A/N: Let's see.
Chapter 2-9: Black Water
Northwest Seattle, 12th October 2010, 2:47 AM
The grass outside the asylum was wet with a faint drizzle from the pitch-black sky. No stars were to be seen, and the night was closing in on the city below the hill, thousands of lights winking out one after one like cats' eyes in the dark, leaving only spreading spiderwebs of advertising and traffic lights amidst a viscid, consuming darkness. The two persons huddled together in the old shed a short way from the slope couldn't see more than a few dozen feet before everything vanished in the moist, cold night air, webbed with the grasping silhouettes of gnarled trees.
In the shed, amidst mountains of rusting tools and rotting wood, the only signs of life were a constant groaning, interspersed with sharp intakes of breath. Something with the intensity of a penlight was shining on a woman in the corner, her face covered in drying blood and sweat. An impromptu eyepatch, made of a strip of cotton cloth holding a folded piece of old, yellowing wool in place over her left eye, was drawn tight across her face. The wool was soaked with the brownish-red hue of dried blood, and a yellow-white liquid was pooling at the corner of her eye.
"Oh fuck... there's nothing here... goddamnit, goddamnit..."
A man's voice, rough from crying, was sounding from between the storage boxes.
"It's okay. We can do it that way, okay? I already decided."
The woman's voice was weak and wheezing, though she sounded acutely aware of the situation.
"...if you want it, Angela. If you want it. So, here goes..."
The man spread out the contents of a wooden crate out over the earthen floor. He picked up an old, tarnished spoon and a half-full jug of cooking oil, poured a bit of oil into the spoon, and started heating it with a Bunsen burner. The sputtering flame lighting his worn-out face showed more worry than bravery, and both tears and sweat were dripping down his chin.
"We shouldn't do this. We should go to a doctor. They'll fix you right up, and you'll be able to get some help afterwards, I'm sure. If we do this, it'll probably kill you. I don't wanna make you suffer."
Angela laughed, a sound that drifted off into a vague, formless vacuum of sound.
"If we go to the doctor, they'll do the math and have us either arrested or put on death row. We'll be lucky if it's just filed as attempted murder,
not a terrorist act. It wasn't that subtle, after all. So we have to do this. If we don't, this'll kill me given the time. I got all sorts of shit in it. Dirt, sweat, a bit of vomit, my blood, Adam's blood. At least try, Ben."
Ben's hands were shaking as the oil began warming up, the Bunsen burner casting a sickly orange-yellow light that seemed to intensify every shadow in the shack.
"I'll do it. I... I'm doing it now. Don't hate me for this."
He took off Angela's improvised eyepatch, pretending not to hear her whimpering when the dried blood and sweat was pulled off her ruined eye. Her whole eyeball seemed to roll upwards, covered in a pinkish-yellow mix of blood and viscous fluids. It was ripped almost in two, not a clean cut, but a dripping, drying-out gash that marred her face beyond imagination.
He moved the spoonful of oil closer to her face, almost touching her eyelashes.
"Don't be stupid. If you do this, it'll heal up better than if it gets infected. Once I get over the blood loss, I'll be up again in no time. So you - "
Ben spilled a drop of oil from the spoon onto Angela's face, and she whimpered and sucked in air through her teeth.
"Just now, stupid, do - "
He inserted the edge of the spoon below Angela's eye. Whatever stoicism she might have had before vanished when the hot oil touched her eye, the spoon being slowly moved up to her optic nerve by Ben's shaking hands.
Angela's composure held for the first half of a second, wherein her right eye began tearing up. After that single moment, the quiet night air was ripped apart by her agony, shrieking and wheezing for breath, broken for a single second by a choking sob.
It was over after about twenty seconds, faster than it started. Angela was dripping with sweat, gagging and vomiting up stomach acid on the dirtied ground. After regaining composure, she forced herself up, walking unsteadily towards a box by Ben's side and bending down, nearly falling over, to take out a simply made leather eyepatch with a patch of cleaned wool on the inside, still smelling faintly of rubbing alcohol. Pulling at the strap on the back, she turned her head to the left, then to the right. A tug at the back convinced her that it fit.
"Good going, Ben. It's a little tight, but... ugh. I think I'm gonna black out for a bit. Let's see if I can survi - lessee if I ca... sur..."
She began slurring her words, and her one remaining eye glossed over. Ben caught her as she lost her balance, holding her over his knee as she vomited up the last contents of her stomach. He held her as her dry heaves continued for another ten minutes, off and on, and he made sure to position her to avoid her choking on her own tongue during her unconsciousness.
Only as her eye closed, and she began breathing calmly, could he sleep.