by R. J. Blain
I regarded the goats around us, determining I shared an amusing number of similarities with the animals.
I allowed myself a laugh at the insanity of it all.
SEVEN
I recognized the fog of sedatives.
The memory of going from goat wrangling to handcuffed and chained in a dingy basement scattered like smoke on the wind. I recognized the fog of sedatives from my many stays in the hospital as of late, although the drugs the hospital used let me go with a gentler hand.
Some hellish concoction coursed through me, determined to torment me. My stomach rebelled, and swallowing compulsively kept me on the right side of the line, as the last thing I needed was vomit to go with my current status as cuffed to a bunch of pipes. A fresh coating of paint on the walls helped mitigate the dank basement of death and murder vibe, although I harbored a limitless supply of concerns over my predicament. Once coherency returned, a lengthy process without a stimulant to help ease the sedative’s cloying influence, I checked the cuff, which was covered in a fuzzy padding to protect my wrist, in the slim chance I’d gotten a stupid kidnapper using an adult toy with a mechanism meant to unlock without a key. Alas, my captor—or captors—had covered the basics and demonstrated some intellect.
Underneath the velvety material, they’d opted to use real restraints, the kind police used to keep criminals from staging an escape. In an effort to keep me from freezing to death on the concrete floor, my captors had provided a nest of blankets, and after some examination, I discovered the chain bound to my cuffs offered enough length to reach the nearby bathroom. Puzzled, I checked where the chain connected to the pipes to discover someone had welded the links into place after securing it with a padlock to make certain I had no hope of escape. They’d even welded the one cuff to the chain, as though concerned I might attempt to gnaw my way to freedom.
I doubted I could defeat any part of the restraint, let alone the thick steel chains keeping me in place while offering me minimal freedom to move around and take care of necessary business.
I suspected, within a few hours, I would appreciate the bathroom, which had a door, a bathtub, a separate shower, a sink, and a toilet. They’d even cut a hole at the bottom of the door to allow for the chain, which worried me.
Someone had planned to keep a captive—me—around for some time, going through the hassle of taking so much care with the restraint and my new living accommodations.
While the nest I’d been placed in lacked an actual mattress, there were enough pillows and blankets to make it comfortable and warm. I would have been much happier without the cuff anchoring me in place, but as far as being an unwilling guest went, I wouldn’t suffer much.
Assuming, of course, I hadn’t been signed up for slowly starving to death with only sink water for sustenance. My magic wouldn’t be able to protect me from that sort of decline, although I’d last longer than most in that situation.
As I lacked a viable method of busting out of the cuff or removing the chain secured to the pipe or dismantling the pipe, I struggled to piece together what had happened.
And why.
I eliminated the trouble-making goats as the culprits, although I bet they’d enjoy kidnapping people if they could figure out how. Damned cute, lovable, mischievous goats. I could see somebody deliberately letting loose a bunch of goats to stop traffic long enough to pull off a kidnapping, although the how of the whole situation insisted on evading me.
The last thing I remembered was helping to load one of the goats into the truck before selecting a new target to help wrangle, talking with Senator Westonhaus the entire time. Thinking about the man worried me. While I disliked his policies, I’d enjoyed my dinner meeting with him, which had taught me an important lesson on the nature of people. I could abhor someone’s policies while still liking them as an individual, at least a little.
Then again, he could have been involved with my current situation, which would have made lowering my defenses part of his job. Alternatively, he could have been the actual target, and I’d gotten grabbed because exsanguinators made excellent weapons. Other possibilities existed, and once my head and stomach took pity on me, I’d go through every last one I could conjure in search of answers.
No matter how much I disliked someone’s policies, I wished ill on nobody, except maybe the bastards who’d chained me in a basement. Considering how the politicians had been murdered, I assumed I dealt with an organized group of people who put their heads together to come up with good plans.
I gave credit where credit was due. They’d come up with a damned good plan. When I’d booked a dinner meeting with Senator Westonhaus, a kidnapping hadn’t even been on my radar as a possibility. Why kidnap me?
Had I been targeted by some freak mistake? A crime of opportunity brought on by goats?
Had the goats somehow been criminal masterminds?
I blamed the drugs for my thoughts, which flailed every which way without doing anything productive. Considering my situation, I could justify a little flailing. Short of attempting to gnaw my hand off my wrist so I could slip free of the cuff, or somehow separating the chain from the pipe using brute force, I was stuck.
Magic could only do so much, and nothing in my exsanguination arsenal allowed me to defeat steel. While I wanted to rescue myself, go home, and hide with my cat for a while, I accepted the reality of my situation.
Someone had gotten me good, and whoever they were, they had done a great job of planning.
With nothing else left to do, I settled in to wait.
In addition to rigging a prison in a windowless basement, my kidnappers had set up the piping to spew out some form of gas-based sedative, which did a damned good job of knocking me out. It also offered a clue on how I’d gone from goat wrangling to being a prisoner. Waking up the second time involved the same stomach-churning symptoms and lack of coherency. A cool breeze from vents overhead worked to clear the air, although a few wisps of some cloudy substance swirled in the corners.
A container of takeout waited nearby, and once I recovered enough, I could sit up without swaying, I scooted closer to investigate the offering. The smell of steak greeted me along with hints of garlic. Hunger demanded I investigate further, and I put the container on my lap, cracked it open, and peeked inside.
I’d been to enough fancy restaurants to recognize the meal as having come from some upscale steakhouse. Whomever had prepared the dish respected good beef, giving me real utensils. I eyed the knife and my handcuffs, but after some debate, accepted the thin blade would do a good job of cutting through meat but wouldn’t do much to the cuffs beyond a scratch or two.
I’d save my energy for something more likely to succeed.
As food equaled strength, I ate. It’d been a long damned time since I’d had a good steak, as while my mother made a damned good roast, she tended to use cheaper cuts she slow cooked to become tender masterpieces. While I loved her cooking, whomever had prepared my steak had done an excellent job of it.
Every movie I’d ever seen involving a kidnapping invoked a sense of terror in the victim, a fear of impending death or some other form of doom. My reality involved good food, a comfortable enough prison, and the ability to move around rather than need to be escorted to and from the bathroom or undergo general humiliation. Given a few days, my clothing would stink, but I could live with that.
I could survive through a lot, and if I couldn’t free myself in some fashion or another, I would endure through the embarrassment of being rescued. Before I went about attempting to rescue myself, I would watch and wait. I knew nothing about who wanted me or why, although their choice to inflict some form of gas on me boded well for my survival.
If I escaped—or I was rescued—I wouldn’t be a threat to their operations. I knew precisely nothing about my captors beyond their interest in keeping me alive, they had enough money to take care with what they gave me, and a general interest in making certain I stayed put.
My observations, such as t
hey were, left me with more questions than answers. Why grab me? Had they also grabbed Senator Westonhaus? If so, what had they done with him?
Considering the fate of those who also supported the bill, I suspected he’d been killed after I’d been gassed out—or whatever had sent me from alert to lacking any memory of what had happened. I refused to blame myself for the man’s fate, however.
I held no responsibility for another’s choice, and if I could have done something to save him, I would have.
I would make that be enough moving forward, no matter what had occurred when I’d been unconscious.
Still, it bothered me I lacked any memory of how I’d gone from wrangling goats to becoming a kidnapping statistic. If I blamed the wretchedly adorable goats for my kidnapping, would anyone buy into it? As far as I was concerned, I would never blame anyone for falling for the charms of troublesome goats. If I told myself that enough times, would I accept I’d gotten kidnapped without even being aware of it happening?
I supposed something could have happened that screwed with my memory. I’d lost a lot of memories surrounding the car crash, although fragments had returned with time.
A knock to the head could scramble a brain and make memories disappear. I would work hard to forgive myself for my inability to remember, no matter how much it bothered me.
After eating every scrap of food in the container and setting the utensils inside to hopefully convince my captors I meant to behave, I did a head-to-toe check for any signs of trauma. My foot needed to be purged of infection again, which told me a disconcerting tale of several days lost somewhere in a drugged fog. Bracing for the inevitable pain, I lurched upright and hobbled to the bathroom to investigate.
Behind the door, the bathroom extended farther than I’d anticipating, including a vanity with several neat stacks of women’s clothing waiting for me. Upon investigation, I discovered a disconcerting number of wraps, which I could wear despite the chain getting in the way. As weird clothes beat no clothes, I accepted what I couldn’t change with a sigh, closed the bathroom door, and checked for any evidence of cameras. I found nothing, even after a top to bottom examination of the room. My clothes would need to be cut off if I wanted to wear something clean, and I accepted my shirt’s demise with a disgruntled huff, returning to the main room long enough to grab the knife.
Five minutes later, I wore one of the wraps, which left my one shoulder bare but otherwise covered everything of importance. The presence of strapless bras in several sizes cinched the situation for me.
I had been the target, and I doubted anyone I knew had been involved, as they knew my sizes thanks to frequent hospitalizations and clothing runs to make certain I had something better to wear than a hospital gown. Someone had made an educated guess regarding my bra size, hitting close enough to the mark I suspected a woman had been involved with the selection.
Sitting on the edge of the tub as close to the toilet as possible, I removed my medical boot, grimacing at the worrying smell wafting up from my foot. While my magic had warned me of unpleasant things to come, seeing was believing.
Judging from the infection’s progression, it’d been at least three to five days since my last dose of antibiotics. I didn’t need to make an incision to access the infection site; the prior surgical site oozed, the source of the odor.
It would take daily work, but I could handle the infection. My doctors would freak out when they found out I’d gone without the drug cocktails meant to help my lungs recover and keep my foot intact, but I’d cross that bridge when I got to it—assuming I escaped alive.
If my kidnappers would stop knocking me out with their damned gas, I could even like being free of drugs, although I’d miss the painkillers the first time something went truly wrong. I’d handled much worse, and I’d do so again without complaint if necessary. Complaining wouldn’t help me escape.
For the moment, I had no choice but to watch, wait, and prepare in case an opportunity came knocking.
After three meals where I returned my utensils without attempting to use them to break free, my captors rewarded my good behavior with books, a dessert of chocolate cake to go with my steak dinner, and a large travel mug of coffee along with containers of non-dairy creamer and sugar. The books, a collection of twenty new titles across a range of subjects, would keep me busy enough. The paperbacks wouldn’t help me escape, although I’d move them into the bathroom under the guise of taking a bath with a book to poke around the ceiling. With twenty books, I could reach the tiles without many difficulties.
After some experimentation while safely tucked into my nest, I’d discovered if I had a willingness to potentially hurt my thumb or some other bone in my hand, I could get my hand free of the cuff. I might even be able to escape with some soap, a willingness to rip some skin off, and some determination. If fortune smiled on me, I might even be able to just contort my thumb enough to slip free.
All I needed to do was tear off the fuzzy padding, be willing to disfigure my hand a little if necessary, and then yank free of the restraint. The padding would prove my salvation and hope of escape, as it kept the cuff open enough to slip over the bones of my wrist, leaving my thumb and the broader part of my hand as the final obstacle barring me from freedom. The disfigurement part would hurt like hell, but if a dislocated or broken bone was all that separated me from making my escape, I’d deal with the pain.
Well, agony.
Suffering was a price I would pay for my freedom without hesitation.
First, I’d have to find a way out of the basement once freed of the chains, and I’d already eliminated the door and the ceiling of the main room. My only hope lay in the bathroom ceiling. If the ceiling opened up into some form of crawlway, I might be able to escape. Otherwise, I’d be stuck trying to dig my way through a wall with a spoon, assuming I could make one disappear without drawing notice.
As far as I knew, they kept close track of anything I might use to escape.
However much I loathed stupid criminals, the smart ones might prove to be the end of me. Then again, if they meant to kill me, they would have rather than reward me with good behavior while I waited to discover if they would actually introduce themselves to me or if they meant to get me out of the way for a while.
A bubble bath with some cake, coffee, and books was in order, and I’d even forgive the presence of the goddamned chain. I ate my steak before implementing my plan to indulge, making sure the cameras in the main room, which were mounted high up in the corners and on the ceiling where I couldn’t reach, caught me acting like someone resigned to a long wait.
Once in the bathroom, with the door closed and enough chain inside I could reach every corner, I went to work. To fool the microphones surely recording every sound, I turned on the water, whistled a merry tune, and set up my bath. Then I did my check of the corners, searching for any cameras or bugs masked with illusionary magic, finding nothing as usual.
It intrigued me that my captors showed some respect for my privacy, although the possibility an illusion covered some form of hidden camera existed. With that in mind, under the cover of the tub filling, I gave the entire bathroom a pat down, closing my eyes to avoid illusionary magic to trick me.
On the wall over the toilet, my fingers brushed against the sill of a window. I jerked my hand back and opened my eyes. The wall appeared to be blank, and I reached out to touch it again, jerking when I reached where the wall should have been.
“Well, hello there,” I murmured, closing my eyes and reaching beyond the illusion. Judging from feel, the window was plenty large enough for me to slip through, assuming I could figure out how to open it without tipping off my captors I knew it existed.
Having earned my chocolate cake, I retreated to the tub with one of my new books, stripped, and got into the water to enjoy my reward for having gotten a little closer to freedom.
Knowing there was a window and being able to make use of it were two completely different things. No matter how hard I tried,
I couldn’t pierce through the illusions shrouding the potential escape route. Unless I closed my eyes and worked by feel, my brain insisted there was only drywall over the toilet, and my body reacted as though my damned eyes knew what they were doing despite tactile evidence of the window existing.
Even touching the section of wall proved to be problematic. Much like colliding into a brick wall at a run, the illusions thwarted me.
It didn’t take long for me to accept the truth: unless I could see the window—and what was beyond it—it remained out of reach as an escape option. In theory, I could attempt to bust out with my eyes closed, but I had no way of knowing if I was, in actuality, in a basement or somewhere much higher.
I’d fought too hard to live to die being stupid and reckless.
To complicate matters, once I tried to bust out, I expected I would only have one chance to make a break for freedom.
I lost track of time, an inevitability considering how often my captors knocked me out in order to access my prison, bring meals, and make certain I wouldn’t kick the bucket on them. At some point, one of them had thought to check my foot—or bring in an accomplice to check it.
My meals began including pills I recognized as antibiotics and a potent painkiller. The painkiller, a welcome relief when I couldn’t defeat the infection, slaughtered my concentration, making my plans to further investigate a way out an impossibility rather than a mere challenge.
While I’d kept the infection from worsening, I hadn’t won the battle. Every time I drained the infection away, it came back with a vengeance, something I blamed on stress.
From the day of the accident that’d almost killed me, pain had been a constant, but the infection in my foot drove me to the limits of my tolerance. I suspected being busy had helped me cope.