Anna looked down. She saw a syringe sticking out of her arm. The plunger was already pressed down, and something cool was beginning to flow through her veins. She reached up and plucked it out, the sting of pain almost as bright as the sting of betrayal, and gave Emily a look of shock and bewilderment in equal measures. "I know," her friend said, her chubby pink cheeks broadening into a beatific smile straight out of a horror movie. "I know. But you'll understand soon enough, darling. You'll thank me for doing this to you, I promise."
Anna tried to move away, not with any plan or intention but simply out of an instinctive need to put distance between herself and that creepy, overly bright smile. But her legs were already beginning to wobble underneath her, and she didn't manage more than a few tottering steps before Emily caught her wrist to prevent her from tumbling gracelessly onto the floor. "Whoa, there," the curvy redhead chuckled, her voice full of condescending cheer. "Let's be careful, okay? That stuff kicks in nice and quick. Wouldn't want you smacking that pretty face of yours on the linoleum, right?" Anna recognized the playfully mothering tone from countless nights on the town, but she couldn't connect it back to the fading pain in her arm and the memory of the other woman's viper-quick thrust.
Emily hooked Anna's arm around her shoulder, the height difference between them making Anna list heavily to one side as she sagged up against her betrayer. "Come on, silly," Emily cooed cheerfully, hefting Anna's weight and half-leading, half-dragging her around the kitchen island and into the living room. "Let's get you onto the couch before you fall over, okay?" Anna wanted to scream at her in disbelief and anger, but all that came out was a loose, warbling moan that no one could have recognized as words. Her tongue flopped inside her mouth like a stranded fish.
Emily heaved her onto the couch with a gasp of effort, and Anna's lolling head slumped against the pillows in just the right position to watch a tiny trickle of blood run down her alabaster skin where the needle went in. She tried to hold on to that sense of indignant betrayal, but it was trickling away too, leaving behind nothing but numb confusion in its wake. She couldn't even be frightened, despite her friend's sudden and inexplicable lurch into creepy cultist territory. When Emily walked away and left her by herself, Anna could only stare at her retreating buttocks in drugged, disassociated bewilderment.
"I know this all seems a little weird," Emily called out from the bathroom, over the sounds of rummaging. "But you're my best friend, after all. I love you more than anyone else in the world, and, I mean... I couldn't just leave you abandoned and bereft and, and, and...." The voice trailed off into silence. Then Anna heard something rattle as it was lifted. "A-ha!" Emily cried out, coming back into the room with a half-empty box of adhesive bandages and a few other first aid supplies.
She cleaned away the blood with an antiseptic wipe, then smeared a little antibiotic cream over it. "The needle was sterile, don't worry," she said, giving Anna a smile that was probably meant to be reassuring. "This is just a precaution." Then she put a bandage over the pinprick wound. "There we go," she murmured, leaning in and giving the spot a quick peck with her lips. "All better now!" Somehow, it was even creepier when she was being nice about it.
She straightened up. "Anyway," she said briskly, reaching under the couch and pulling out a shallow plastic storage bin. "You're probably wondering why I drugged you, right?" The words jolted Anna with a surge of adrenaline, reminding her that somewhere behind her muzzy confusion she was in a potentially very dangerous situation despite the cozy familiarity of her surroundings, and she attempted to lever herself upright. She didn't know what she would do from there--her phone was in her purse, a million miles away on the kitchen table, and Emily's house was in a new development that had fallen victim to the cycles of economic boom and bust. The nearest neighbor was almost half a block away. No one would hear her if she screamed.
