“Ambulance is on the way,” Nolan reported.
And Sandra thought, Well, he certainly won’t sleep with me now. But that thought came and left in a heartbeat, because something else was happening on that eerie picture-in-picture view in her head.
She was seeing a falling drop of liquid that must have been a million gallons. It was far bigger than the terrifying bugs with her face smeared across them, her eyes; those nightmare insects with her own damned eyes.
The drop landed. It swept around the two bugs, engulfing them. And instantly it began to eat away those insect legs. It chewed burning holes into those insect carapaces. It burned away those distorted reflections of her own face like an old-time filmstrip jammed in a projector that bubbles and caramelizes and is gone.
The picture frames in her head blinked out.
They were gone as fast as they had come.
Sandra stood now, seeing only through her own eyes, seeing only what was real.
She laughed. “Hah-hah-hah-hah. Hahahahahahahah!”
And then she screamed. “Ahhhh! Aaaaaahhhh! You’re devils! Devils!”
Nolan moved to grab her because she was climbing awkwardly onto the table. She slipped, skinned her knee against the edge, stared down at the blood, and shrieked, shrieked like a mad thing.
She snatched up a knife. Not a very big knife, just a dinner knife with a point and modest serrations. She stabbed it into Nolan’s thick bicep.
The strong man screamed, a more feminine sound than one might have expected.
“Hah! Hah, devil!” Sandra yelled, happy at the sight of his blood, fascinated.
Wade and Quentin backpedaled, making sure to keep the table between themselves and the long shot for Best Actress.
In Sandra’s eyes they were not backing away, they were coming for her, with their fangs out, and claws for fingers, and liquid fire dripping from their eyeballs—it was all about the eyeballs, it was there, in the eyes, the demons.
Sandra Piper turned the knife around and stabbed it into her belly. It didn’t go far. It drew blood, but just a stain the size of a quarter.
“Hey, hey, hey!” Quentin yelled.
“No, no, stop that, stop that this instant,” Wade said.
Nolan made another move—this time wary—to take the knife from her.
Sandra spit at him. “Hah!” she yelled, and stabbed the knife into her own eye. Her left eye. Pulled it out bloody and clotted with viscous goo.
Cries of horror, and now even she could see that they were backing away, the devils. It was working. Hah! Run, devils, run!
She then stabbed the knife into her other eye and pushed it through cracking bone, pushed it until the hilt was stopped. Then she twisted the knife around as if she was trying to churn her own brain.
Her knees gave way. The knife dropped from her hand.
“Stupid Mission project,” she said. Then fell onto her back, laughing and howling, laughing and howling. “Devils! Dev—”
It was Lystra Reid who took the knife from her. And Lystra who placed a napkin over the bloody craters in her face.
Not that Sandra Piper could see that.
TWO
Her name was Sadie McLure. She had indifferently styled brown hair and smart, skeptical brown eyes that could take on golden highlights and even suggestions of green in certain lights. She had freckles on her cheeks and across the bridge of her nose. She’d never liked the freckles—they seemed to be accompanied by the word cute and she didn’t like people thinking of her as cute. Cute was a belittling word.
The cute freckles had a second outpost on her chest, and a lesser presence on her shoulders. But all her freckles were now almost hidden by a rich, deep tan.
Her name was Sadie McLure, but in certain company she called herself Plath, after the great and tragically suicidal poet.