A/N: If you want to see the Danger Girl fanart created by Anonymous, head to my bio for the link or search "SquaresvilleB" over at DeviantArt!

To 707: It's confession time. I have a friend who dabbled in urbex, and many years ago, I explored maybe three abandoned houses with him. He's probably seen way cooler stuff over the years, and I guess that's why he did it for so long. As for me, quite frankly, what I saw was pretty boring. The most interesting thing I saw was a house that had a small family plot with blackened headstones that looked like they were about to topple. The plot was perched near the edge of a hill, too, and it did make me wonder what would happen as the hill continued to erode. But I never saw anything like Van Houten. Inspiration for the rotting floor came from someone I know who renovates fixer uppers. I saw a water-damaged floor in one of them once, and the image sort of stuck. There was no hole in the floor though. I basically have to rely on ideas that won't leave me alone, my imagination, and research to make my stories happen. Fern's process is far more interesting, even if it is far more dangerous. Oh, and I couldn't get into Budweiser U. Had to go to PBR A&M instead.

Trigger Warning: This chapter contains explicit descriptions of blood, injury, and peril. Reader discretion is advised.

Chapter 30

Rock Bottom at the Top

Fern had guessed correctly. It had been a large and very old refrigerator that tore the hole in the rotten kitchen floor of the farmhouse, only she had not known that right away. Right away, all she had known was pain. She hit the dirt floor of the basement feet first, but she had done it with the grace of a heavy bag of refuse being dumped from the back of a garbage truck. Something in her left foot had snapped on impact, and she crumpled sideways, where she collided with the fridge, now on its back, its doors facing up. Though absorbing the rest of the fall chiefly with her ribs and arm felt to Fern as if her entire left side had been caved in, crushed like one of the Four Loko cans still sitting on the dusty countertop, it had softened the final blow of whacking her head against the fridge. She had seen stars, and her head was now reeling, but she had been spared loss of consciousness. The upside, if there was one to be seen, was that she could breathe again, as evidenced by the series of agonized wails that escaped her as she struggled to emerge from the blanket of suffering that swaddled her body.

Had it taken a minute? An hour? Fern was not sure, but the pain's intensity eventually waned to a more manageable level, and she could at least think. The GymMaster was silent. Had she broken that in the fall as well? Still lying in a heap atop the fridge, her headache pulsed with every beat of her heart, her foot throbbed, and her torso buzzed and prickled as she became aware of cold metal under her fingertips. If she was sure of one thing, it was that this was not the end of her pain but the eye of a great storm. She would not simply stand up, dust herself off, and walk away from Van Houten with a couple days of soreness ahead of her. She had experienced near misses before in her risky practical research and had even been caught by her mother at the Baxter cottage, but now it would seem her luck truly had run out.

"Shit!"

Her voice was a broken sob. Outside of occasional use in her writing, Fern had never been fond of foul language, not when there were so many other, better words available to express one's feelings. In this moment, however, "shit" summed up her situation quite nicely.

"Shit!" she cried out again, more fiercely this time, and it was as if her body sent her a signal. A short, stabbing sensation poked at her side, and she immediately held her breath.

Don't do that, her ribs, surely broken, warned her, not unless you want another jab.

Fern did not want another one, but she also did not want to stop cursing.

"Shit," she whispered, followed by every expletive her addled and terrified mind could conjure.

Once the string of swears petered out, there were only her shallow breaths. In the weak light streaming in from the hole above, brief exhalations turned to small bursts of white steam before her. It was cooler down here than it had been on the hill. With the impending snowfall growing ever closer, it was only going to get colder. She needed an ambulance, but how was she supposed to call for one with her phone upstairs?

I have to get to it somehow. I have to get help.

First, she would have to master sitting up, but she was afraid. If shouting had caused jabbing in her ribs, there was no telling what trying to move would do. And the eye was rapidly passing over, the storm threatening to beat down on her again. She would have to be quick, that was all, sit up, find her flashlight, and figure out how she was going to get out of here. Fern flattened her palm against the refrigerator and braced herself. Counting down from three, she pushed herself up to a sitting position, and she nearly collapsed into another heap from the pain that assaulted her as she performed the action. It was as if a white-hot spear had pierced her side, level with her navel, and an invisible strongman had raked the weapon upward until it exited through her collarbone.

"SH—AAAGH!"

Fern's stomach lurched and she swallowed hard, willing her stomach's contents to stay down. She did not want to know what it would feel like to throw up in this condition. Sucking in short gasps through gritted teeth, she waited for the excruciating wave to subside. It seemed to take just as long as the previous one had, but as it faded, Fern became aware of a new pain. She had clenched both of her fists as the fire raged inside her torso, and now her left one was smarting something awful.

"Please…." Her whimpered plea was small and tearful as she relaxed her hand. "Please, nothing else. Please…."

As slowly and compartmentalized as she could, Fern concentrated on moving only her right arm, though her body still twinged and protested at this, until she had slid her hand into her bag and retrieved her Mini Maglite. She wedged the handle between her thighs and twisted the top until the flashlight turned on. Fern pointed the beam at her left hand and confirmed that her index and middle fingers, as well as their knuckles, were puffy. The glove had to go. She stuffed the Maglite's handle into her mouth. Holding it steady was no problem as she bit down hard while peeling the glove from her hand, the constricting fabric squeezing the tender tissue as it rolled over her injured fingers. She tossed the glove to the mucky basement floor, the result of accumulated rainwater seeping into the earth. She was briefly taken by the sight when a stripe of red in the Maglite's beam caught her eye. A gash ran from the top of her right knee to the middle of her thigh. A long run had been ripped in her leggings, and with it, a substantial amount of bright blood soaked the gray fabric. Fern surmised that she could have come into contact with a rusty nail on her way down, otherwise she was at a loss for what had caused that. She did not know if the wound was serious enough to warrant compression. Blood was hardly gushing from it, but it was not exactly a scratch, either. Clueless, she spent the next few minutes carefully removing her scarf with one hand and winding it around her thigh, wincing at every terrible jolt that coursed through her upper body, until she was left panting against another wave thanks to her exertion.

While she recovered, she pointed the Maglite around the basement. The walls were made of stone and mortar. A pile of broken and web-covered vegetable crates sat in one corner, and a cave-like archway recessed into the wall underneath the staircase, perhaps the entrance to the root cellar. The archway entrance is where the can of spent red spray paint had come to rest after the wannabe Satanist had used it to create his masterpiece. The stairs were wooden, looked rickety, and one of the treads halfway up had broken away completely, creating a gap between one step an another. Her foot ached more intensely at the mere thought of trying to climb them. Until now, Fern's ribs had caused her the most pain, but she knew her ankle was either sprained or broken, too. She just hoped she would be able to endure the weight she was about to put on it long enough to make it up the stairs.

Come on. It's twelve steps. Come on.

Fern bit her lip as she returned the Maglite to her bag. Again, she counted down before trying to stand.

"AAAGH! OHMYGOD, OHMYGOD, AAAGH!"

Surely, her shin had been split down the middle when she fell. That was what standing felt like, an explosion of pain in her obliterated ankle, creating a fault line that traveled upward to her knee cap, cracking it wide open like a walnut. It was like knocking over dominoes. Fern dropped back down to the fridge, which set off her ribs again, which worsened her aching head and clenched fist. She screamed and sobbed and begged the empty room for help, knowing full well none would come because she had made sure no one knew where she was. This did nothing to calm her, and this level of panic did nothing to abate the sheer misery that coursed through her body. She thought she understood now, why some torture victims prayed for death. They just wanted the pain to end, and they did not care how it ended.

Fern did not want to die, but it was looking more and more likely that the choice was out of her hands. She had been rendered useless, and if her injuries did not kill her, exposure certainly would. She would trade anything to be at the Autumn Ball right now, safe and warm, dancing with George, who was so sweet and trusting and undeserving of the way she had used him today. She wished her father would not have to endure the anguish he was about to go through when he arrived at MCM to pick her up from the ball, only to discover she was missing. And, perhaps most shocking, for the first time in a long, long time, Fern desperately wanted her mother. It was impossible to let go of that particular thought as she sat on the fridge, weeping, hurting, waiting for her inevitable death.

To be continued…