Wednesday, December 10, 2025, 3:35 PM
Countdown to Extraction: 59 Hours, 06 Minutes Remaining
Tally stood frozen in the center of the cramped, freezing bathroom, staring at the closed door with absolute, unadulterated venom.
How dare she, Tally thought, her jaw clenching so hard her back teeth ached. How dare that bitch.
Her chest heaved, her breath coming in ragged, angry gasps that plumed faintly in the frigid air. She was standing completely naked on a peeling linoleum floor that was probably crawling with staph, and Renee had just snatched away the only dry clothes in the apartment simply because Tally wouldn't bow down and thank her for a piece of actual garbage.
Tally looked down at the crude, taped-up paper towel roll resting on the edge of the filthy sink next to her clean hand towel.
Did Renee honestly expect her to wear that? A stiff, scratchy piece of literal trash strapped between her legs like some kind of medieval torture device? It was insulting. It was degrading. But the absolute worst part—the part that made Tally's stomach violently churn with revulsion—was the insane, psychotic expectation that she was supposed to hand-wash her own blood out of it and put it back on.
"Psycho," Tally hissed under her breath, a hot tear of pure rage slipping down her cheek. "She is a literal psycho."
If they were in a real home—if they were back in her massive, climate-controlled house in the gated suburbs of Savannah—this wouldn't even be a conversation. Tally's pristine, white-tiled master bathroom had an entire linen closet stocked with organic cotton tampons, ultra-thin pads, flushable wipes, and a towering stack of fluffy, heated Egyptian cotton towels. If she ruined a pair of leggings at home, she wouldn't even think twice about it. She would just toss them into the massive, silent Maytag washer in the laundry room, or just throw them in the trash entirely, and her mom would buy her a new pair on Amazon the next day.
But they weren't in a real home. They were in a trap house. A disgusting, rotting, squatter's den owned by a pregnant junkie and a washed-up loser.
And Tally was supposed to just accept that she was now a part of this squalor. She was supposed to put on a crackhead's unwashed clothes, strap a piece of cardboard to her crotch, and be grateful.
"I am not doing it," Tally whispered fiercely to the empty room. "I will literally freeze first."
She turned her attention to her ruined, high-end yoga leggings discarded on the floor. The seamless black fabric was her only option now. She refused to apologize to Renee. She would rather die than open that door and beg that psychotic bitch for a pair of musty sweatpants.
Tally picked up the leggings with two fingers, holding them far away from her bare legs. The crotch and upper thighs were heavy, damp, and smelled aggressively of copper.
She turned to the bathroom sink. The porcelain bowl was stained yellow, the drain ringed with black sludge. She reached for the rusted knobs and turned the cold water on. It sputtered, coughing violently before a weak, freezing stream began to trickle out of the faucet.
Tally shoved the crotch of the leggings under the water. The icy stream hit the spandex, and instantly, the water pooling in the bottom of the sink turned a bright, horrifying pink.
Tally swallowed hard, a lump of genuine dread forming in her throat. Just wash them. Just get the smell out, put them on wet, and deal with it until Mari gets back.
She grabbed the sliver of cracked, yellowing bar soap resting on the edge of the sink. It was bone dry and felt like a pumice stone. Tally aggressively rubbed the soap against the wet spandex, trying to work up a lather.
Nothing happened. The soap didn't suds. It didn't bubble. It just scraped uselessly against the expensive fabric.
"Come on," Tally gritted her teeth, pressing harder, scrubbing the soap viciously against the wet material.
With a pathetic snap, the brittle sliver of soap broke in half.
"No, no, no," Tally gasped as the larger half slipped through her wet, freezing fingers.
It hit the porcelain bowl, slid down the wet slope, and dropped straight down the wide, open drain hole. The remaining piece in her hand completely crumbled under the pressure of her frantic grip, disintegrating into useless, chalky flakes that washed away under the weak trickle of the faucet.
"Are you fucking kidding me?!" Tally shrieked at the sink.
She stared at the drain, the anger suddenly evaporating, leaving nothing but a crushing, suffocating despair. The soap was gone. The water running through her leggings was still pulling a steady stream of pink blood into the basin. The spandex wasn't getting clean; it was just getting saturated, heavy, and freezing cold.
"Fine. Whatever," Tally muttered, her voice breaking. Her hands were shaking violently from the cold. She started tearing through the bathroom, pulling open the vanity drawers and the mirrored medicine cabinet. "There has to be shampoo. Bubble bath. Body wash. Something. Please."
She ripped the mirrored cabinet open. A cascade of empty, translucent orange prescription bottles tumbled out, clattering loudly into the sink and bouncing onto the floor. Oxycontin. Percocet. Vicodin. Dozens of them. Troy and Kimmie had completely filled the cabinet with their trash.
Tally shoved the empty bottles aside, her manicured nails scraping against the rusted metal shelves. Nothing. No shampoo. No body wash. Not even a crusty bottle of cheap Suave or a crushed tube of toothpaste.
She slammed the medicine cabinet shut, the mirror rattling dangerously in its frame.
She stared at her own reflection. She was a seventeen-year-old girl standing naked in a biohazard. She had no soap. She had no clothes. She was entirely alone.
Suddenly, a warm, thick sensation slipped down the inside of her left thigh.
Tally froze.
She slowly looked down.
The stress, the adrenaline, and the physical exertion of the last few hours had caused her body to rebel. The bleeding wasn't just spotting anymore. A heavy, dark red stream of fresh blood was actively running down her inner thigh, stark and terrifying against her pale, goosebump-covered skin. It dripped down to her knee, sliding toward her calf.
The smell of copper in the tiny bathroom intensified, thick and suffocating.
They smell blood.
"Oh my god," Tally whimpered, taking a staggered step backward. Her wet, bare heel slipped slightly on the peeling linoleum.
She looked at her legs. She looked at the ruined, soaking wet leggings in the sink. She looked at the filthy, horrifying shower stall.
She couldn't just wipe it away with toilet paper—there wasn't any. If she used the clean hand towel Renee had given her to wipe her leg, she wouldn't have anything to dry off with, and the towel would just become another bloody beacon sitting in the trash can.
There was only one option left.
Tally's lower lip trembled, and a broken, miserable sob finally tore its way out of her chest. It wasn't an angry cry anymore. It was the devastating, heartbreaking weep of a child who just wanted her mother. She wanted her mom to wrap her in a warm towel, hand her a clean pair of pajamas, and tell her everything was going to be okay.
But her mom wasn't here. Nobody was coming to save her.
Tally picked up the crude, cardboard-and-rag pad Renee had made. She held it in her shaking hands, her tears dripping onto the medical tape. She hated it. She hated how degrading it was. But as the blood continued to run down her leg, she realized with crushing clarity that Renee was right. It was the only thing keeping her from being eaten alive.
Tally turned back to the bathtub. Her chest heaved, her whole body vibrating with a mixture of bone-deep cold and pure, unadulterated fear. She had to get back in. She had to stand under that sputtering, rusty pipe in the freezing dark and wash the fresh blood off her legs before it pooled on the floor.
She reached a trembling hand toward the rusted shower knob, stepping over the edge of the moldy tub, and surrendered to the nightmare.
Back in the dark bedroom, Renee was sitting on the floor with her back pressed hard against the particle-board dresser. She was a complete mess.
Her amber eyes were red and swollen, her chest tight with a grief so profound it felt like a physical weight crushing her ribs. The brightly colored, powder-coated plastic straws and the razor blade were still clutched in her fist—the undeniable, devastating proof that her pregnant sister had chosen a cheap high over her own flesh and blood.
But beneath the crushing grief for Kimmie, there was another, highly uncomfortable emotion gnawing at the back of Renee's mind, making her stomach sour.
Guilt. Heavy, ugly guilt.
Renee squeezed her eyes shut, resting her forehead on her knees.
I am thirty-six years old, she thought, the realization ringing loudly in the silence of the apartment. I am a thirty-six-year-old medical professional, and I just screamed at a child. I stole clothes from a terrified, naked teenager.
She took a deep, ragged breath, letting it out slowly through her teeth. She was a physical therapist. She spent her entire professional life dealing with patients who were in agonizing pain, lashing out, crying, complaining, and refusing to do their exercises. She was trained to be the calm, unyielding rock in the room. She knew exactly how to regulate her own nervous system when someone else was spiraling.
And yet, she had just lost her temper and abandoned a seventeen-year-old girl to freeze in a bathroom because her own feelings got hurt.
Why did she trigger me so badly? Renee asked herself, staring into the dark.
The answer was ugly, and it tasted like ash in her mouth.
It was jealousy.
It wasn't just that Tally was annoying. It was what Tally represented. Tally was the physical embodiment of everything Renee and Kimmie had been denied. Tally grew up in a sprawling, climate-controlled house in a gated community. Tally had a mother who hired housekeepers instead of smoking meth in the bathtub. Tally threw tantrums over sizing and branding because she had never once had to worry about where her next meal was coming from, or if the man sitting on the couch was going to hit her.
Tally's absolute disgust at Kimmie's apartment—calling it a trap house, sneering at the squalor—had felt like a direct, personal attack on Renee's deepest trauma. It dragged Renee right back to her childhood, making her feel like the dirty, worthless trailer-park kid all over again.
Renee had punished Tally for having an easy life.
"God, I'm a bitch," Renee whispered to the empty room, rubbing her temples. She felt a massive migraine beginning to pulse behind her eyes.
She knew better. Tally wasn't malicious; she was just incredibly sheltered. Her whole world had just violently ended. She had watched people get torn apart in the streets. Her obnoxious, entitled attitude was the only defense mechanism she had left. If she was complaining about the mold in the bathtub, she didn't have to think about the monsters outside the door.
Renee sighed, the petty anger completely bleeding out of her, leaving behind only the bone-deep, staggering exhaustion. She couldn't fight with a teenager right now. She needed to apologize. She needed to hand the sweatpants back, help the kid put the makeshift pad on, and just keep them both alive until Mari and Ethan got back with the insulin.
The insulin.
Renee's eyes snapped open in the dark.
Dot.
In the emotional whiplash of fighting with Tally and finding Kimmie's stash, Renee had been sitting in the bedroom for almost fifteen minutes.
Renee scrambled to her feet. She shoved the plastic straws and the razor blade back into the black velvet pouch, pulling the drawstring tight, and shoved the bag deep into her front jeans pocket. She didn't want Kimmie's dirty secret lying out in the open.
She rushed out of the bedroom, stepping over the spilled trash in the narrow hallway, and dropped to her knees on the stained living room carpet beside Dot.
"Dot?" Renee asked, her clinical voice instantly snapping back into place.
There was no response. The older woman was lying exactly where Renee had left her, propped slightly onto her side with a couch cushion tucked behind her back.
Renee leaned over her. The smell of acetone was overpowering, radiating off Dot's breath like a toxic perfume. The diabetic ketoacidosis was steadily marching forward, the acid building up in her bloodstream.
Dot's breathing was heavy and labored. The Kussmaul respirations were pulling with a horrific, mechanical rhythm. Huuuck. Huuuck. Her chest heaved with terrifying violence, her body fighting a desperate battle to blow off the excess carbon dioxide.
Renee reached out, pressing two fingers against the side of Dot's neck to check her carotid artery.
Her skin was clammy, broken out into a cold, heavy sweat that soaked the collar of her shirt.
But her pulse, while fast, was steady.
Renee let out a slow breath, doing the clinical math in her head. Dot was in a diabetic coma. Her blood sugar was likely astronomical, and her kidneys were screaming. But the human body is incredibly, stubbornly resilient. DKA didn't kill in an hour. It was a slow, agonizing decline. Dot wasn't going to go into cardiac arrest tonight. She had time. Maybe twenty-four hours. Maybe thirty-six, if her heart held out.
But watching it happen was agonizing.
Renee carefully wiped the cold sweat off Dot's forehead with the damp dish towel, smoothing the older woman's hair back.
"Just hold on, Dot," Renee murmured softly. "They're coming. Mari and Ethan are coming."
Renee looked up, her amber eyes darting toward the barricaded front door. The heavy wooden kitchen table was still jammed securely under the doorknob. The apartment was dead quiet. The mechanic in the hallway had apparently moved on or lost interest when the scent of blood had temporarily faded.
But the silence wasn't comforting.
The sun was dropping fast outside the plastic vertical blinds. The shadows in the living room were stretching, painting the trash-strewn carpet in long streaks of grey and black. Night was coming. And if the sun went down while Mari and Ethan were still trapped out there in the city... the odds of them making it back to this apartment plummeted to zero.
Renee gently laid Dot's hand back onto the carpet. She stood up, her muscles screaming in protest, and walked over to the kitchen counter. She picked up the heavy, rusted cast-iron skillet, gripping the handle tightly.
She walked back to the front door and sat down on the floor, leaning her back against the wooden barricade. She rested the heavy skillet on her knees, staring into the darkening apartment.
From down the hallway, the rusted pipes in the bathroom squealed in protest. The shower turned on again, a weak, sputtering hiss echoing over the sound of Dot's labored breathing.
Renee closed her eyes. She pictured Tally in there, freezing and alone, trying to wash the blood away. The guilt flared up again, hot and heavy. As soon as the shower shut off, she was going to bring the sweatpants back. She was going to be the adult.
But for now, Renee just gripped the cast-iron handle tighter, listening to the water run, and waited in the dark for her people to come home.
Wednesday, December 10, 2025, 3:55 PM
Countdown to Extraction: 58 Hours, 46 Minutes Remaining