Where Sinners Sleep

Candle Burns

The city moved past the window like it was in a hurry to get somewhere.

Evelyn watched it without really seeing it. The streetlights dragged long orange lines across the glass and then disappeared. Buildings rose and fell. A traffic light blinked red and then green and then they were past it and it was gone. Everything was moving forward, fast and relentless, the way life had always moved around her, never waiting, never slowing, never once asking if she was keeping up.

She did not notice when her eyes started to feel heavy.

She did not notice when the tension in her shoulders began to loosen, slowly, the way ice melts, so gradual you cannot point to the exact moment it stops being solid. The hum of the engine was low and constant and the seat was warmer than anything she had sat in for a long time. She was aware, distantly, of a warmth somewhere close to her. She did not know where it was coming from and she was too tired to figure it out.

Her eyes closed.

She was in the kitchen.

She knew it was the kitchen before she even saw it because she could smell it, the sharp chemical bite of cleaning fluid and underneath that something sweet and waxy that turned her stomach even inside the dream. The linoleum floor was cold under her knees. She had been on her knees for a long time. Her hands were shaking.

Sarah stood above her.

She was holding a candle.

"You missed a spot," Sarah said, and her voice was so calm, so perfectly pleasant, like she was commenting on the weather.

"I am sorry," Evelyn heard herself say. She was small in the dream, younger, her hands tiny against the cold floor. "I am sorry, I will do it again, please"

The wax came down.

She felt it on the back of her hand and the sound that came out of her was not a scream because she had learned a long time ago not to scream. It was just a sharp intake of breath, swallowed immediately, pressed down into somewhere deep where Sarah could not reach it and use it.

The dream shifted.

A belt. The whistle of it through the air before it landed. She knew that sound better than she knew almost any other sound in the world. She had memorised it the way you memorise things that hurt you over and over, involuntarily, your body logging it before your mind can decide whether it wants to.

The dream shifted again.

She was laughing. She did not know what at. Something small and stupid and funny the way only small stupid things can be funny when your whole life is heavy. The laugh surprised even her, bright and sudden, and for one second it felt like something she was allowed to have.

Sarah's hand connected with her face so hard her vision went white.

How dare you, Sarah said, very quietly, very close to her ear. I hate that sound. I have always hated that sound. Do not ever let me hear that again.

"No," Evelyn mumbled. "Please. Please do not. Please stop. Please"

Something touched her hair.

It was gentle. So gentle that it did not fit inside the dream at all, like a wrong note in a familiar song. Something slow and careful, pushing a strand of hair back from her face, and the touch was so different from every touch she had ever known in that house that it pulled her toward it instinctively, the way a plant turns toward light without deciding to.

"Please," she mumbled again, but it was quieter now, the dream loosening its grip slowly.

The car stopped.

Not slowly. A firm brake, the kind that pitches you forward, and Evelyn came up swinging before she was fully awake. A real punch, fast and direct, her whole body behind it, years of surviving in that house coiled into the movement before her brain had even caught up.

A hand caught it.

One hand, completely calm, wrapping around her knuckles in mid air and holding them absolutely still. No struggle. No effort. No flinch. Just stopped, like he had seen it coming a full second before she moved.

She gasped and opened her eyes.

He was looking at her. Green eyes, very close, expression unreadable in the way she was already starting to recognise as just his face, the way he looked when he was processing something he had not prepared for. Her fist was still suspended in his grip. He had not even shifted in his seat.

"Piccola," he said, and his voice was low and completely even. "You are safe. It is me."

She stared at him.

Her heart was hammering. The nightmare was still sitting at the edges of her vision, the kitchen floor, the wax, the sound of the belt, Sarah's voice right against her ear, and she blinked hard to push it back. She became aware that she was half upright in the seat and that her head had been on something. His lap, she realised, with a lurch of embarrassment that arrived slightly after everything else. There was a warmth around her shoulders where his jacket had been placed over her at some point without her knowing.

She pulled back and sat up straight and pushed her hair out of her face.

He let go of her fist without a word.

"We are here," said the driver from the front, glancing at her in the rearview mirror with an expression she could not quite read. He addressed the man beside her with the ease of someone who had known him a long time. "Kit. We are here."

Kit.

The name landed somewhere in her foggy brain and sat there quietly. She filed it away without letting on that she had heard it at all.