The ambulance screamed through the street, rushing to its predetermined destination. Her consciousness was fading in and out, everything was muffled and fuzzy, but she knew they were doing what they could for her. When they finally arrived, she was wheeled out on a gurney immediately into the ER. Her case was one that couldn't wait. She'd suffered enough as it was, and this was time sensitive. She heard the machines around her, the doctors talking frantically. She heard words like "skin grafting" and "serious reconstructive surgery". She was in and out of consciousness for hours, and when she finally managed to regain some sense of reality, she found she was laying in bed, hooked up to various machines. She hurt all over. She had no idea what was happening.
"You're lucky to be alive," a nurse said beside her, surprising her; the nurse changed out a bedpan and looked at her, smiling, "seriously, it's not everyone who survives getting mauled by a tiger." *** Allie brought the truck to a screeching halt. She turned the car off and she sat there, listening to Zoe hyperventilate in the passenger seat, while she stared dead ahead out the windshield. The entire experience had taken their evening, and Allie had just driven until the sun was barely up. Now, parked in some unknown neighborhood somewhere in Vegas, Allie couldn't make heads or tails of what day it was or even what time it was. Sometime early in the morning, she knew that much. "...you...you left her there..." Zoe whispered, her eyes bloodshot from the crying, her voice hoarse from the screaming. "...I...I didn't...I didn't know what to do," Allie replied, also barely speaking, "I couldn't just go into the pit, I would've put us at risk, he could've gotten out. I'm not a trained animal controller." "...you pushed her in, and then you left her there..." "I did not push her in," Allie said through gritted teeth, "that was an accident!" "How come everything that happens to everyone as a result of being in your presence is an accident?!" Zoe screamed, "First Sunny, now this?! You chose to do these things, those aren't accidental! You pushed her in, and then you left her there!" Allie wanted to argue, but she knew Zoe had a point. Everyone that had come into contact with her had been meeting with some grizzly end lately it seemed, and it was always her fault in some way. Allie put her head down on the steering wheel and tried not to cry. Zoe climbed out of the truck and started pacing up and down the street, the sun barely starting to peek over the treeline. Allie finally climbed out as well and watched her momentarily. "we...we have to go to the police," Zoe said, "We can't keep hiding this anymore!" "They'll put me in prison!" "Then maybe you deserve to be in prison!" Zoe screamed. "Keep your voice down!" Allie said angrily but quietly, "We are in a residential neighborhood and it is very early in the morning, don't make a scene." Zoe walked up to Allie, their faces barely an inch apart, and she could smell her breath. "I'm through listening to what you tell me to do," Zoe said through gritted teeth, "I was hired to help you, and you took advantage of that. You took advantage of me. Poor little innocent me, who idolized you, who'd never really had a friend, whose family had turned on her. You took total advantage of that, and you used me to justify your poor decisions. Well I'm done. We're done, Allie." Zoe turned and started walking down the street. "Where do you think you're going?!" Allie yelled after her. "I'm going home, Allie!" Zoe shouted back, turning to look back at her, "I'm going home. We're done." "We're not done! I say when we're done!" Allie shouted, "Zoe! Zoe!" But Zoe didn't stop. She didn't look back. She just kept walking, walking away from the worst thing that had ever happened to her, and she felt good about it. *** "Can I help you?" the woman at the front desk asked as Agent Siskel pulled her wallet out and flashed her badge. "Yeah, my partner and I need to speak to someone in your facility," she said, "Jenny Gibbons, the girl who was brought in here this morning. It's urgent." The front desk woman knew better than to deny anything to agents of this caliber, so she nodded and silently led them down the hall. Tropper caught up, walking alongside Siskel, as the three of them headed towards Jenny's room in total silence. After they arrived, the nurse turned back and looked at them sternly. "Don't be too demanding of her, she's been through hell, and please try not to take too long, she needs a lot of rest," she said, then sat down on a chair outside the door, "I'll be here when you're done." Siskel and Tropped nodded, then entered the room. It was dark, and eerily silent. The walked to the bed and pulled back the curtain to reveal Jenny laying in the bed, her face wrapped in gauze. Her eyes were shut, and she appeared to be heavily drugged. Siskel pulled up a chair and sat down, leaving Tropper to stand behind her. After a moment, Siskel took a deep breath, and then gently reached over and nudged Jenny's shoulder, waking her. "Mmm?" Jenny asked, slowly rolling her head to face the agents. "Hello," Agent Siskel said, "I'm Rebecca Siskel, this is my partner Roger Tropper, we're with the local FBI division of the Vegas police force. We know you've been through a hell of an ordeal, and we don't wanna make things complicated or difficult right now for you, after what's happened, but we need to ask you some questions regarding Allie Meers." That got Jenny's attention, as her eyes widened. "What about her?" she asked, realizing that it hurt to speak. "We know the tiger belonged to her, we're just wondering what your relationship to Miss Meers was. We need to know everything you might know about her," Agent Siskel said, "Anything you can tell us would really help in the long run." Jenny thought for a moment, then smiled. "I don't know anything about Allie," she said, "I just worked there." Jenny was a lot of things, but she wasn't a narc. *** Allie walked into the loft and threw her jacket onto the couch, before noticing Nick standing in the living room area. She stopped dead in her tracks and looked at him. His arms were crossed, and his eyes were squinty, like he was thinking about what to say to her. For a moment, neither one said a thing, and then finally Allie walked into the living room and pushed herself into his chest, but he merely pulled away. "please don't," she whispered, trying to get up close again but he pulled away again. "It's all over the news," Nick said, "what happened? What did you do to her?" "It was an accident," she whispered, on the verge of tears, "I just wanted to see him, it was an accident." "You didn't call anyone, you didn't do anything, you just left here there, Allie. I...I thought that maybe, you know, things would be different. You were doing so well. You're sober, you're financially stable again, and yet here you are, self inflicting damage on not just you but those around you. Those who trusted you. I trusted you." "you can still trust me," Allie mumbled. "Can I?" Nick asked, "I have work today. I can't deal with this right now. I'll see her at the hospital when I get there, see for myself how she is, what she has to say." Nick pulled on his jacket from the coat rack by the door and then opened the door. He sighed and looked back at Allie, who wouldn't look up from the floor at him. He scratched the back of his head. "You know, you're the most beautiful person I've ever known. You're intoxicating, honestly. Your charisma and charm, your sense of humor, it lures people in, but that's just the thing, Allie, you're like a deadly plant. You look great from afar, even seem greater up close, but once you stick around long enough...it starts to slowly poison you. I don't wanna be poisoned anymore," Nick said, "...I'll call you." And with that he left. Allie finally let herself break, now that she was alone. She collapsed onto the couch and sobbed, screaming into her pillows. In just a few short hours, she'd lost Zoe, now Nick, and had left Jenny for dead. It was all coming unraveled. Sure, Sunny's body was essentially gone, and that helped ease the pain, knowing the core piece of evidence was now destroyed, but it didn't ease the pain of everything else. She rolled onto her side, her eyes landing on the liquor cabinet. She climbed off and approached it, kneeling, fiddling with the lock. She'd tried so hard, and it all still came undone, so what harm did alcohol really do in the end? She'd been sober for almost a year, and it didn't seem to make any difference whatsoever. When she got the lock off, and the chains unspooled, she pulled the doors open and looked inside at all the various booze she had in there. She couldn't bring herself to throw it away, so she merely locked it away, kept it for only serious special occasions. Well, what was a more special occasion than your life imploding, she thought? She reached inside and pulled out an entire unopened bottle of whiskey and sighed, staring at the twist off lid. All it took was one sip, she knew, one sip and she'd throw all her progress away. Was it worth it? *** "You gonna finish your fries?" Agent Tropper asked as he sat across from Agent Siskel at a burger place nearby the hospital. Agent Siskel shrugged, so Tropper helped himself, reaching across the table and grabbing a handful of her fries. "I don't...understand," Siskel said, her brow furrowing, "what causes that level of commitment to someone? I mean, Allie and Claire, they both manage to get people to do everything for them, to follow them, to never question. What causes that level of adoration? Is it just being a good enough liar?" "People wanna be led, Becky," Tropper said, "they don't wanna face up to their own lives, they wanna feel like a bigger part of something. It's not complicated. It's why so many people vote for leaders who have their worst interests at heart. They don't really care, so long as someone is telling them things they want to hear, even if they're doing the opposite." Siskel sighed and took a sip from her drink, shaking her head. It seemed like no matter what she did, she couldn't win. She couldn't find a break. "Every single time, Roger, every single time I feel like I've got it, every single time it's within arms reach, she finds a way to pull it away from me again," Siskel said, "I don't know how she does it." "She's a magician," Tropper said, taking a bite from his burger and chewing, pushing errant lettuce into his mouth, "they're really good at making things disappear." Siskel nodded, but not really accepting his reasoning. She sighed and rubbed her eyes with the balls of her palms, groaning. She hadn't been sleeping well ever since getting this case, and as things had gotten worse, so had her sleep. "How do you trick a magician?" Siskel asked, "That's the question. If you can't catch them in the act, if you can't get someone to divulge their secrets, then how do you trick a magician?" Tropper looked up, seeing Siskel smirking. "If we can answer that, we might be able to save this," she said. *** Nick pushed the door open gently and entered Jenny's room. He felt his heart hurt at the sight of this poor, sweet girl lying in this bed, her face so badly mangled that she had to have it covered. He walked in further and sat down in a chair beside the bed, not knowing whether or not she was awake, but also not caring. He needed to see her regardless of whether she was aware of his presence. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "I'm so sorry," he said, "I don't...I don't know what else I could possibly say. I just know someone has to say it to you, and she never will. She can never take responsibility for her actions. She's somehow never to blame. I thought she'd changed, but I guess she's the same, she just got better at lying. Never trust a magician in a relationship, I guess." Jenny stirred, but she didn't wake up or speak. "You don't deserve this," Nick said, "and I wanna go to the cops, but I know you'd hate me if I did that. I know how much you like her. I don't wanna put you through anything else right now, while you're trying to recover. That isn't fair to you. Just know that I am so so sorry Jenny. I really sincerely am." Nick reached out and touched her arm, but again she didn't wake. He sighed, then checked his watch and stood up. He had to do his rounds, but he had to see her first. Someone had to care, he thought. *** "You're in a lot of trouble," Claire said, sitting across from Allie in the visitation room, at their usual corner table, "well, potentially a lot of trouble." "How'd you do it?" Allie asked, "How'd you get people to do whatever you wanted?" "Wasn't hard, just had to promise them whatever they wanted, then tell them if they worked hard enough they'd eventually be given it," Claire said, shrugging, "but you gotta have people dumb enough who're willing to believe it. That's part of your problem, Meers, you're not working with idiots." Allie sighed and leaned back in her chair, rolling her eyes. "You look like shit, by the way," Claire said, taking a sip of her water. "Thanks," Allie said, "...she's not dead. She's in the hospital. I need to talk to her, but I need to do it in a way that won't look suspicious. I need to know she's not going to talk. Not going to turn on me." "Then I suggest you find a way to do that, because if you don't, you could really be facing down the barrel of the gun here," Claire said, "lemme tell you something, okay? The hardest part of what I did came down to getting them to believe their belief was their idea. You have to first convince them to listen to you, then convince them that they convinced themselves. If you can do that, Allie, then you're golden. You're an expert in magic, you figure it out." Allie thought, and then it hit her like a mac truck. A way to get into the hospital without it ever seeming suspicious, and the answer would be obvious to anyone. After she left the prison, she climbed into her car, then pulled out of the parking lot and headed down the street. She reached a red light of a busy street, then exhaled and pulled open the glove compartment, reaching inside and grabbing a bottle of pills and an airline bottle of alcohol. She drank the alcohol, then took a handful of pills, then shook her head to regain composure before exhaling and staring straight ahead at the parked car across the street. She had to do whatever it took to save herself, to save Zoe, and Molly and everyone else. This was going to hurt, but it was a necessity. So Allie steeled her nerves, put her foot on the gas... ...and sped across high traffic until she collided with the parked car.
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ABOUT
Allie Meers is what she dreamed of being since she was a little girl...a successful Vegas magician. The only problem now is she can't make all her problems disappear; Allie grapples with her strained relationship, crippling addictions and FBI agents on her tail, all while trying to stay at the top of her career. Archives
December 2023
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