It was her favorite time to be in the library, and as the days began to grow shorter, it came much sooner than it did in the warmer months. The windows became black mirrors in a matter of minutes, and she catches her reflection momentarily. She looks tired, her face drawn and hollowed out with shadows. She should eat more, take more Vitamin D, maybe laugh more. She had felt so isolated lately, sad for reasons she couldn't quite name. Maybe she would call Ellie, go out dancing or just go out.

The rest of the employees had trickled out of the building one by one over the last few hours, so that only the janitorial staff puttered around here and there. They were mostly silent, like worker elves or ghosts. There was a sense of calm that rippled through her, something she hadn't felt in a while. Books were plucked from bean bag chairs and brightly colored tables that barely reached the height of her knees. Volumes of children's stories of all sorts were gathered in her arms, waiting to be returned to the safety of their homes on the shelves.

Kathleen often wondered what that was like, to have that unshakable sense of home and purpose - to know precisely where your place in the world was located. She had often felt adrift in her life, not quite sure where it was that she belonged, or if she belonged anywhere. She tried to explain it to others, that sense of not fitting into the world, or her own life, but she had yet to find someone who really understood what she meant. Perhaps she never would.

But here, tonight, was where she belonged, even if it didn't last. She was the last great keeper of the words, protector of literature and laughter. There was a little girl who swore she was a fairy or witch, living somewhere behind the vast bookshelves in the children's library. Kath couldn't be sure that the little girl wasn't correct in her assumption; sometimes it felt as though she spent more time there than at home. She certainly felt magical when she inspired a child to read something new, moreso when they returned to tell her about what they had read. There is a whisper in the pages, an echo of spells cast in the fading light.

"We're nothing special, Kathleen. Someone has to be the one found dead."

There is no use in arguing, she tells herself as her thumbs convey simple responses. The scrapnel finds its home, as it always does, somewhere behind her ribs. She's become tired of the stress that comes from fighting with him. There's also a part of her that believes, in the shadowy parts of her mind, that perhaps he's right. Perhaps she's only made it all up in her mind, a hideous byproduct of loneliness and trauma long past. The thought rests like a stone in her throat as she drops her phone on the bed.

Waking before the alarm, her whole body twitches as she pads to the bathroom. Actively thinking about it isn't necessary; it is as if her body whispers between heartbeats: BESAFEBESAFEBESAFE. The hurts inflicted the night before bloom beneath her flesh, flooding her nerves in adrenaline and dulling heartache. Her fingers tap-tap-tap out messages to the universe, a Morse code for the anxious. BESAFEBESAFEBESAFE. She moves through her lunch hour like a piece of clockwork, all cogs and whirring parts, never noticing how her slim fingers toy with her mobile every few seconds.

The scissors are sharp and barely whisper shink-shink as she carefully cuts away the negative space in geometric chunks. The action releases her mind of active thought and soothes the raw edges of her nerves. There is no escaping the snakes slithering in her belly, large and slow, churning her insides until she feels green around the edges. When her phone vibrates across the table, she startles only slightly. The sound is soft and she reenters the atmosphere, one breath at a time. Her eyes scan the screen:

The Captain    5:36PM
I'm alive

It feels sometimes that he mocks her when he says it, as though she were a silly girl for being worried. For wanting more time, always more time. She wants to explain her fears, that she doesn't want to lose him before she can find her words, before he knows exactly why it's him. She knows what those kind of confessions reap and she swallows her words, the desire to say them.

I'm glad.

Maybe he's right, she thinks, her thumbs moving faster than her thoughts seem to. Maybe they're nothing special... to him, but she knows that there are days when he is all she has in the world, the only person who actually gives a damn, and that is special. Someone has to be the one found dead, but she can't be sure that it won't be her corpse recovered from the wreckage, and not his.

The low bass of the music reverberates through her spine, throbbing somewhere in her lumbar region, dropping low into her pelvis. There is an ache that no amount of mid-range champagne will chase away and she shifts her weight from one foot to the other. The shoes give her height that rivals the perfectly polished gazelles whose natural habitat is more fantasy than reality. But it has gone off without hitches or meltdowns.

The blonde leans in to share a secret, lips pressed against the warm shell of his ear. They laugh, he pulls her close, his mouth moves to taste the hollow of her throat. It is a moment suspended in the