More.

More, more, more.

It isn't good enough. It isn't fast enough. Damned modem! The whole freaking machine could just go to hell for all she cared! Distressed, she throws the keyboard back onto the desk with a clatter and turns off the infernal computer. Off -- just -- off. She'd like to turn off her whole damned life.

For a moment she sits in the wooden desk chair, knees hugged against her chest. For a moment -- a long moment. Finally she turns the computer on, but not for personal use -- more like a strange compassion she feels for the machine that can't feel anything for her in return.

Nobody could.

Nobody ever could. Not as long as she could never reciprocate their emotions. It's not that she loves only the computer -- she loves a great deal. There are so many people she wants to touch, to taste -- just once.

Just *once*.

She bites her lip, tearing the living flesh with her incisors so she might taste blood. After all, she likes the taste of blood.

What might someone else's blood taste like? Would it have that same salty metallic taste as her own?

She swallows the skin she just tore off. The chunks of soft organic material join her saliva as they travel down her throat and continue on to God-only-knows-where.

Electricity.

That's what would happen.

She turns in the desk chair -- it's old, and the wheels stick. When she was younger she'd use her feet to propel the chair across the room. That was before the wheels stuck. And before Ellie decided to carpet the study.

"Mom," she's told time and again. "Call me Mom. Not Ellie. I'm your mother." She always ignores the advice -- but what can Ellie do about it? Absolutely nothing. She'd never harm her precious girl.

Her precious freak.

The screen saver clicks on: a marquee proclaiming "THE END IS NEAR." They can never see the fine print. Ellie would probably shed a few tears for her daughter but nobody else would miss her.

Almost nobody.

Nail polish remover would do it. It might taste awful going down, but -- but Ellie would have her rushed to the ER for a stomach pump. Ellie was like that. Blood was definitely the way to go.

She uncurls from her position in the chair and walks across the hall to the bathroom. Cold water -- she needs that. To numb the pain. Hell, everything is numb right now. She wouldn't feel anything, anyway. She fills the bath with water as cold as it comes and strips naked.

Now, though? The end is near, btu ... it's so sudden.

Yes, now. Now or never.

She rummages, naked, through the bathroom drawers; she can't find what she's looking for. Upset, she puts her dirty clothes back on -- excepting undergarments -- and heads out the door.

She doesn't tell Ellie she's leaving. What would be the point in that? Into the car and out the garage; she's driving so fast she's going to get herself in an accident.

Except she'd probably survive an accident. No way in hell that's happening.

No way in hell she's surviving.

She pulls up to Ryan's house. He doesn't live too far from her -- just far enough it's a pain to drive there all the time. She doesn't want to ring the doorbell; she'd rather break a window. She'd like to break a lot of things. She feels like such an ass right now, coming here. She shouldnt' have come here. Ryan would just talk her out of it.

The door opens before she can commit to her decision to leave.

"Taryn? What happened to your hair?"

She's going through hell and all he cares about is her hair?

Confused, she stares at the tall twentysomething man. His hair is sandy, almost like it couldn't decide if it was blonde or brown. It looks striped in the midday sun that shines on it now.

"My hair?" she repeats.

"Yeah -- it's ... red."

"Dyed it." She stands there, still needing desperately to leave but completely certain she has to do those things that must be done. "Look, uh ... you got any razors? For shaving, I mean?" Smooth, girl, she tells herself. Of course they're for shaving. Now he's going to get suspicious.

"Uh ... upstairs, I think."

She pushes past him in the hall, trying to keep as much space between them as actually possible -- trying to refrain from actual physical contact. There's a slight tingling in her hand, and the golden sparks that come with her touch ignite upon his skin.

He pulls himself away from her -- "Taryn!" he calls, but she isn't listening as she runs upstairs to find the precious items she requested.

The number is programmed into his speed-dial. He paces his kitchen as he waits for someone to answer. He should probably be upstairs, but --

"Anderson residence. Kylie speaking."

He swallows and hopes to God she can't hear his pulse quicken over the phone. "Taryn's at it again," he blurts. Stupid man!

"Is she?" Kylie responds, tasting her words like private delicacies.

"Yes -- get Mitch on the phone." If anyone can help, it's Mitch.

"He's not in. Shall I have him ring you later?" Her accent caresses each of her words lovingly....

"No!" he insists. "Taryn might be *dead* later!"

"She might be dead *now*, luv."

He thinks about that -- did she just call him "luv"? No matter -- Taryn might be dead *now*? Not possible. That just isn't possible. Still, the thought clouds his mind and he races upstairs -- too fast -- to the bathroom. The door is locked.

"Taryn!" he calls, frantic with the thought that maybe this time she wasn't kidding.

"Well, is she there?" Kylie's voice taunts him over the phone. She can't be *laughing* ...

"It's locked," Ryan informs her.

"Pity."

"I'm serious!"

He wrestles with the door and tries in vain to open it even though he knows perfectly well that it's locked.

"She's not coming out?" Kylie asks.

"No." He looks at the cordless phone in his hand, staring at the numeric keypad. Taryn could be dead. But he's actually speaking to Kylie. But Taryn could be dead.

"Ryan, luv, are you there?" the tinny voice in the earpiece questions impatiently.

He turns the phone off and wonders if that was the wrong thing to do. No matter -- his regret lasts only a moment before he starts shouting at his friend behind the thick wooden door again. "Taryn!"

He listens, waiting for some responce from her and hearing none. He waits only a moment more -- tears? Is she crying? He can't tell. "Taryn?" Her name is the only word he seems to know now....

"Go away." Her words carry the weight of self-loathing, the weight of the death that she would inflict upon herself. But she's alive, and the joy at this sends a relieved chill through his chest.

"Taryn, I -- "

"Go away," she repeats, more forceful than before. Angrier, but still alive. He had to keep her alive. "You don't understand. You don't. You can't. You don't know what's going on -- what I -- " Her voice breaks down again into nerve-wracked sobs.

He lets her cry. He doesn't know what else to do. He doesn't want to say anything that would cause her to actually use whatever implement of death she might have found in his bathroom.

For extended, breathless moments, he lets her cry, glad to her her sobs because they mean she isn't dead.

"Taryn?" he whispers, her name again. Is that all he can say? Whatever happened to Kylie? "Um ... "

A door slams from within the bathroom, a cabinet or drawer, accompanied only by her enraged shouts. "I can't find the f*cking razors! Where the hell to you keep the f*cking razors?"

"Calm down! Taryn, I'm -- I'm coming in. Open the door?" Stupid man -- stupid, stupid Ryan. That was the entirely wrong thing to do. Now she's really going to do it.

No -- no, she would have done it by now. She would have found some way to do it if she was serious about it. But she sure as hell wasn't going to open that door. He decided to try again.

"Um -- they're not in there," he told her. Right. Good. That would get her out of that bathroom and probably into another. But at least she'd come out now. Right?

The lock clicked, door unlocking, and the heavy wooden weight swung open, denting the inside wall. Taryn stood in the doorframe, completely naked, wet hair in strings around her face, cheap red dye streaked across her cheeks. Her lower lip was bleeding, her eyes red from tears.

He reached out to her, but she withdrew. "No," she said, the single syllable heavy. "Don't touch me."

"What?"

"I said don't touch me." Her voice is thick with the same self-hatred as before.

"Wha -- why not?"

She mumbles something to the wall, her head down so he might not hear. He doesn't understand.

"But -- what? I didn't hear ... "

She turns around to face him, screaming in his face. "I'm a mutant!" she screams. "A Goddamned f*cking mutant!"

He can see the tears forming in her eyes as she makes that painful confession. She hates herself. He can't help her, though, and it cleaves his soul. All these times he thought he'd been such a good friend to her -- he knew she had problems. He always knew she'd had problems. But never before had he even thought --

"Electricity," she mumbles.

"What's that?"

"Nevermind." She turns back into the bathroom, closing the door behind her on the way in.