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The water was cooler than she had been expecting.
She tipped her head back, the water creeping past her hairline and halfway up her forehead- for a moment, she was back in her childhood home. She wasn’t sure if it was a real memory or something she had invented- she wasn’t sure of anything anymore, especially anything that had been in the days before John had woken her up.
“Stop splashin’ Mandy, you’ll get water all over the floor!”
Amanda tried to relax, her grip tightening around the ledge of the bathtub to keep her afloat without having to splash again. Her mother’s fingers were gentle as they eased the tangles out of her hair in the warm water, and her hair billowed out around her as she stared up at the ceiling. Peeling paint, spreading damp.
The paint was peeling here too, allowing the grimy concrete to peek out from underneath. The smell of chemicals irritated her nose, and she scrunched it up to stop from sneezing. She could hear John’s breathing, reliable as anything, and she willed her muscles to stop tensing so much.
She could feel her clothes sticking to her skin as let herself drift.
A sound must have spilled out of her, because she heard John soothe her with a hand on her shoulder, the warmth of his skin shocking her a little. Her ankle bumped against the edge, and she grimaced and pushed herself up to a sitting position.
“What are we doing this for again?”
Her voice was irritating even to her own ears, petulant and childish. She knew that it was bothering John too- something had changed between them in the recent few weeks, both of them knew, and this had seemed to be an attempt to fix that rift.
If John was annoyed though, his face didn’t show it. He was as serene as ever, above it all. For a moment, Amanda had the urge to wipe that peace off his face, to make him feel something, anything. Sometimes she felt like she was going insane, like she was some sort of animal that John had to constantly look after and temper her emotional outbursts.
“It’s important that we leave your old life behind.”
Amanda leaned forward, water running in rivulets down her neck to join itself in the bathtub below, and she shivered, John’s voice changing in her mind to something she had tried to forget.
“Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God, and do you accept him as your Lord and Saviour?”
Her father’s hand was tight on the back of her neck, and it would have made her skin crawl if it wasn’t so close to painful. The collar of her dress had gotten caught up in it, and it was starting to choke her.
Nodding, she tried to wriggle out of his grip slightly, and felt his annoyance almost immediately.
He let go of her then, and it took everything not to collapse to the floor in a heap. Anxiously, she smoothed her dress out with sweating palms.
She watched him take a breath, and then another. When he spoke, it was deceptively calm, but she could sense the anger underneath, the promise of violence in it.
“What do you think,” His hands touched her hair, catching a tangle and making her wince. “The congregation are going to say when my own daughter can’t get through her baptism without crying?”
Amanda hadn’t realised she had been.
“Have I failed you?”
She shook her head, and flinched when he forced her to look at him.
“Have I been a bad father?”
“No.” She shook her head again, blinking away fresh tears.
The silence stretched out for a moment, two- and then her father smiled.
“Then let’s try this again.”
Once everything was back in position, Amanda willed herself to lean back into her father’s waiting hands, and sucked in a harsh breath.
She could feel the water creeping through the fabric of her dress, slowly soaking her, and she had almost done it when the panic surged again, and her legs moved without her permission.
Her father’s grip tightened again, and she heard herself shout, felt herself thrash against it, felt the water close in over her face-
Felt Adam’s hands on her wrists, struggling feebly as the plastic cut off any chance at breathing, blood smearing- fresh blood, wherever it had come from. She realised a second too late that he had hit his head, the blood splattered and smudged against the inside of the bag where he was starting to breathe it back in.
It wasn’t her fault- if he could just keep still, if he could just understand that she was trying to help him, god damn it-
“Hold still you bitch.” Her father’s hands yanked at her hair, pulling her out of the water. She was surprised she heard anything at all over the rushing of her own blood in her ears. She took a ragged breath, water burning in her lungs, and she started to cry in earnest then.
The scream tore her throat as it left her, and by the time she had enough wherewithal to stop herself from moving John’s arms were tight around her, holding her in place. As close to an embrace as they’d ever had- as close to an embrace as Amanda had had in recent memory.
He was soothing her, she realised dully, humming and shushing into her hair like he was soothing an upset child. Like he wasn’t a murderer, like she wasn’t his all too willing accomplice. Or maybe exactly like those things were true- this was probably the closest to being accepted, to belonging, that Amanda had ever gotten. Maybe that was all that needed to be true.
“M’sorry.” She mumbled, shivering slightly. The water was colder now, no remnants of warmth left. John seemed to notice her discomfort, and he leaned away to fetch a towel. The loss of him made her chest seize, and she pulled herself tighter. “I don’t know what-”
“Rebirth is a harsh process.” John said easily, turning the soft fabric over in his hand before bringing it to Amanda’s face. She leaned into the touch, a soft noise escaping at the gentleness of it. “The old life must be purged.”
It did feel like a purging, the memories rising in her throat like bile. She swallowed harshly, and then sat back again.
“I can do it.”
John’s hands, always so sure, hesitated. Her heart squeezed at the thought that he worried about her.
This time, as the water washed over her temples and bordered her face, as John’s hands help her in the water, she brought the memories back voluntarily. It was a tactic she had adopted in the last few months, when her mind started to fall apart. A pre-emptive strike.
She didn’t know why she had gone down to the basement that day. John wouldn’t have liked it- would never have allowed it, if he hadn’t been having one of his bad weeks. They were unpredictable, as changeable as the wind. Sometimes he seemed almost youthful, caught up in the frantic energy of those beginning stages of a trap, and in the next moment he was lying in his bed, wheezing and barely able to grip Amanda’s fingers while she mopped his face with a towel. It was nerve-wracking, like she had anchored herself to something that was teetering on the edge of a cliff, like any second now she would be dragged into the inky abyss. Still though, it had given her a chance to duck away into the dark, to follow the dimly lit hallways towards what she knew was waiting for her there. Her unfinished business, she supposed. Every step taking her closer until she was standing in front of that door again, silent and impassive as a gravestone.
The rust on the handle ground against her hand as she gripped it, and after an initial pull it started to slide open, exposing the first few feet of grimy tile.
Amanda took a step forward, before stopping dead at the smell. She couldn’t have guessed how long it had been, hadn’t been able to think about it too much without feeling her chest start to lock up from it. Adam was probably dead by now- she hoped he was, selfishly. Hoped to spare herself this one act of decency that she was still capable of, whatever that said about her.
It was pure rot, the acrid taste of it coating her mouth with each ragged inhale. She could hear her own breathing reverberating against the walls, making the room feel smaller than it probably was. Though, she supposed any room would seem small when you were trapped inside.
Her shoe squelched sickeningly as she walked forward- she knew it was blood, but couldn’t bring herself to look down to confirm it. Instead, she kept her gaze firmly on where a ghostly pale foot stuck out into the light.
She tried to speak, but her voice cracked, cleaving the syllables in half. “Adam?”
The word echoed and she took another step forwards, ignoring everything around her as she approached the man who had been haunting her for hours, days. It had started out as a creeping dread, a feeling of being watched as she kept herself busy, but then she had seen him. Not as he was now, as a broken thing stashed in a forgotten basement, but as the man she had first seen him as. Crooked smile, crows feet. So kind to her.
A sob rose then, and it was all she could do to force it back down.
He still hadn’t moved by the time she reached him, but she tugged the plastic bag free from her pocket nonetheless. She had to be sure.
It slid into place over his head despite her shaking hands, but it wasn’t until she tightened her grip that he finally moved.
Sudden, violent, he gasped a breath that welded the plastic against his face, sealing his fate before he had even opened his eyes. His movements were weak, but Amanda could barely stand to look at him. In a burst of energy, his body hinged and slammed his face off the metal pipe beside him. When she pulled him back to her, the inside of the bag was smeared with red now, blood bubbles bursting against his skin. It could hardly be called suffocating now- more drowning than anything else. The skin on her knuckles was stretched so tight it could have been mistaken for bone, and she stared as his choked breathing gave way to an awful gurgling rattle, and then to a terrible silence.
She tossed the bag to the side, grimacing at the sight of it in the dim light from the doorway. Adam fell forward, and she grimaced as she pushed him back up to a slumped sitting position against the wall. His face was slack and pale, his hair pasted to his forehead and his eyes open, bloodshot. She did sob then, a hiccup of a sound that punched all of the air out of her. With a shudder, she closed his eyes from him. He could have been sleeping, if it weren’t for the stillness.
For a moment, she wondered how anyone could have thought that someone deserved to die like this.
It was a blasphemous thought, she knew. John was waiting for her upstairs even as she thought it, and there would be more people like Adam. Many more- and she would help him.
She would have to leave that guilt here, then. She had no use for it outside of this room. It wouldn’t save anyone.
Pushing herself to her feet, she gave one last look to Adam’s crumpled form, before turning away.
When she opened her eyes, John was smiling.
He sat her up, the towel against the back of her head, and she felt a grim sort of settling in her chest.
“You have to give yourself over entirely.” John spoke softly, his hands in the towel coming to tighten around her hair, before letting it fall against her back and settling it over her shoulders instead. She heard the drain plug get pulled, and felt the water level start to fall. “Do you trust me?”
Amanda nodded, and pushed everything else from her mind.
“I trust you.”