The old bench creaked underneath her as she sat down, pulling a cigarette from behind her ear and lighting it. She looked aged, although she wasn't more than twenty-two. Beneath her thin legs, the bench felt like the sandpaper carpet she had sat on for hours in astonished silence. Her eyes shut tightly, trying not to envision that room, trying not remember the sound of heart beating angrily.

Muffled screams that, if they weren't absorbed into his unyielding hand, would have filled the house and escaped the windows with anguish. Thrashing, thirty-seven minutes of useless thrashing against rough arms and legs, their massive power pinning her to the mattress. Crying. More thrashing. More attempted screaming. Thirty-seven minutes of the kind of fear that paralyzes a person. He removed his hand from its cover over mouth and stood. The room remained dark until he reached the door, one long, violent arm reaching back to flick the lights on, then the door was shut. Footsteps descending the staircase, a mockingly gentle shutting of the front door, then the house was still.

Her hands shook with anxiety, panic tracing every fiber of her being. She could remember only the white room with coarse carpet and a single queen-sized mattress. Nothing else. She recalled how the mint green sheet looked so new, but there was no blanket, how the spider she saw tiptoeing on the walls didn't frighten her like it usually would, how the light on the ceiling shone too brightly.

Forcing her eyes open, she escaped the room and returned to the present. The cigarette she forgot to smoke was burning filter, so she stubbed it out on the faded, wooden bench, retied the white apron around her waist and slipped in through the back door of her mama's restaurant. The fear slowly subsided as she talked to faceless customers, building in the back of her mind until it decided to return again.