“Shut up! Just shut the fuck up!” Lindsay reached forward and shoved her fanatical admirer in the chest. “Get this through your head once and for all: I will never want you! I will never be with you! You’re a fucking creep, and no one will want to go anywhere near you ever again once I tell them what—”
“No!”
A shriek pierced the air as two hands shot out, pushing Lindsay in the center of her slim torso. She stumbled and teetered by the edge of the roof, a scream trapped in her throat, and then she slipped right over the short balustrade and fell back into thin air.
Everything seemed to slow down as she stared up at the face she’d seen a million times before. The face of the person she never even dreamed would hurt her. Not until tonight.
Now that face was cast in shadow, dark and grotesque. Nearly unrecognizable with its wild-eyed fury and cold, twisted disdain.
Her right hand reached out reflexively, grasping at nothing. “Help!” she cried out.
No one surged forward to pull her to safety. No hands shot out to grab her. She was on her own.
The side of the three-story mansion rushed by in a blur as she plummeted downward. A sickeningly-loud thud registered somewhere in her mind as she finally hit the wet pavement.
She felt almost nothing at first. Just a dull throb in her head. Then the real pain started. Such terrible agony, radiating out from every nerve ending, ripping her into shreds. She could feel that her limbs were twisted at all the wrong angles, bones shattered like glass, and without reaching up to feel it, she knew there was blood seeping from the back of her aching head. It was warm with a metallic scent that wafted over to her nostrils before fading away as the pounding rain diluted it.
Her eyes rolled back as she stared upward, trying and failing to make sense of everything that had just happened. Nothing came to her. Not a single memory.
Not even her own name.
She attempted a moan, tasting blood in her mouth, but she couldn’t tell if any sound actually came out. She couldn’t move, either. Couldn’t even lift a finger. She was completely and utterly dazed, head spinning like crazy as a great weariness washed over her.
The pain finally started to fade, and the world wobbled and turned fuzzy before her eyes. She felt like she was plunging into a dark pool, one that was mercifully warm, descending deeper and deeper by the second. It was soothing. Comforting.
She closed her eyes and let herself sink deeper into the warm nothingness, until she was so far gone she knew she’d never emerge.