So Night Follows Day Pt. 15

"Because that 'yeah, I'd fuck her' look is on her face here, but watch how it changes."

The memory slowed, like someone was hitting the Frame Advance on a video, because they were showing me something that you can only see for a moment, but they felt it was worth pausing the video to point it out. Helen was still looking me up and down, but Suzy-Ho was right. The look of lust on her face was becoming something else. Something more familiar.

Pity? No. I wasn't any stranger to that one. I got plenty of it back when I was with Chad and we had neighbors he hadn't chased off who still bothered to call the cops on him. It wasn't that let-down look that cops got when all I would have had to say was the word "yes," and they would have dragged him downtown, and I'd say "no," instead. It was the look they gave me before that point.

"She's noticing the marks." Suzy-Q said. "The ones you still had from Chad." I could suddenly feel them all over me again. Old pains that I thought would never go away, but eventually did.

"The ones she remembered Wade giving her mom." I replied. "And her, too." She'd stopped at my upper arms, below my shoulders. She touched one of her own. Just as we were about to walk out into the lobby like that, she stopped us and put Troy's Dracula cape over me. She whispered something about being a good little kitten, and the image faded.

"Well, yeah." I said, as the others looked at me. "Troy & Julie told me about that part later, but what was the point of seeing it again?"

"I think it was to show us that look, Susan." Suzy-Q replied. "The one Suzy-Ho pointed out. When Helen noticed the marks we still had left from Chad."

"Right!" Suzy-Ho piped up. "Before that moment, you were just someone she wouldn't mind fucking, Susan. That's where she first made an emotional connection with you."

"Troy would never hurt you; she'd know that." Sue added. "She figured out right there that 'some guy was doing that to her before Troy and Julie stepped in.' She knew Troy well enough to see that you were special to him from that first minute, then she saw the road you took to get to him."

"And how much it was like her own." I added. "I didn't know how to do it, then; the mind control stuff. So much of it is reading people, looking for these little inroads; things to latch onto. She had me all figured out by then. She was sorry immediately; she'd started caring, but she couldn't stop things now."

The image on the screen went white, then back to the electrical pink of the nebula.

"The signal has stopped." Suzy-Q said. "You already figured that out, but they would've said on the show."

I turned in my chair to her.

"True. Then Kirk would have turned to Spock and said 'Spock, analysis?'"

"About here, Spock would say something like 'Fascinating, Captain. Once you figured out Helen's motivations, the transmission ended. It would appear that this is how your subconscious is going to communicate with us.'"

I turned back to the screen.

"And the answer should be in there somewhere. OK, Suzy-Ho, this is progress. Take us in further."