PART 13, AUTHOR'S NOTE - 2/22/15, 10:51am

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So here's what just happened.

I guess I might seem calm, but only because I'm typing this out so slowly. Inside, though, I feel like I'm being slowly dismantled.

I don't know if I'll ever touch Kyle again, or hear his voice in my ear, or make plans with him, or laugh with him, or fall to sleep in his arms.

A few minutes ago, the cop burst into the room. He just suddenly flung the door open. He didn't even tell me to cuff myself. He was disheveled; he seemed to have just woken up, and it was pretty clear that he'd accidentally fallen asleep last night without having meant to let Kyle stay in my room for so long.

So he was already generally irritated and pissed off. Then he saw that the tub was full—I'd forgotten to drain it—and he noticed that Kyle was clean and no longer smelling of gasoline. He seemed to have deduced right away that we'd been in the bath together. To make matters worse, I'd crawled into the bed to lay beside Kyle while he slept. When the cop had burst in, we were under the covers together.

"You disgust me," the cop said, glaring at me.

He grabbed Kyle by the wrist, wrenching him awake, and with a single heave pulled him out of the room. Kyle tried to fight back, but after suffering so badly from hypothermia, he was too weak. I tried to leap after him, but my legs got tangled in the duvet, and my balance is so shaky anyway that I fell to the floor.

Kyle called out to me, but the cop tried to cover his mouth. Kyle said something through the cop's hand. It sounded something like, "sustenance," but that didn't make any sense, and his voice was so muffled I couldn't make anything else out.

Then the cop pulled Kyle out of the room, slammed the door closed, locked it, and left me alone in silence. For a brief moment, I felt fleetingly thankful that the cop hadn't bothered to use the fishing line around Kyle's neck this time.

Then, a minute later, that faint sense of relief collapsed when I heard the house's front door swing open and bang against the porch wall.

The cop dragged Kyle, naked once again, across the driveway. He'd already cuffed one of Kyle's wrists, and Kyle tried to stand, but he couldn't, and as the cop dragged him, Kyle's flailing legs left a rough trail in the pristine snow. The snow was coming down so heavily that by the time the cop dragged Kyle all the way to the pine tree and latched him to it, I could barely see him at all.

I couldn't believe the cop was really doing this. But if the freezing rain hadn't stopped him last night, why would the snowfall stop him now? He was furious, and beyond all reason.

The cop marched up and stood below my window.

"Now that I know just how fast you can write," he said evenly, "lets get this over with. No more stalling. You know how this works, Bailey. Part 13. Sooner the better. Kyle's waiting."

"You'll kill him," I screamed. "You're insane! It's freaking snowing!"

"He'll live." The cop stepped inside and slammed the door.

I tried to call out to Kyle, but the snow in the air was so thick that it muted my voice as if I were trying to yell through a thick wall of styrofoam. If Kyle was trying to say anything to me, I couldn't hear him, either.

I sat at the computer. I hurried to open a new post, my hands shaking and feeling like wooden spoons.

I sobbed.

I didn't write anything. I couldn't. It was futile. Now that my symptoms were coming on strong, and I could barely open my hands, there was no way I'd be able to type half as fast as I did last night. The cop had insisted that Kyle would live, but I knew he was wrong. There was no way that Kyle would survive in this kind of weather for even a couple of hours, especially now that he was only just recovering from last night's bout of severe hypothermia.

DEAD IN BED By Bailey Simms: The Complete Second BookWhere stories live. Discover now