Thursday, November 24

3:09 A.M.

Room 7

Southern Hospitality Motor Lodge

Metairie, Louisiana

Annalise Devereaux felt like she was suffocating.

Not the literal asphyxiation one experiences from lack of oxygen, but a metaphorical suffocation brought about by the absence of something else entirely. A something else that was just as important to her as the air she was now breathing.

And, metaphorical or not, the agony she suffered because of the void it left was no less real.

At the root was the feeling she harbored deep inside. It was the unquenchable thirst that drove her to do unspeakable things for no other purpose than self-gratification. It was the force that made her no longer Annalise, but Miranda.

It was also the thing that now brought her pain.

The inner sensation was no longer a mere tickle; nor was it the insatiable itch she had grown to know so well. It wasn’t even a mere compulsion. In fact, it had surpassed her very need to breathe in order of importance, making itself the top rung on her ladder of survival. And, with that, it had turned to a raging fire that could not be quelled.

Still, that didn’t stop her from trying to snuff out the flame.

But, for everything she did to feed the hunger, to douse the burning, to satiate the desire-simply to breathe-she still felt as if she was gasping. As though she was barely clinging to life in the face of that which had become all consuming.