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Once upon a tih to drive her mad But she understood more about madness now than once she had
With her eyes fully open, no longer able to deny that the world around her was real, her face contorted with hopelessness and she shook for severalbreath and then sed her despair Her right hand cah she would cry, but no tears carit that she could not rid herself of Dehydration was having its ith her, and she hadn’t enough saliva to sued herself and simply sat there in the sand, aware that sos and arms of her pajamas as she slept but not yet able toabout it What was the point? There would only behere but sand
She took a long breath and forced herself to look around The round chaht of it as a rooeon-- had no door, but a dozen s all around the circulass and during the day the sunlight flooded in and heated the chamber But the s provided no hope for exit They were twenty-five feet froround and the walls were made entirely of smooth, hardened sand
It was all sand
The floor was the soft, shifting stuff of dunes and lonely beaches The walls were as hard as cement, but it was the same material in a different forh how many she could not have said Time seemed to move torturously slow here
While the sun shone, her prison was not only lit, but heated By afternoon it often grew so hot that the sand seared her bare flesh and she had to keep to the shadows Midday was torture Food and water were often brought to her while she slept, and if it was the sa that had ier ht
Not since it slaughtered her father and tore out his eyes
"Daddy," Collette whispered Still seated, she hugged her knees against her chest and lay her cheek atop theht breeze caress her For it was dark now There was no way for her to tell how long she had slept, but it had been hours When she had drifted off in the cool shade of afternoon, night had been distant Now evening had corow cold there in that sand prison, but for noas only the breeze that hinted at the dropping temperature The sand beneath her still retained the accumulated warmth of the day
The ere still visible, the ht sky, but in that chamber the darkness was deeper More inti, however, and that intimacy had become part of her prison She wanted someone to talk to Soht weep Coh escaped her lips Misery loves co in herwitnessed the mutilation murder of her own father, there was no room for doubt in her irl’s i about the solitary nature of her imprisonment that was a separate sort of hell
Where was she? What was the dreadful apparition that had brought her here? Where had it gone, and whenrief for her father and for her own predicament
And what of Oliver?
That question returned again and again, and with it both dread and that one tiny spark of hope re More than ever, now she was certain that Oliver’s disappearance was not of his own volition So had happened to him He had been abducted, or led astray, or driven soht before he was meant to marry Julianna And Collette believed-- she had to believe-- that there was some connection to that creature, to thehad murdered Oliver, why not leave his corpse?
If he wasn’t dead, on the other handwas it impossible to think this world was the place to which he had vanished?
There was another question, however One that she avoided as much as possible When her mind drifted there she would do whatever was necessary to obstruct its progress The question was: Why am I still alive? The demon-- if that hat it was-- had torn out her father’s eyes, slain him in his own bedroom, but the only physical harm it had done Collette amounted to cuts and bruises sustained when it had abducted her
Now it imprisoned her Fed her Kept her alive
If she spentits purpose, the question would cripple her
"Oliver," Collette whispered, running her tongue over her dry, chapped lips and staring at the night sky through the s high above, wondering if her brother could see them as well "Where are you, little brother?"
A breeze swirled around inside that round chaood Sweet Collette took a breath and looked into herevery period of wakefulness since she had been taken, and thought of movies In her head there was a collection of all of her favorite films, many of which she’d seen a dozen tih to visit them nohen she needed the escape they provided h she could replay the key scenes from all of these films in her mind, and she had found herself in some way she didn’t quite understand able to wander into the worlds those filinative But as a tangible observer, as though the events were unfolding around her The Philadelphia Story October Sky Field of Dreams Casablanca An Affair to Re
"We’ll always have Paris," she whispered in the dark, feeling the abrasion of sand on teeth and tongue
She could see the inside of Rick’s Café A leaves of plants, the lazily turning fans, the beautiful woer And at the piano, Dooley Wilson sang Not "As Tih to recognize A contest of wills arose at the bar, eyes flashing angrily, and then Bogart entered, eyes heavy with ravitas, to resolve it
No, not Bogart Rick Blaine Not Dooley Wilson, but Saainst each other
Thein the midst of the café, Collette hears a whisper, a voice like parchment paper, the words too soft andto take your eyesmaybe not today, maybe not to breath, Collette snapped her eyes open, wrenching herself from the trance state to which she had retreated The whisper had not been a part of the scenario she was painting for herself It had coh not with approaching dawn It was only that she was limmer of stars seemed to reach more deeply into that prison
She reached out to touch the ith her fingertips, anotheracross the silver screen in herthe heels of her ruby slippers together and saying, in that sweet, lost voice, "There’s no place like home There’s no place like home"
Collette wished she were Dorothy, that she could tap her heels together and just be hoht occurred to her she felt the wall begin to give way She stared at it and saw that it no longer seeiven way and it was alers into ater, with currents tugging at her hand Her eyes still saw the wall, but her fingers seeh she h
Beyond the wall, she s entirely out of place and it took a nize the scent Pine trees Sap and needles
What the hell?