Despair

I don't want to do this on the threshold between awake and asleep, but there's no other time.
She's difficult to summon these days.
I haven't felt her hook in my flesh for many, many moons.
She doesn't often come at night, but by the weak light of day
when all of these fickle imperfections are obvious to all.
If you could hide them she'd keep her distance, but her hook is in your flesh and she's tugging, tugging, tugging.

The dog is tugging at the sleeve on her jacket. She'd get up to help him, but she can't even get up to help herself, these days. Sunlight filters through the blinds occasionally but she just rolls over and buries her face in the sweat-soaked leather of the couch. Between the hours of ten and one, the room is bathed in light, but she won't open her eyes - it'll remind her of him, of the things that he left behind that she can't bring herself to clear away.
There's a half-finished cigarette in the ashtray and she wants to light it up and inhale the stale tobacco, letting the impurity wash over her and subsume her, and maybe then she'll feel filthy enough to get up and have a shower and take stock of her life, but she can't remember if the cigarette was his or hers and so she leaves it where it was while the sun passes across the sky.
Soon it'll be night again and she'll probably break a glass and hold a shard up to her eye, all refracted edges and planes. 
It's something to look forward to.

God, I'm watching her right now and she's feeding on rats and refuse and drinking from a goblet and the liquid is clouded and she just don't care, she just doesn't care, she can't bring herself to care because this sustains her and all I want to do is run.

He can't bring himself to run anymore. The mist has rolled in and he can't see his hand in front of his face, for which is is grateful, as it's probably stained with all manner of filth. He buried it as deep as he could but they'll find it, somebody's told them where to look, and once they dig it up and find the shovel and unearth it they'll all know and he'll have lost everything. It isn't as if he had a choice - nobody would listen, but he knew that if they'd just take a few of them apart and see how they worked there would be a fundamental difference, something that'd set his name down in the medical books and make him more than just an oafish drunk living off his parent's money. He had been so sure, but then somebody noticed the disappearance and he had to run for it, but that wasn't going to work, he doesn't even have a coin to his name and nobody would recognize him out here and help him but they'd sure remember him, and then it'd be a long walk and a short drop and that'd be the end of him, dangling on that noose.
They'd all see it happen.
He'd have to look her in the eye as he dropped.
So he keeps running until he drops and he can feel them closing in.

No, you can't. I can see you reaching for it, but there's nothing in those cold dead eyes that means I should give it up. You're a void, do you hear me, you fucking bitch, and I know now that there's nothing you can offer me, nothing in you but a shortcut to your sisters and an early grave, and I'll be damned a thousand times if you manage to wrest it from me again, I mean, I don't even dare cry, I can't bring myself to cry, you're always so much closer when I cry.

He can't stop crying.
His back hurts from the belt and his throat hurts from the hand and the screams and his feet hurt where he hit the ground running and he needs to stop and clean himself up and get back into the room and face it with dignity and just stop, for fuck's sake, but he just keeps on crying.
The roof of the house is pretty easy to access, he knows. Just climb onto the fence, grab the gutter, swing your legs up, and there you are. He spent weeks up there putting up Christmas lights, to celebrate a holiday that no longer held any meaning for him, ordered up there by a man who cared nothing for the holiday and everything for the chance to show the neighborhood and the others that here was a man in control. Weeks on the roof and the ground so perilously close, so tantalizingly far away. Just one slip and it'd be over - they'd put him in a hospital, set his bones, and then surely he'd have to be treated differently. There'd be no more belt, no more gasping for air, no more forced silences. No more being a pawn on the ogre's chessboard. The edge is right there.
Stop crying and clean yourself up, or you'll never make the climb.
He can't stop crying.

You did your work too well, and now I'm free of you.
Enjoy your empty hall.