A breathless moment of silence, and then Constance's fingers tightened around the other woman's wrist. She heard her stifled sob, and her hand contracted as she tried to stifle a gasp. With a sudden, nearly invisible twist, Constance broke the woman's wrist and held the wailing woman's hand to her chest. She felt the woman's warm blood coursing through her still supple fingers, and her eyes widened as the woman's hand began to change shape.
She was doing this, of course she was, and she was trying to fool her, but it wasn't working. The woman was a monster.
Constance stepped across the room, her dress rustling as she left the woman without so much as a second glance. The woman was screaming now, her arm flopped at an odd angle, her fingers now long, pointed claws. The skin below her fingers had turned to fur, and the fur had turned pink and red and brown. She sounded like a wounded animal, but then again, that's really what she was, and Constance felt more than a little pleased to hear the woman howling in pain.
She knew why she was here. She knew she was sick, and she knew she was dangerous. She just didn't know why she'd been dressed that way. Although she was pretty sure she knew, and anger quickened her pace as she walked towards the door. All of this, and she'd been so stupid.
She could feel the heat of the room, hear the sound of the older woman moving in the other room. The scream died away as the woman's bones snapped back into place. The door opened a crack and then whispered closed, and Constance knew the woman was likely standing behind it, looking down at her.
And she knew that she'd had something going on with the woman, but she hadn't been able to read the woman at all. She was so serious, always so serious. Maybe that was the problem, Constance thought. Maybe she'd never really tried to get to know the woman at the foundation, had never even bothered reading what information she could glean about her.
She could hear the woman moving again, and she moved closer to the door, out of what scant light filtered through the door's glass. Her feet made barely a whisper on the polished hardwood floor as she crept forward, one foot in front of the other, and she held her breath.
The knob turned in her hand, and instead of pushing the door open, Constance pulled it shut behind her. Her dress rustled again as she did so, and for a moment she thought she heard the older woman cough.
Constance smiled. She knocked three times on the wall.
The door opened, and she saw the woman in the shadow, her gasp frozen in her throat, her hand clutched to her chest, her eyes wide with shock as she tried to look at Constance.
Constance stepped forward, her dress rustling softly as she moved into the light. She pushed the door closed, and her fingers pulled the lock. Her heart was pounding now. She didn't know why, but she knew why, and she knew that she was going to come up with an answer soon.
She was getting good at it. It was time for a fresh start.
All she needed was to get away from the woman. She knew that she could do it, and her heart lifted as it raced. She didn't know where to go, but she knew that she wasn't going back.
She took a step towards the bed, and then she felt pain, heard something sharp slice through the air. Without another thought, Constance threw herself forward. Her dress lifted to her thigh as she flew into the room, and the flashes of light against the floor as she sprinted towards the window seemed to trail her like flashes of lightning in a stormy night sky.
Maybe it was a bolt of lightning, she thought as she ran. She didn't know, but she did know that it was now or never. The woman screamed as she felt a clawing panic, felt fear for the first time in a long time, felt a dark, hidden something fluttering through her heart.
She was reeling. She was falling.
She was failing. Constance gasped through clenched teeth as she slammed herself against the window's cool pane, felt the glass shatter as her weight and her speed carried her through the thick glass, felt her skin sliced to ribbons, felt her body lurch in midair. She felt her heart halt as she fell, and then she felt nothing.
She awoke to screams. She had her eyes open, and she was moving, a panic shot into her heart, and then she realized she was in her own bed, and her body felt strange. She felt like she'd been broken, but she also felt strange.
The screaming continued as she tried to sit up. The screams were all around her, and the panic beat behind her rib cage like a hummingbird's wings.
She'd heard the stories, of course. She'd heard them spoken of, told of, read about. Stories of those who dared go above and beyond, who took desperate chances, who'd become touched...different.
Those who had been touched.
She'd seen it happen to others, but she never thought it could happen to her. She'd never thought to be touched, never thought to be infected, but for the first time in her life, she knew that was what had taken place.
The woman on the other side of the door was infected. She was a beast, she was a monster, and Constance knew that she'd been touched herself.
Constance shook her head as she sat up. She needed to know if the woman was right. She needed to see the woman for herself. To do that, she'd need to enter the room she was in.
