocked back and forth drunkenly, dry sobs beginning to rack her shoulders. A door opened on her left, and footsteps approached her and helped her stand with gentle hands under her elbows.
She ventured a smeary-eyed look at her father and stepmother, safely hiding behind her shaggy hair. She saw what she knew she would see in their faces – pity, disappointment, love, and above all, worry. Her father gave her a hug and a brief peck on the cheek, and Irene squeezed her shoulder with a wary sort of intimacy.
"We'll be back on Friday. If they let you call, well, we'll be home. … Toby misses you."
As the nurses buzzed Sarah into the door next to the reception desk, she heard the thunk and swoosh of the double doors opening for her parents, and the dreary lobby brightened with the first rays of sunlight, just briefly, before dimming back into the greys. She stumbled where she was led, still mostly drunk, and thought about her hand on the reflection.
It was not the first time she had tried to call her friends, and she supposed she would try again. Her sequined shoes, the glitter of the nightlife, the drugs – they weren't working anymore. In the beginning, they had helped replace the fantasy world she had rejected – or at least, they helped her forget that she was no longer special, not some pursued princess in a fairy tale.
She could lose herself in a moment, in a dark place with warm bodies dancing in a much different way than she'd tried twelve years ago. But as the years passed, she had felt more and more desperate to get back what she had lost, and less and less able to find relief. And now – she didn't know how her father had found her, or what she had said and done over the last four days, but she was tired. Very tired.
A sterile room and a bed were presented by the orderlies, along with a tiny cup of pills, which she swallowed with a gulp of metallic-tasting water. As she collapsed onto the bed, she resigned herself to three days of the shakes, of screaming and crying and cursing. And hopefully, dreaming.
A/N: Okay, I am posting a story! At least, the beginning - I certainly haven't read every Labyrinth fanfic out there, and I am hoping this is a new kind of approach.
This is my first, and hopefully it seems interesting. I have never done this before, so any input or encouragement is appreciated!
Also, I own neither Sarah nor the Labyrinth.