The summer air was still thick, but the darkness was soothing. Hard, smooth stone passed under her feet, making her feel powerful again.
Night can completely transform one’s world, if one is receptive to the transformation. Ariana’s eyes widened to take in the street lights, and she saw hopes and dreams. She stood on the very edge of a bridge. The dark water made her feel like she was suspended over nothing, with only little void-ducks paddling beneath her. She descended to the river’s edge and danced with ghosts in the gathering fog.
At first she reveled in the new world all around her, but soon she remembered why she hadn’t wandered like that since her illness. An entirely different transformation took over. Her vitality waned. Her limbs moved like a poorly-aligned machine - mechanical yet clumsy. She was no longer thinking about her infection, or indeed much of anything at all. All that remained in her clouded mind was the strong feeling that she didn’t want to go home yet, so she placed one foot in front of the other again and again.
Light from a nearby window halted her pace. She immediately shielded her eyes from the brightness, but after peeking around her raised hand she realized that the window was familiar to her. Her barely-conscious body had brought her to Dr. Lane’s practice.
“Well, it makes sense,” she said to herself. “My doctor should know what I found out about the machines. Maybe my instincts knew that. But he shouldn’t be at his office now. It’s much too late.”
No one answered her feeble knock, but the solid, wooden door was unlocked. Before she noticed anything with her eyes, she smelled protein and electrolytes. The odor washed over her brain. She fell to her knees from the intensity of it, not even questioning how she knew what electrolytes smelled like.
The source of the smell was lying in red puddles on the floor. She dipped her finger in a puddle and tasted it. Her jaw muscles tightened, and her salivary glands squirted. She swallowed and savored the metallic tang; she wanted more.
Losing all sense of restraint or propriety, she buried her face in a puddle, lapping and gulping. She sank her taste buds gratefully into the grain of the floorboards, tasting blood, wax, and wood all at once. She licked cold, limp fingers clean and sucked at the gash in the throat where all the blood had come from in the first place. For the first time since her illness, Ariana had an appetite.
A warm, contented feeling filled her body, as if she had been taking morphine. The lights, which had seemed harsh a minute ago, melted until they were soft and comforting. She lay down next to the body of Dr. Lane and slept.
