"Life in Mono" by Mono, from Mono

In the beginning it was easier not to think about it.

Teena Mulder searches through her purse, fingers brushing old candy wrappers, the smooth surface of a leather wallet, the keys to several houses, the oldest of which is beginning to rust. Her hand closes around a plastic cylinder - she pulls it out, stares at it as if it is a stranger rather than the old friend it is. She can see her own faint reflection above the prescription that bears her name.

Before the abduction - before the screaming, before the Valium - she had been beautiful. She still is, in a way, her face youthful, eerily unlined beneath its frame of pearl-white hair. Her aloof, coolly defiant brand of beauty stares back at her from the orange plastic, twists at her heart as it echoes her daughter's features.

Samantha, she thinks, Samantha - why now?

And she cannot put it out of her mind. She cannot allow herself to escape, as she has done so many times, hoarding pills like a miser, hoarding memories and stashing them away in a place where not even she could reach them. No longer, she decides - she will face this particular demon awake, without the soft haze of oblivion keeping her safe.

She is no longer safe. None of them are.

In the beginning, it was easier not to think about it. Now she can't stop. Even as she walks alone, pulling her dark coat around her like a shield, the image is seared into her skull, a cruel tattoo across her line of vision. Every tall, wavy-haired stranger watches her with the same blank stare, following her across the reflections of windows, over the pavement in the slender, lengthening shadows.

She turns the corner and steps into a blast of heat. Her cheeks instantly flush with a glow that would have been dazzling in the face of a younger woman, but that makes her look only feverish. Inside, she can smell coffee and freshly baked bread, melting snow, a wholesome, homey sort of scent mixed with the odor of cigarettes that drifts from the table of a young couple. She associates it instinctively with menace, and it seems out of place here.

Neutral ground. That was what he said, over the phone. A small cafe just south of the hospital, a location in which neither of them would feel entirely comfortable.

He is late, and Teena waits half an hour before deciding to leave. Just as she stands, the door opens with a harsh cry of chimes, and he is brushing snow out of his thinning hair.

"I was delayed," he says, his tone terse but polite, and he explains no further. He sits down, nods to the waiter to bring a coffee. Two coffees, he amends, glancing at her. The same offhand dismissal he uses to run the fate of nations applies to her as well.

But she does not return the sentiment. She has a harsher spirit than the men who rule the world. And though he can decide the future with a single word, she can make him tremble without even opening her mouth.

"What did you do to her?"

His lips move in mockery of words, and he lights a cigarette instead. "What makes you think I did anything to her?" he asks finally.

She says nothing. He takes a drag of his cigarette. He does not break her stare.

So, he does not know either.

There are other questions to ask. Whether or not Samantha will live. What they plan to do to her next. These are questions to which he will know the answers.

But it is better not to ask. Better not to know, not to dwell on it. This is a dark parody of her dreams: Samantha is back, but she is not Samantha. *He* is back, but only to assess the situation, to take appropriate action. She almost laughs, a bitter knife turned inward against her own time-hardened heart.

She can breathe again, but it will never be the same.

Abruptly, she stands, leaving him to pay for the coffee. She has to leave. The room is closing in on her.

"Teena," he says, and his voice sounds like a shout to her, though not one stranger's head turns to stare.

Against all logic, she stops, though she does not turn back.

"Give Samantha my regards," he says, and then the door crashes shut behind her.

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