DEAD IN BED By Bailey Simms: The Complete Second Book

PART 12, AUTHOR'S NOTE - 2/21/15, 10:31am

Oh my God. This is going to have to be a really, really quick post. I just need to get this online so there's some record of what's happening. For all I know, this could be one of my last entries.

Normally at eleven o'clock sharp, the cop shows up for his freakish ritual of forcing me to take a hot bath, then bathing in my own dirty water. But not today.

I hadn't heard anything from the cop since he'd last stormed out of the room. I'd pretty much just been at the radiator tapping to Kyle, without a single response.

Instead, I heard the cop walk out onto the driveway, and I rushed to the window.

He had Kyle in handcuffs. 

Kyle was stumbling behind him, totally naked. 

And he was soaking wet.

Immediately, I thought about what I wrote in Part 8 when the Home Guard soaks the prisoners in gasoline before burning them alive.

My heart stopped.

I started banging on the window and calling Kyle's name. Then I screamed at the cop, saying I wouldn't write anything at all until Kyle was safe and back inside.

The cop ignored me. It's February in the mountains, and it's really, really cold outside. Kyle was shivering badly, gingerly trailing after the cop in bare feet.

The cop cuffed Kyle to the same young pine tree he'd cuffed me to earlier. Kyle tried so squat down and hug his knees against the cold, but the branch the cuffs were attached to was too high, and he had to stand back up.

I thought I would go crazy drowning in my desire to cover his naked, shivering body with something warm. Which, of course, I was powerless to do. I could do nothing but watch him shiver and suffer.

The cop stood beneath my window.

"Bailey," he called, now placidly calm. "These are the new rules. Finish the next part, and Kyle comes back inside. Don't finish the next part, and, well . . . use your imagination."

With this, the cop waltzed inside and out of view, leaving Kyle huddling beside the pine tree, and ignoring my increasingly hoarse shouts as I banged on the window.

And then I fell.

That's never happened to me before. I slammed the window with the flat of my hand, lost balance, and my knees buckled. I landed painfully on my hip. And I couldn't get up.

Something strange was happening to body. Something had taken over my muscles. 

I'd started to feel this electric tension around all of my joints as I'd been frantically calling out to Kyle, but the sensation hadn't fully registered then. Now, lying on the floor, the tension in my muscles, especially in my shoulders and thighs, wrenched my body from my control. I was moving, totally against my will. It was if I were a puppet, and someone was violently tugging at my strings. Helplessly, I writhed on the floor, unintentionally drawing my one knee up around the opposite leg and back down again. My hands inadvertently pulled themselves up in awkward fists and jerked from my ribs to my neck and back again.

I tried not to panic. But Kyle was outside, freezing, covered in gasoline, and I'd somehow lost control of my body. The more I writhed uncontrollably on the cold linoleum like a fish out of water, the more all of my joints ached as if they were lined with sandpaper.

The word chorea flashed into my consciousness. The last time I'd heard anyone utter it had been in my doctor's office in Denver. He'd told me about the writhing, involuntary movements by that name which I should prepare for when my Huntington's entered into its later stages. Apparently, the sudden stress and the physical exertion I'd just undergone while screaming at the window had triggered my chorea for the first time.

I lay writhing on the floor for maybe ten minutes before I was able to force myself to be calm and catch my breath. But, finally, I was able to pull myself onto the chair I'm sitting on now. 

But I haven't tried to stand since. The writhing tremors have diminished, but typing isn't easy. Now, it's not just that my fingers are weak and hard to control, my shoulders and arms can't seem to coordinate like I want them to either. Sometimes, I have to take a deep breath and consciously relax my muscles before my fingers can even find the keys. But I'm doing my best, and things are feeling maybe a little more stable than when I started typing this post. Still, I get these weird, feverish urges to rub my legs together or curl into a ball and back out again. I've never felt anything like this. And it's terrifying.

But I can't let any of these new symptoms slow me down. I just can't. Kyle's outside naked, wet, and freezing, and I have all of Part 12 to write as fast as I can without stopping. . .