Fight For Reason
an excerpt

Her hands were unsteady under the pressure of the faucet. The water hissed and spurted due to what she presumed to be a faulty washer. She knew very little about plumbing. Eagerly, she drenched her hands in the water, letting it pile up in the dish-like foundation of her pressed-together palms before she dipped her face to receive the liquid, feeling it coat the susceptible surface of her cheeks and mouth. The beads, temporarily forgotten, were coiled around her fingers, dripping like a candle drips wax, but in a more rapid succession. She seemed to atone for a moment; she was at peace with all her tribulations. It didn’t come close to euphoria, but it was enough to settle her pulse, to drag everything into a continuum she’d once been used to. But of course it didn’t last long. The tremors were again felt through her wrists, shaking through the core of her, and as she crumbled again to the floor there came the squeal of her fingertips against the tile.

She’d had such a deceivingly rosy smile. The nun often had a healthy blush to her cheeks, accentuating her too-crisp blue eyes and the wrinkles that branched out from them. Her face was plump and round, making it almost in disproportionate to her tall and lean figure. “God would be ashamed of you!” she would say as the shadows gripped to the contours of her countenance. It had only been a very small fire with very big ramifications.

There was that noise again, like a scratch. She couldn’t distinguish if it was in her head or in the walls, and it was gone before she knew. With an infuriated sigh, she slumped into the wall, feeling the surface crash against her. And in the next instant she scrambled up again, testing the door, under the apparent illusion that it might come undone this time, despite it not having worked several times before. Her slippery hands achieved nothing but a new bout of debilitating frustration, and she retired her back to the wooden panel, feeding her eyes into the darkened room. Was it day or night? No matter. The thirst still raged.