The Writer's Escape

17. The Clinic

Serena collided against the ground.

She awoke to the smell of antiseptic burning her nostrils. Some kind of helmet was affixed to her head. Wrenching it off, she shot out of her chair, and nearly stumbled to the ground as blood rushed to her head. 

She looked around wildly, and saw that she was back at the clinic, in the empty room where everything had begun. Seven days ago. It seemed like an eternity. Relief flooded her, and with it a strange tight ache in her chest. 

She looked down, half-expecting herself to be in her normal clothing, black-pencil skirt and ruffled blouse, but instead she was clad in desert-clothing, torn and splattered with blood. And her leather bag was still slung around her neck. A half-laugh, half-sob gurgled out of her throat. Then she saw the metal bracelet jangling around her wrist, and her throat closed up, and she smiled.

She spent only a moment getting her bearings. There was no time to waste. 

She pushed open the heavy doors, blinking into bright fluorescent light washing over her. Someone, a technician maybe, saw her down the hallway and gaped open-mouthed, but she brushed past him. She stumbled out of the twisting hallways into the waiting room. It was hard to believe that only seven days ago, she'd cared so much what these people thought of her.

The tousled-hair receptionist turned to look at her, then blinked, and looked again. "Uh— ma'am—" he stuttered. Some of the people in the waiting room half-rose out of their seats, someone dialing on their phone. 

She didn't wait to satisfy their curiosity. She ran out of the room, clutching her bag, one hand already fumbling for her car keys. As she walked towards her car, she saw trees rustling with silvery-green leaves, shading the parking lot. She'd never been so glad to see an oak tree before.

There would be time to appreciate nature later. Her car sped through the streets, veering sharply to turn. Cars honked at her but she paid them no mind. The forty minute drive back to her house, previously an hour, was a blur. She barely remembered what happened in the time in between, but then she was home, opening the door. 

She inhaled the familiar smell of her house, lemon-scent cleaning solution and books and coffee. Everything was exactly where she'd left it.

But there were words in her head, and she was terrified to lose them. So she threw down her bag and raced up the stairs, and flung open the door to her bedroom. From her bedside table, the faces of her protagonists smiled at her mysteriously. She fell down into her chair. The twenty seconds it took to boot up her laptop felt like an eternity.

It opened to the empty document page from ten days ago. This time, the whiteness didn't paralyze her.

Still covered in grime and sand and demon-blood, her fingers flew furiously over the keys. The words spilled out of her so fast she couldn't have stopped them if she'd tried. 

The story manifested right before her eyes, unfurling as though it had always existed and she was only just uncovering it. It was Berry and Patrick who led the story now, rather than the Wild Sisters. She wanted to reach out and say hi to them, but behind her computer screen they were unreachable, like she was watching a friend's life unfold but could do nothing to interfere.

The faces of the characters she'd met and places she'd been crowded in her mind as she wrote, and tears burned her eyes. She blinked them away and kept writing.

*     *      *     *     *

Serena paused from her writing to sip at her coffee. It had gone cold, the milk-foam flowers traced on the surface distorted into blurry shapes. She stirred it absently with her delicate metal spoon as she gazed around the cafe, eyes unfocused. The shapes swirled and blended into white and tan swirls.