The world was outside and it was finally over. Vivienne turned the knob shut. The dead lock slammed in its socket and rung through her fingertips, startling her more. She watched her slow hand tremble up toward the door chain, where it fumbled to hitch the bolt to its frame.

Vivienne collapsed against the back of the door. Her knees buckled as she fought, halfhearted, against her own giving way. She sagged to the floor, legs splayed, resigned. Her purse slipped from her shoulder and sounded the cacophonous miscellany within when it dropped beside her, which only aggravated the throbbing in her skull.

It was night inside. She was a shadow evolving through indignity: growing at the entryway, first slithering, then crawling, kneeling, reaching for side table assistance while knocking over some clunking effect before she trembled for stumbling. Her heels pounded the floor and inside her head so she shed them—now struck by the revelation of her clothes, which led her to strip.

She molted in dull frustration from her little black dress, her black lace panties and bra. She struggled with her necklace, attempting to pull it over her head—choking—before the tension snapped, dinning pearls in a hurried storm across the hardwood.

Blind and exposed, Vivienne made her way toward the bathroom. She staggered into the bathtub, pulled the knob, lifted the pin, and cringed under the stinging cascade that pelted down.

She reached for the knob and turned it further.

Steam stifled her breathing. Fetal, singed. She began to cry from the scalding pain of the water and what else. She lay in searing darkness trying hard not to think.

And she turned the knob still further.

And she screamed out with inhuman pitch and agony, melting in the cruelness of her condition, away in the mercy of the tide, melting in the mist of her own boiled blood, melting away in simmering skin, screaming in fear and pain and relief and gratitude for the fact of death and control over when.