"In a strange way we were free. We'd reached the end of the line. We had nothing more to lose. Our privacy, our liberty, our dignity: all of this was gone and we were stripped down to the bare bones of our selves"

-Susanna Keysen, girl interrupted.

I never used to smoke. Not even when Bart would smoke. I used to huff and flail my delicate white hands about and he would laugh and his eyes would sparkle darkly, like a brilliant night sky.

I find that now I smoke just to remind myself of him.

No, only in that place did I ever smoke.

My hands, once nurtured by the finest creams, were dry and hard as they'd never been. A cigarette was pinched between fingers that grew more brittle with each day. A shaft of sunlight fell from a slat near the ceiling while my cuts were healing. I picked at the wrist I.d they'd strapped to my arm upon my arrival with blunt fingernails. It was plastic and oh, it itched so terribly. I'd gotten a cigarette from a girl at lunch with these awful burn scars all over her body. She'd lit it for me and I had to scurry like a mouse back to my room to smoke in solitude. My cell with the tiny slice of sunlight.

They wouldn't let me have a mirror. Everytime I saw my own face, I howled like I was being prodded with hot irons. It was quite a spectacle let me assure you.

It was at that moment when I sat there, watching the smoke billowing all around me that I had what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity.

"Momma... I found a small room we'd never seen before. There was a very peculiar odor in that room, like something dead and rotten."

My daughters words cut through the air like knives she'd hurled at me. It was like a movie reel had begun behind my eyes. I saw Cory's white face swaddled in a green blanket of terry cloth. I hurried down the hall, my mothers' thundering footfalls close behind me. I looked at her over my shoulder. Her head was on a swivel that day, her sharp steel eyes sweeping from side to side.

I made it all the way to the hallway leading to the garage. It all happened so fast.

John Amos, he came out of nothing, nowhere, just like he always did. His hand closed itself around my arm. He took one moment to look down at my youngest son. Then he was shaking me like a doll. Cory jerked out of sleep...or the silence that comes before death. His eyes, large, liquid; snapped open, and they were wild with fright as they stared up at John Amos and his demented expression. My son jerked forward in my arms, coughing violently. While John Amos shook us both.

"John." My mothers voice came to me as if from very far away.

"Whore!" He spat on my face. I could feel his warm saliva trickling down my lips. Cory coughed one last time, and shuddered.

"John! Stop this instant!" My mother commanded.

He released us, and smiled down at me so cruelly, It was as if a sheet of ice closed itself around my heart.

He turned on his heel and left. My sons eyes were wide open. I saw some tiny flicker of light leave blue orbs forever with my own eyes. I sank to my knees as my mother gasped and hurried to close the door to the hall. Her hands were shaking afterward and I heard her mutter somewhere above me,

"Dear God, what have I done?"

I heard tears in her voice. Not since Mal died did I ever see such an emotional display from her.

My baby was so light in my arms. His little sprit had flown away, and carried mine with it.

The night of the party, staring into my daughter's cold, glassy eyes, I felt the earth split wide open, and I could see the dark light cast by the eternal flames of hell reflected back at me. And I would extinguish all. Put out the fire with gasoline.