Wildlings

18: Dai the Flatmate

Sannah woke up in the familiar, dark room, on the familiar, scratchy sofa. She felt better. It would be hard to feel worse, she thought, her throat sore as she swallowed. Her mind was clear now, though foreboding still hung heavy at the corners of her thoughts. The memory of the hallucinations, the paranoia, brought on by chang. Her weak mind couldn't take it.

She thought of the smoky room, and tried to piece together her blurred, confusing memories. She had partially blacked out, lost consciousness, and the man in the greasy dressing gown had taken her away—to get some air? She had a flashback of being on a bed. His bed? Had he...? Her stomach plunged. No. No. She was sure he hadn't.

Then he'd shown her those off spec animals, though maybe she'd hallucinated that part too. It certainly didn't feel real. Were they Exotic animals? Where would you get something like that from? It made no sense. Then Saint had come to get her, and taken her to the kitchen. Given her water, brought her back round. Her stomach rolled again. What would he think of her?

They'd gone back through the smoky room. There's been that man with the teeth—his boss, he said—and back here. She remembered laying on the floor in the bathroom and almost gagged, thinking how brutal dirty it was in there. Saint had gone to bed, thankfully, shortly after she came back, leaving her with a hot tea and her skittish, nightmarish thoughts bouncing off the walls of that tiny, menacing room.

Although it seemed less menacing, now. Sannah felt desperately sad for some reason, and full of a fearful regret, like she'd taken a dangerous risk. Her life again felt like something she was an active participant in at least, rather than a sequence of horrific events being foisted onto her. She still felt a trepidation about Saint, and was glad he was hidden behind the curtain and she was in a sense, at least, alone.

Get it together, she told herself sternly. This is all in your head. She tried to think of normal things again—if anything was normal, now. Things she had control over. Her fifty digits, her plan to find Judit. It seemed pathetic, but it was all she had. Her stomach was still cramped and nauseous. She pulled the musty purple blanket over her head and scrunched her eyes to prevent herself from crying. She had slept fully dressed. She kicked off her shoes, tucked her feet under the blanket.

Sannah drifted in and out of consciousness until Saint awoke and came into the living room. He turned on the light, boiled water in the kettle. It was comforting to have him perform these familiar errands around her, and she told herself off for the fact she'd been dreading his appearance.

Sitting in the corner of the sofa, legs curled up, she hugged the cup of tea he gave her. At the table, he performed his usual sequence of stuffing, lighting and smoking his pipe. Even first thing in the morning, Sannah thought.

She wanted to talk, bring up that house, the people there, the animals, but she couldn't. Her mind attempted to jump to the warehouse a few times, his art, but for whatever reason she couldn't bear to think about that. She blocked it all out, focused on this moment. The shadows on the walls, the heat of her tea. Her mind still felt frazzled so it was easy to do.

Saint was silent, sitting at the small table, looking at his screen. Sannah was trying to push away a memory of her embarrassing performance in the strange house last night that had just invaded her head. A loud buzz made her jump and him look up.

Lox? Sannah remembered the last time she'd heard the intercom. She realised she hadn't told Saint that Lox had come round that day. Ah, well. Too late now. She wasn't even sure they were a couple any more. Thinking about it twisted up her insides, and she pushed that thought away, too. She felt like she was under siege, her mind a fortress against everything.