The luke-warm water tasted beyond sweet. I gulped at it desperately, banging my teeth against the bathroom faucet as I tried to slurp up each drop. Finally out of breath, I slumped over the counter, panting heavily as my useless arm trembled at my side. I trained my gaze downward, focusing religiously on my warped reflection circling the drain. There was nothing else in this bathroom worth looking at.

As soon as I caught my breath, I went at it again, guzzling until my stomach felt like a balloon near to bursting. Then, using my good arm to support myself on the counter, I slowly lowered myself back onto the linoleum. The breath caught in my chest, as the stain on the wall edged into the corner of my vision, but I quickly turned my back on the bathtub, shuffling on my knees to crawl behind the cabinet. I propped myself against the wall, safely wedged between the cabinet and the closed door as I stared listlessly at the wall across from me. How long had I been here? Did it even matter?

My head started to dip towards my knees, exhaustion tugging at my eyelids. Maybe this time when I fell asleep, I would simply drift off into another world, a world of endless, meaningless dreams where I could wander aimlessly through nowhere with no one.

The doorknob twitched and my head snapped up, heart fluttering like a caged bird as I watched the door swing towards me. I pressed myself hard against the wall, jumping as the door hit the edge of the poorly-positioned counter, trapping me in my corner. Familiar heavy boots plodded past me until they stopped in front of the bathtub.

My lungs constricted. I felt the presence as if it were squeezing my neck instead of standing across the room. I heard a long, drawn-out rustling of plastic, some muttered curses, then silence fell. The air grew thick with apprehension and hesitation, thrumming with the beats of an invisible clock.

Tick…tick…tick…tick…

More rustling. A few heavy breaths.

Tick…tick…tick…tick…

A sudden grating noise screeched painfully through my skull. My mind screamed to identify it, conjuring up sights and smells of the butcher's shop on 23rd street where my mother used to take me twice a year to buy a ham bone for Christmas and Easter. While my memory reviewed the horrified fascination of watching bone severed and muscle bisected, the rest of my body seemed to heave in protest. Clapping my good hand over my mouth, I demanded my stomach not to retch.

I hated this alien, yet familiar sound. More than I had hated anything else before.

My eyes traced the swirled patterns on the wooden door, round and round like a spinning top, until at last the grating stopped. There was a crack that hit me like a wave of nausea, a curse, and then finally a thump and more rustling of plastic.

Then the whole process started over again. The grating. The butcher shop. Eyes spinning round and round. Crack. Curse. Thump. Plastic.

The boots retraced their steps, the door sweeping closed behind them and then clicking as the lock dropped back into place.

I remained frozen, my shallow breaths echoing through the room as my widened eyes protruded sightlessly from my skull. My brain was sure that there was a pattered trail of greyish, rusty liquid dribbled across the floor in front of me, but my eyes absolutely refused to see it. Like a child in a dream, with an urgent desperation to know but a pervading terror of the truth, I felt my body lean around the cabinet, pupils tracking the trail of fluid without truly acknowledging its presence. It led across the floor to the base of the bathtub and then up over the ceramic rim to its source, which was so glaringly obvious that even my eyes couldn't possibly protest the sight.

As I leaned back behind the counter once again, I felt my mind retreat back into itself as a shot of agony pulsed through my broken arm. The pain consumed me, fighting back my consciousness until only one thought remained.

"Do you want my arm?" I wondered who was forming words with my cracked lips. "It hurts so bad. I don't want it any more. Do you want my arm? You should take it. You don't have any anymore."

A/N So sorry for this ridiculously long delay but life got in the way. Also, I went back and did a lot of editing and revamping of the story so I would suggest a re-read if you're up for it. You might have noticed that I changed the name to the story, yet again. Thank you guys so much for being so patient while I play with this thing and try to shape it into my original vision. As always God bless and please review!