Lana Arwen Lazar

Part 3: Panic

She peered down at the glass in her hand and frowned finding it empty. She wasn't sure when that had happened she'd only taken one sip. Maybe she did need to slow down a bit. She was drinking unconsciously now. Not good. 

Lana set her glass down on the nightstand. 

Astrid still held an expression of utter opposition. 

Lana tried to understand, she tried to care but she couldn't. She understood that her particular hobbies weren't exactly healthy, but they were a necessary evil. She couldn't imagine herself without them. Maybe her vices were a crutch, but she was likely to die soon anyway. She might as well spend the last stretch of her life somewhat sane. 

Just then a sharp pain shot through her head. She pressed hard at her temples with the pads of her fingers. More, she needed more. 

She glanced at the bottle next to her, and found it to be empty too. She had sworn that she'd just opened the bottle yesterday. She shook off the thought and felt a wave of panic go though her. 

She resisted the urge to scream, and instead looked to Astrid. 

"I think I have one bottle left, will you get it for me?" Lana asked summoning all of the niceness she could from inside her. 

Astrid looked at her incredulously.  

"No!" she exclaimed, her eyebrows swallowing her eyes. 

"Yes," Lana countered replicating her tone. "Or I'll," she started looking around for an argument on her behalf, "I'll sick Patrick on you!" 

Astrid glanced over at Patrick who was still fast asleep, and raised an eyebrow. 

Lana sighed and clucked at her dog. "Patrick! Hey Patrick!" 

He didn't stir. 

"Patrick! Attack this mean girl!" 

Silence. 

Lana turned back to Astrid. "Please?" 

Astrid rolled her eyes but seemed to come to some sort of submission.  "Where?" She asked. 

Lana's head was swimming. She moaned and let herself fall back into her pillow. "I don't know." Lana closed her eyes, and clenched her jaw trying to drown out the pain. 

There was a long stretch of silence. Too long. She used to enjoy silence, now she was afraid of it. Lana opened one eye just a crack. Astrid was kneeling by her wardrobe, inspecting the wood. Patrick rose grumpily, unhappy to be disturbed and walked to the other side of the room, and plopped back down. Astrid ran her hand over the wardrobe's finish. On the front leg, on the right side were notches, several of them, carved messily into it's surface. 

"What is this?" Astrid asked. 

Lana wished she could walk up to the wardrobe, open the doors, and escape the question. Instead she looked at it and her hands shook. She looked at it and saw herself, brutally unfiltered. 

It was like looking straight at the sun, on a cloudless day. It hurt. She didn't look at Astrid. She didn't want to see her expression. 

"What is this?" Astrid repeated. 

There were a lot of notches there in the wood. And savage stretched second, she was somewhere else. Some one else, in another time. She was a girl with limbs that didn't work. A girl with tears streaming from her eyes making her hair stick to her cheeks. A girl with a knife clenched in her hand so tight her knuckles turned bone white. 

That wasn't her. She was tougher than that. Well, she thought she was. 

"That's how many drinks I've had today" Lana sad, staring at the ceiling. She still didn't glance at Astrid, but she felt her glare. 

"That many drinks in a day and you'd probably be dead, not to mention unconscious." 

Lana cursed Astrid and her working brain. 

"Okay so for the week then." 

There was a moment of frightening quietness. 

"Why are you acting all strange and nervous? You're fidgeting. That's your tell. Ever play any poker?" Astrid said quietly. 

Lana felt the irritation coming back. "I've played plenty of poker, thank you. I'm not nervous. I don't get nervous. And strange? I don't know maybe it's because I'm drunk." 

"Or because you're lying," Astrid interjected, "What do these marks mean?" 

Lana was trapped. Like a mouse in a maze within a maze. And before she really understood what was happening, the words were flooding from her mouth.