When Scotty regained enough sense to jingle his keys at Abigail and offer, through concussion and a few years, to take Abigail home...he wasn't met with glares and swearing; Abigail shot him a couple of finger guns and went “nice.” She shot Molly a meaningful glance and, after confirming that those sonnofabitch 'friends’ of Scotty weren't actually man enough to tell his mom, the three of them piled into his car and off he went. Abigail found the first mailbox murder to be funny, but when she sarcastically dared him to hit another and felt the thud, her temper flared up a little and it was Molly behind the wheel. Abigail sat in the back - she liked sitting in the backs of cars for some reason - whilst Scotty got high in the passenger seat and slurred out praises to both of the girls. Abigail was giving him her usual enthusiasm, to the point where even Molly doubted that Abigail ever said anything about spies and torture before. Nevertheless, there was this unique...oddness about Abigail's demeanor, a gut that she wasn't as happy as she made herself out to be. “Of course dude, a broken arm? No pain at all for our Scott. Like... like meeting an old friend, huh. Familiar sort of pain.” She was bigging him up the whole way. “And I'm sorry about the arm thing, really - it's just, like, it was my first fright night too so I showed up early and rigged the place. Used to be a techie in my drama club, back in the city.” Molly could smell the bullshit there. Abigail had said once that there weren't any things like clubs where she came from (“at least, not the kind you'd want to join”) and Abigail was dragging her heels in ever since she heard fright night was a thing. 

They got to Abi's house first - unsurprising, given that her uncle could only just about afford a shitty bungalow on outskirts of the suburbs, closer to the woods than most of civilization and making the walk to school just that little bit more difficult than it had to be. She popped the door open then leant on drivers side window, thanking Scotty for the ride and peering down at Molly with an indiscernible expression. “Get home safe, okay? Both of you,” was all she said before twisting around and jogging into the house. Molly could hear her lock the door after her. It was just another one of her oddities - nobody needed to lock anything in Brimstone - but after what happened, and given her proximity to the woods...it didn't seem that weird anymore.

Within the hour Abigail found herself leaning against the sink, glaring at her misty reflection in mirror, dripping wet and stark naked from the well deserved bath she took. “Water you doing, Abi…” she mused, smirking at her own stupid pun. More moments passed as she tended to her 'wounds’, the stink of iodine and alcohol rub mixing with bubble bath and the hot smell of steam that permeated the bathroom. She ran out of plasters and pulled on her PJ's, leaving the empty box quite tellingly on the countertop near the front door. She made herself dinner - a breaded chicken steak, beans and potato wedges - and put it in the microwave whilst stuffing her fist into the cereal box and shovelling handfuls into her mouth instead. The cooked meal was another little sign for her uncle when he got in. Abigail wanted to scroll through the TV channels but knew it wouldn't do her any good. 

On nights like this, distractions never cut it. She put the cereal box away and took a pill bottle out of the medicine cabinet, popping two into her mouth and then pointedly placing the bottle on the countertop next to the plasters. They were strong enough, but not what Abigail was used to; she could feel them kicking in no more than twenty minutes later as her mouth dried up and her limbs felt leaden. Dragging herself to bed, she had a couple hours of dreamless sleep, followed by a series of naps that plagued her with bright and lurid nightmares, of filthy streets and filthy girls, and the horrible tug on her navel jolted her awake every single time.