by Tim McBain
“Hands,” he says, eyebrows raised at me in a way that suggests he expects something.
No goddamn idea what he’s talking about, though. I feel my forehead wrinkle up, my brain trying to flex its muscles.
“Turn around, and I’ll cut your hands free,” he says. He sounds a little disappointed that he needed to explain it.
“Right,” I say.
I turn, my hands near the bars. I feel the metal against my skin. The taut plastic around my wrists falls loose and slides over my flesh as he pulls it away. I bring my wrists around, observe the pink dents the zip tie made and massage at them with my fingers.
“Ready to get changed?” he says.
He throws a balled up hospital gown into my cell.
“First, take off your shoes and pass them through the bars. Then take off your clothes and pass them through the bars,” he says.
“Is this really necessary?” I say, letting the gown drop to the floor, partially covering the foot that conceals the screwdriver.
“Just do it,” he says.
I kneel and go to work on my shoe laces. So there goes my first little bag of powder, the one tucked in the hole I gouged into the inside of the tongue of my shoe. But it’s OK. There are two more, and it’s the third one I’ve been banking on this whole time.
This could get tricky. I stand, pass my shoes through the bars.
“It’s cold in here,” I say. “Can’t I at least get some scrub pants or something? I don’t want to be touching my taint to this concrete or to that fine grit sandpaper you call a blanket over there.”
Laughter hisses between his teeth.
“Shoot,” he says. “I guess I could do that. Finish disrobing, hand over your clothes, and I’ll find something.”
“Thank you,” I say.
I peel my shirt off, pass it on, strip my pants off, pass them on. There goes the second small baggie – rolled up in the cuff of my jeans. But it’s OK. Like I said, those were backup plans. Baggie number three was the big one all the while.
“Are the boxers really necessary?” I say.
“Yeah,” he says. “I was given pretty specific orders to strip you naked.”
He looks a little uncomfortable. I decide to press it.
“What, you think I keistered something?” I say.
It takes a second for this to register, and then he laughs. Something about the way he laughs reminds me of when chimps laugh. It’s sort of alienating, even. It makes me think about how weird laughter is. This gurgle of sounds erupts from our bodies, contorts our faces, shakes our torsos all because of an idea. And even simpler creatures befall this behavior, apes and monkeys, maybe others. At some point it cuts off, of course. Centipedes don’t sit around laughing at things other centipedes say. But it would be the same concept, right?
Anyway, he has a hard time stopping the laughter. It’s always hardest when the giggles are rooted in something genuinely uncomfortable.
“Look, just drop the shorts,” he says. “And I’ll get you those nurse pants or whatever.”
“Is the cavity search before or after that?” I say.
“Neither,” he says, his face scrunching up like he ate something sour. “Jesus, you’re weird.”
I take off my boxers, pass them through. Why am I not surprised to find myself naked at this juncture? It’s weirdly not shocking. And hey, at least this way my penis doesn’t feel left out of the fun, right?
“There you go,” I say as the shorts exchange hands. “Have fun with these. I’m not judging.”
He laughs again, his cheeks going a little red. He’s pretty bashful for a mutant psychopath.
“Very funny,” he says.
He pinches my undershorts like his fingernails are tweezers and flings them to the pile of my clothing by the desk on the other side of the room. I almost expect him to retch or something, but he doesn’t.
“I’ll grab those pants,” he says. “Be back in like 90 seconds tops.”
I scoop up the screwdriver. For some reason I think it unwise to hide it in the blanket or pillow. Like the gun, I want it on me at all times, touching me so I know where it is. I pick up the robe and try to figure out a way to tie it into the straps on the back. Sure it’d be visible from the back, but I’ll just keep my face toward him the whole time.
Shit.
This isn’t going to work. I set the flathead back down and cover it with my foot, sliding the robe on just as he enters the room. Shit. The handle is partially exposed, poking out from beneath the arch. Don’t look at it, dildo. Don’t look at it.
“Your trousers,” he says, sticking a hand through the bars and throwing them at me underhand.
“Teal,” I say, turning the pants over in my hands. “Well, these should bring out my eyes nicely.”
He laughs again.
“Do you mind?” I say, bouncing the pants.
He shrugs, turns his back.
It’s weird how your right brain just knows things. Your instincts kick in, and your thoughts fly over logical steps with leaps and bounds. I intuited somehow that the eye comment would get him to consent to giving me privacy. He rankles at outrage, probably even more so with threats. He’s easily embarrassed, however. He has empathy for me on some weird, bashful level. He wouldn’t hesitate to pound my face in, but my nudity he can identify with. And I somehow used this to my advantage. I knew it was happening, but it didn’t feel like a choice I made. Sort of like how in the heat of a fight, you bob and weave without thinking about it, the punches seem to throw themselves. Craziness. I feel like a trailer park version of Sherlock Holmes.
I stoop to grab the screwdriver and tuck it in the elastic belt of the pants as I slide them on. It will be hidden behind the long hospital robe. Perfect setup.
I’m giddy. I know I shouldn’t be. The screwdriver is a potentially valuable tool, sure, but I’m hardly in the clear. I still don’t know how I will play some of this, but my confidence just got a lot higher.
“Unfortunately, those pants come at a price,” he says, turning back my way.
I get the strong urge to look at my hand, so I glance up at the place where ceiling and wall make a corner, as if I’m deep in thought.
“Yeah?” I say. “And what’s that?”
“Gotta take the cot,” he says. “Boss’s orders.”
“You guys can’t let me squeeze in one last cat nap?” I say.
He smirks.
“Just get in the opposite corner,” he says. “Stand with your hands looped around the bars.”
I do what he says, waiting for him to zip tie me again.
“I ain’t gonna bother cuffing you,” he says. “I know you won’t try anything. Just stay put, all right?”
I look out at the room, not looking at my hands. The metal feet of the cot scrape across the floor, like it’s an animal that wants to stay where it is.
“So what’s your name, anyway?” I say.
The floor scratching pauses.
“Mike,” he says.
The grind resumes. I wonder if there will be grooves etched into the floor. I wouldn’t think a cot would be heavy enough for all of that, but it sounds bad. It sounds heavy.
I hear the cell door close.
“All done,” he says.
I unclasp my hands. I don’t glance at them. I stay in G mode.
I circle back to the center of my cell. There are no marks on the floor from the cot. No damage. So now what? Should I sit down? I guess.
I sit Indian style on the concrete floor, and after a moment the cool leeches through my pants and grips my legs. It doesn’t feel bad, though. I suppose it will in time, but for now it’s OK.
I close my eyes and try to figure out my next move and how the hell I’m going to use this screwdriver.
Chapter 27
My heart beats, and the blood gushes all through me. I can feel the weight of my head on top of my spine.
I feel calm. Focused. My mind is clear.
So what to do:
> Threats work best when you figure out what the other person wants and a way you can prevent them from having it. In this case, Farber wants to kill me. More specifically, he wants to sacrifice me. I’ve guessed, perhaps correctly, that he wants to do so at a particular time and place. He’s a showman, after all.
Does any of that leave me an angle? A way to get leverage? A way to take a screwdriver to his plans?
I let my mind go still. I let my thoughts drift of their own accord, waiting for something to bubble up from my subconscious.
And so it does.
Farber needs me alive at a certain time and place.
And I have a means of taking that away.
But for now I’ll wait. I’ll relax. I’ll let time blow by and hopefully give Babinaux time to hide out. They think it’s over, they’re flummoxed, and my gut says that they’ll be too distracted by the moving pieces to consider following her.
They can’t imagine that I know a way out.
Chapter 28
I stand at the bars, observing Mike as he reads a magazine, making sure not to stare too long, avoiding his attention. My idea continues to coil itself in my mind, wrapping layer upon layer like soft serve winding around the top of a cone.
“So Mike,” I say. “If I wound up dead in this cell, that’d be about the worst thing that could happen to you, right?”
He looks up, and over the next few seconds of silence, his expression hardens.
“What are you talking about?” he says.
“Look, we both know what’s going on here,” I say. “Farber means to sacrifice me. He’s got it all planned out. Some kind of event, yes?”
He doesn’t say anything.
“What I’m saying is, if I die before that, he’d be unhappy with you, isn’t that right?” I say. “Think he’d let you off with a warning for something like that? Or do you think it’d be more like—”
I slash a finger across my throat and make a slicing noise.
He still doesn’t say anything.
“I don’t want to get you killed,” I say. “But I have nothing to lose, right?”
I pull the screwdriver out of my belt.
“A couple stabs at my jugular, and I get a moral victory, at least, right?” I say. “I mean, I’m dead either way, but if I bleed out in this cell, Farber doesn’t get what he wants. That’s something, right?”
He pops off the stool, takes a half of a step forward.
“BACK!” I say. “You’ve heard the stories. You know I’m not right in the head.”
He stares at me.
“What do you want?” he says. “I’ll be just as dead if I let you out.”
“I’m not an idiot. I understand that,” I say. “I’m not asking to be let out. I need a bottle of water and for you to deliver a message to your boss. That’s all. Do you have a pen and paper?”
He pulls a plastic cooler out from under the desk, opens the lid and pulls out a bottle of water. He takes a step toward me.
“No,” I say. “Throw it.”
He tosses the bottle. It clangs against the bars and drops on the other side, but it’s close enough that I can fish my hand through and grab it.
“Good,” I say, the sweaty water bottle in hand. “Now the pen and paper.”
He picks through the magazines on the desk, finds some post it notes and a pencil. When he has the pencil pressed to the page, he nods.
“He will know what this means,” I say. “The pass code is D as in dog, dash four five six, dash three four five, dash A as in apple.”
His pencils dances on the post it note.
“Did you say this is a pass code?” he says, looking up.
Actually, it’s something I remember from an episode of Battlestar Galactica, but I’m not telling Mike this.
“That’s right. Farber will know what it means,” I say. “Now read the whole thing back to me.”
“D as in dog, dash four five six, dash three four five, dash A as in apple,” he says.
“Good,” I say. “Now go call him and tell him that, and maybe he’ll have the decency to come talk to me in person.”
He glares at me. He looks like he wants to say something, but he remains silent. I let the hand holding the screwdriver flop down to my side.
He sighs and pushes through the door, which flaps back and forth a few times after he disappears through it.
And this is it. Do or fucking die. Literally.
I let the screwdriver clatter to the floor and pinch my left thumb, the one I haven’t made eye contact with in a while. The rubber thumb peels off slowly, some kind of suction or vacuum holding it a little too snug to rip right off.
It’s from a child’s magic trick. You wave around a handkerchief and make it look like you’re shoving the piece of cloth into a closed fist. You’re actually shoving it into a rubber thumb that you slide on and off discretely. You keep attention off of the thumb, you keep the thumb pointed at the audience as much as possible so they can’t get a sense of depth to notice its odd length, and you mostly keep the focus on your opposite hand.
The instruction leaflet says that once you get good at sleight of hand, you should be able to perform the trick with not only a rubber thumb that doesn’t match your skin tone, but with one that is light green, without the audience noticing.
I apply a little more force, and the rubber appendage comes free. I pull the sides with my fingers and cave in the tip as though to turn it inside out. The little baggie of powder inside pops out enough for me to grab. There we go.
If I had time to scrape a groove into the wall with the screwdriver, I would. Instead I take the water bottle and try to dump two parallel vertical lines on the wall about seven feet tall and three feet apart. Then I wet my fingers and connect them with a perpendicular line running horizontally along the top.
And here comes the bottleneck in the plan. I pinch out a little powder and fling it at the wall, aiming for the top line. A little of the powder sticks, but not enough. Way too slow. I’ll need to try something else.
Think. Think. Think.
What would Glenn do?
I bite off one of the corners of the cellophane bag, and spit it out, the plastic clinging to my chin until I brush it away. I examine the hole and squish the rest of the bag so the powder oozes toward the new opening. It’s like a Martha Stewart style piping bag for cake frosting or something. I go to work, piping out a thin bead of black powder, much of which sticks to the wet streak on the wall. This works pretty great. I’d like to thank Glenn for being a sort of Martha Stewart type figure. I believe that helped this flash into my mind out of the emptiness.
The top of the black streak indents, making that little noise like a fridge door peeling open. That just leaves the sides and bottom. It’s so close to happening now that it doesn’t quite feel real. I smear down the left side first with no problem, but I’m running low on powder.
Damn. I’m only going to get a little over halfway down the right side.
I trickle water along the corner where the floor and wall come to a point, and the loose powder down there goes to work along the crevice. I scoop a little of the surplus sludge out with my finger and smear it along the crack, hoping it doesn’t do some kind of damage to my finger, though it didn’t back when Glenn did his weird dipstick routine, I suppose.
I don’t quite have enough powder, though. There’s a four or five inch chunk that isn’t indenting and likely won’t be. I look over at the pile of clothes near the desk, wishing I could get to my shoes or pants. I don’t even need a whole baggie. Just a couple of pinches.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. I have no time. Surely Mike is making his way back by now.
And then there’s a crack behind me like a rock striking another rock, and I look back, and the pressure from the two slits on each side of the unblackened part cleaved an opening down through it. And now the white light glows from the other side, and I sink my fingers into the opening and pull.
It seems like the little bit of water
on the floor is helping the door slide over the cement, so I stop and dump the rest out.
I pull. Concrete grates against concrete, a gravel throated sound to embarrass the cot for its comparatively puny scraping effort earlier. My face gets all hot from the strain. Time slows down, and the ambient sound fades out around me until all that exists is me, the door, and the concrete we stand upon.
Once I walk it out enough to make room, I swing my back up against the wall and push rather than pull. I stare at the floor while I do this, watch black swirls undulate in the puddle of water below, feel the wet lap against the arch of my foot. A noise filters through the barrier of concentration blocking it out. Sounds like a growling doberman about a half of a second away from taking the mailman’s hand off. Did Mike bring a dog back here?
And then I realize it’s me. I’m making a weird canine noise while I push, panting for breath, lip curled back to expose my fangs.
But it’s almost there. It’s almost there.
Yeah. I think this will work.
I take a step back, taking in the image for a split second, the rectangular hole ripped in the concrete, all jagged along the edges like the crack in the liberty bell, the concrete door opened just enough of a crack that I should be able to squeeze through, blinding white light spilling into the room, the glow spreading out from the opening, reflecting in a different manner and seeming to change its shade where it shines from the ceiling. It seems flat up there somehow, less of an energy moving in the air, just a flat white light on the ceiling.
But there’s no time. I sidle through, back and chest brushing against the corners of each side of the opening. I get a pretty good scrape on my right pec, but I’m through.
And I’m running into the light, all white at first, engulfing me in its glow, and once it surrounds me, it seems to shift to a pale blue. And I hear noises somewhere back there, but I don’t care. I did it. Let Mike or Farber or whoever the hell wants chase me into the dream world for all I care.
I know my way around out here.
And it won’t be long now until it all gets flipped back around, when the guy hunting me goes back to be the guy getting hunted by me.