She Woke to Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page A

halfway between bed and chair. Beside the bed her alligator pumps were placed neatly side by side with toes pointing outward. There was no luggage and no other article of clothing visible.
    Aline gritted her teeth against returning nausea and looked down at herself with loathing. Her left stocking was twisted and baggy, but still rolled above the knee on a round garter. The other was coiled around her slim ankle.
    Something peculiar about the left stocking caught her attention. She blinked her glazed eyes at it, reached down fearfully and extracted a green paper folded lengthwise four times and inserted beneath the roll above her knee.
    She unfolded it wonderingly, smoothed it out between her fingers, squinting in an effort to focus her aching eyes.
    A two-dollar bill! But what on earth…?
    For a long time she had difficulty comprehending the significance of the bill. Then she suddenly understood! Anger swept over her, mingling with loathing and self-pity.
    A two-dollar whore!
    That’s what she had become. Racking sobs tore at her chest and rose in stifling knots to her throat. The cheapest sort of drunken floosie. Staggering up to a hotel room with a man who figured it was worth two bucks when he left her. Two filthy bucks, by God!
    Her tears came at last. Hot tears that streamed down her cheeks and eased the knots in her throat. She blindly tore the offending bill into narrow strips, then crossways into tiny bits and flung them over the bed.
    Her sobbing changed to hysterical laughter. Good enough for her! It was exactly what she deserved! Oh, God in heaven! How could she have allowed it to happen again? After being so careful. So very, very careful for the past month… since the last time.
    Again the tears flowed, gently yet copiously, tears of self-pity, relaxing her body and easing the throbbing pain in her temples.
    She didn’t know where she was or what time it was or how she had got there or who the man was who had paid her the final insult of slipping a two-dollar bill into her stocking.
    She didn’t know anything. Try as she would, she could not remember anything after that third martini at Bart’s party. Always, in the past, there had been some vagrant memories of the things that happened during her alcoholic blackouts. Vague, disconnected and unreliable, but with a certain pattern and meaning if one worked hard at putting them together.
    This time, there was nothing.
    Aline wiped her eyes with the top sheet and sank back against the damp pillow, determined to go back step by step and recall everything she could from the moment she had decided to attend Bart’s party.
    Let’s see. She had decided to accept Bart’s invitation at the last minute. About eight o’clock, she guessed. After all sorts of stern resolves not ever to trust herself at a drinking party again.
    But she had been practicing self-control for a whole month. She was sure she could stop in time. It seemed absurd to pass up a good party just because she was afraid she wouldn’t stop drinking before she lost control.
    After that horrible last time, she couldn’t possibly make the same mistake. She knew, now, that she was different from other people who drank. Her body reacted differently. Probably something to do with basic metabolism, or an allergy.
    For a full month she had been checking her alcoholic intake to see exactly how she was affected by certain amounts under varying conditions. In the past it had happened because she hadn’t recognized the danger signals in time. It hadn’t worried her… not in the beginning. She would sometimes take one or two beyond her capacity and have a slight mental lapse. A few minutes or half-hour, perhaps, and then she’d be conscious again. She’d be nauseated, of course, and have to run to somebody’s bathroom, but that would be the end of it. Something to joke about with the others and dismiss from her mind.
    Until a month ago!
    That night had taught her a much-needed lesson. She still cringed