[b][u][center]Cordelia Lynn Holmes[/center][/u][/b]

Cordelia Lynn Holmes had many faults but being someone to quit easily was not one of them.

The problem was that the part of her that had picked herself back up off the asphalt, or the power-washed concrete of a prison block, or the carpet of that house - that part of her just couldn't.

She couldn't [i]see[/i]. Lynn didn't remember drinking. It was all spinning. Her thoughts wouldn't work. Nothing was working. She hurt. She hurt really bad and she wanted to go to sleep. Somewhere she could hear him scream. [i]Pick me up,[/i] Lynn tried to say. [i]I have to get him back to the kitchen. They got them out of the cafeteria so I can blow it up now. Freezer, someone, there's - [/i]

Someone was holding something over her head and covering her eye so she couldn't see. "Stop," Lynn tried to pick her hand up off the floor and push them away but it wouldn't move. "Shta," Lynn garbled. She was sweating in her mouth. It was hot, and salty. Lynn coughed - pain lanced through the side of her skull - and ash and blood splattered out. She wheezed, and what she could see out of her eye was dark and swimmy and shifting. "Stop I can't see, I can't..."

[i]I got shot again,[/i] Lynn thought. [i]I walked in the room and I got shot, from back behind me, there was supposed to...they were supposed to be there and they weren't, and I got shot in the knee.[/i] But Lynn's knee didn't hurt. Nothing in her legs hurt. She was just cold. Lynn was shaking and shivering and couldn't remember why her hair was gone. She was barely able to shift her head. There was a girl over her. Lynn couldn't remember her name. She was swimming. There was something she had to say but she couldn't remember but she knew it was important she had to say it. Where did she get shot? She couldn't walk. Was it her knee? Someone was screaming for help. [i]It's a trap,[/i] Lynn thought. [i]You're gonna follow them in the door and you'll get shot.[/i]

[i]Keaton,[/i] Lynn wondered. [i]Or Elly, or...[/i] Lynn blinked. Was Amelia there? Amelia was gone. She'd been gone for a month. There was something she had to tell her before they got shot again. Lynn couldn't remember who her was. "Lizard," Lynn muttered, her brain trying to hold all the thoughts that they were leaking out her skull like cupping sand in her cold shaking hands. Why had she been there? Why did she get shot? She wasn't - "docks," Lynn murmured. "Docks, they're bringing..." Lynn tried to remember. The woods. "Dolls," Lynn said. "Kids at the docks, tell denim, it's...they're...the ghost men are watching but she...know," Lynn tried to pick herself up again but her hurtless legs wouldn't work. She was cold. She was so cold. She was so cold. All of her was shaking and shivering and clammy. Someone had burned half her clothes and all her hair off her. She didn't want to be ugly when she died. The part of her that put brick by brick against the part of her that was afraid and fused it in the kiln of the back of her mind was leaking out onto the floor through Amelia's jacket. "Blanket," Lynn murmured. Her words spiraled slower and quieter. "It's cold. Bring the lizard, he'll get cold, it's cold, lizards and cold they...they slow, you can..." Lynn's eye focused on the figure above her, leaning over her. It was a woman. No. "No," Lynn said. "I had to, you were gonna kill me, you were gonna kill me...I had to, I had to, I had to...you were gonna hurt him, you...you and then those four people and the kid, I lit him on fire, I thought...you shot me, why did you shoot me, I never hurt you, I did everything right...they all sat there and lied about me, I just had to watch...I was gonna get needle...they lied...you shot me..." 

Everything was dark now and the slurred mess that spilled out of Lynn's bluing lips matched it. This was cruel. Lynn hadn't done this to her. There was pressure on the side of her head. The freezer. She'd pulled her into the freezer. That's why it was so cold. Lynn had killed her but she hadn't been like this. She didn't blind her. She blinded the kid though. She lit him on fire. She melted the gun in his hands. "I didn't know," Lynn slurred. "Get off my eyes, get off my eyes, get off my eyes, get off my eyes..."