by Greg Barth
I wrenched a leg free and kicked her in the side. She fell off the bed to the floor.
“Chris!” I shouted. I sure as hell hoped she was back from the grocery store.
I sat up, my left wrist pinned to the headrail. I scooted around, my naked ass sliding on the smooth spread. A silver set of handcuffs stretched from my wrist to the pole on the headboard. There was a second set next to it, the jaw of one hungry cuff open for my other hand.
“Motherfuck!” I said.
I jerked hard, the chain pulled tight. My left arm exploded with pain. I stretched and strained everything that had spent weeks healing. “Unghh!” I positioned my short, skinny legs and banged my feet hard against the bedrail. It clacked against the wall, but there was nothing but pain in my wrist. I screamed as loud as I could. “Chriiiiiiiiiiiisssss!”
“Fucking goddamn it,” Lilly Bett said.
I spun my head and looked over my shoulder.
She sat on the floor, stunned, blood flowing free from both nostrils.
I slid the handcuff across the horizontal pole far enough that I could stand on the floor. I took my right hand and pulled against the headboard. The bed scooted across the floor a few inches. I put my right foot against the mattress and pushed against it. The mattress slid over to one side, leaving the box springs in place. It took me three or four hard kicks and the mattress moved enough to tilt down to the floor at an angle. I pulled against the bed, and it moved a bit more.
“No!” Lilly Bett said. She crawled across the floor toward me.
I pivoted and kicked her in the face.
She clawed at me.
I kicked her again.
She held her face in her hands, ducking low.
I stomped down hard on the back of her head.
“Jesus,” Lilly Bett said.
“Key now, bitch,” I said.
She turned and scampered toward the bedroom door, leaving a trail of blood in her wake.
I didn’t think she was going for the key.
When she got to the door, she used the doorframe to help her get to her feet, then she was gone, a smear of blood on the wall by the door. I heard the sound of her stumbling down the stairs.
I bent down and pulled against the rail that the box spring sat against. I jerked as hard as I could. The rail propped free from the frame and dropped to the floor. With one corner of the frame free, I was able to move the bed a bit more.
My heart pounded in my chest. The thought of her going for a weapon kicked my adrenaline up another notch. I lunged across the room, dragging the various pieces of the bed behind me. But I couldn’t very well drag the whole bed down the stairs with me, let alone fight her while I had one hand chained to it.
I’d had a large boyfriend in the past, a man named Ragus Breed. He was fond of particularly rough sex. We’d broken our share of beds in cheap motel rooms, so I had a pretty good idea of how beds go back together and how to get them apart.
She’d moved recently. Moving’s a lot of work. She’d just hooked the bedrails to the headboard without bothering to bolt them down.
I stepped back up on the box springs, dragged the handcuff along the headboard to the other side of the bed. I hopped down on the floor and jerked the other frame rail free from the headboard. The remainder of the bed collapsed to the floor.
I was still cuffed to the headboard, but it was now free from the bed. I picked it up by the pole and walked back across the box springs. It wasn’t that heavy, but it was large—too bulky for me to move quickly.
Footsteps coming back up the stairs.
By the time I got halfway across the bedroom, Lilly Bett was standing in the doorway. She held a baseball bat in both hands.
I sobered up fast when I saw the bat.
She didn’t say a word. She lunged across the room at me, bat held up over one shoulder like she was swinging for the parking lot.
I jerked the headboard up and ducked behind it. Just in time, too. The bat cracked hard against the wood. I felt a painful jolt surge through my knuckles from the shock of the impact.
Then crack! Crack! CRACK!
She kept pounding away with the bat.
If I didn’t think of something smart right away, she was going to kill me.
“Lilly Bett, listen—” My arms ached from holding up the heavy headboard.
She came down with the bat, overhanded this time, and just narrowly missed my fingers.
I backed away a few steps. Didn’t matter—at best it bought me seconds before I’d be cornered.
She started toward me, bat cocked and ready.
I tightened my grip on the headboard, my one strong arm doing all the work, and rushed at her full steam.
We collided in the middle of the room. She gave no ground. She leaned into the headboard and shoved back hard. I lost my footing and fell back on my ass. I pulled the wooden board up to cover as much of my face and head as possible. I curled up and cowered under my only barrier.
I was vaguely aware of the rumble of the Challenger as Chris pulled back in.
There was a blur as the bat started my way again. I moved my fingers just in time. Had I been a split second slower, they would have been crushed.
These sounds: the whack of the bat, the apartment door opening, another whack, grocery bags on the dining table.
I put my foot against the bottom of the headboard, raised it off the ground, and shoved forward with all my might. The edge of the wood hit hard against Lilly Bett’s shins.
“Aaagh,” she said. I saw her back away.
I scampered to my feet.
A look of pain on her face.
I took a step forward, set the headboard against the floor, and slammed my right fist into her bleeding nose.
She pulled back, cupped her nose with one hand, lifted the bat with the other.
I leaned in and grabbed the end of the bat.
“Fuck no,” Lilly Bett said, and jerked back on the bat.
I kept my grip, moved forward with the momentum. I caught the headboard with the top of my foot, raised it off the ground at an angle, and shoved down hard with my weak hand. Her shins took the impact again.
“Goddamn it,” Lilly Bett said.
I jerked hard with the bat but couldn’t free it from her grip.
“Guys?” Chris said from below.
“Chris!” I shouted. “My purse. The pistol! Hurry!”
Lilly Bett took the bat in both hands. The grip was slick with her blood. She gave a violent jerk and ripped it free from my hand. But she didn’t have a good enough grip to follow up with an immediate strike.
I rushed toward her again, tripped against the headboard, tumbled into her. We sprawled on the floor, me on top. I got my knees up on the board, pinning her. I gripped her neck with my right hand, trying to choke her.
She wrenched the bat free, gripped it with both hands, and chopped at me with it.
I lurched to the side, taking the blow with my shoulder.
Fuck, it hurt.
She swung again, this time connecting with my left hand, smashing my fingers.
Jesus.
“Chriiiiiiiiis!” I screamed.
Scampering footsteps on the stairs.
I pulled back to avoid another hit.
Lilly Bett sat up and shoved me. I fell backwards, my head connecting with the floor. I could hear her getting to her feet.
She stood over me, the bat rained down blow after blow. She was aiming for my head. I blocked with my arms.
“What are you doing?” It was Chris. I couldn’t take my eyes off Lilly Bett.
“Shoot her!” I said.
The bat connected with my left elbow.
“Sh…shoot her!”
When the next blow didn’t come, I peeked out from under the headboard. Lilly Bett was looking at Chris.
“What are you going to do with that?” Lilly Bett said.
“Fucking shoot that bitch,” I said.
Chris had the pistol pointed at Lilly Bett. “I�
�I…” Chris said.
“What are you going to do?” Lilly Bett said.
“Throw me the gun, Chris,” I said.
Chris’s eyes widened. She looked from me to Lilly Bett. Her eyes darted back and forth. She swallowed, took a step backward.
“Christine Friday,” I said. She looked my way. “Toss me the gun. It’s okay.”
She flipped the gun through the air toward me. Lilly Bett swung with the bat, tried to hit it. She missed.
The pistol hit the headboard and slid toward my face. I grabbed it with my right hand. I didn’t bother sitting up. I slipped my finger through the trigger guard and raised the gun.
Lilly Bett turned to me and swung the bat down at me two handed.
I snapped back hard on the trigger. There was a deafening pop!
I caught the blow from the bat with my left arm again.
Lilly Bett screamed. There was a dark, reddening dot on the fleshy part of her left thigh.
I pointed the pistol right at her fucking baby fat.
She lowered the baseball bat.
I snapped back on the trigger. Wood splinters flew.
Lilly Bett screamed louder and ran from the room. She pushed past Chris and thudded down the stairs.
“Fuck,” I said. I sat up.
Chris rushed over to me.
“What’s going on?” she said. “Why are you fighting?”
“Chris, there’s no time. You have to help me. We’ve got to get out of here. Everybody’s heard those gunshots.”
“Oh my god.”
I shook my left wrist. “We’ve got to find a key…or something.”
“Where? Where?” She looked around, her eyes darting here and there. She went to the vanity and pulled the drawers open.
“Wait,” I said. “Fuck. Don’t touch anything.”
“What?”
“A bobby pin. Do you see a bobby pin?”
She looked through the open drawers, the surface of the table. “How about this?” She lifted a paper clip.
“Perfect. Uncurl it for me.”
She twisted the wire so the end was straight out.
Having been in handcuffs for too long in my past, I’d made some friends in nefarious places. A couple of them had described methods to free oneself from handcuffs.
I took the paper clip and carefully wedged the end of it between the locking flange and the teeth of the bracelet. I wiggled the paperclip back and forth a few times before I had it firmly against the flange. I pressed hard, and the cuffs loosened.
I slipped my wrist out of them, pushed the headboard away and stood.
“We have to go. Now,” I said.
“Your clothes.”
“Go.”
We ran down the stairs.
TEN
THE RED SPORTS car was gone. Drops of blood marked the path to an empty parking space.
“What the hell was that back there?” Chris said.
“I’ll explain. But we’ve got to get out of here first.”
Chris led us back to the Challenger. She started around the front toward the passenger side.
“I need you to drive,” I said.
She looked at me a second, a shocked look on her face. “Oh…you’re not wearing any clothes.”
She got in behind the wheel, I slipped in beside her. Her hand shook as she put the key in the ignition. “Easy does it,” I said.
She backed out of the parking space, pulled up to the edge of the parking lot. There was little traffic. When she pulled onto the street, she gave the car too much gas, and I was thrown back into my seat.
“Take it easy, Chris. Slow the car a little. We don’t want to attract attention.”
I grabbed my bag from the back seat. As Chris drove through the night, I struggled to get dressed in the passenger seat. My left hand was useless.
“Why were you chained to that board? Why did you shoot her like that?”
“Get us onto the highway. We want to go north.”
“No. We need to find her,” Chris said.
Chris was a nervous wreck, her hands shaky on the wheel.
“Watch the lights.”
She pulled to a stop at an intersection, took a deep breath, waited for the light to change as she watched the cars pass in front of us.
“She was going to hurt us, Chris.”
“But…why?”
“I don’t know. I think she gave me something. Slipped it in my drink or...I don’t know.”
“This is crazy!”
“You saw her. She had a bat.”
“You had a gun!”
“No. Remember. I was chained up. You gave me the gun.”
The light changed. “Easy does it,” I said as she went through the intersection. We passed a sign for the interstate. “The entrance ramp is coming up.”
“No. We need to find her. Talk her down. Bucky will be here in the morning.”
“Chris, give your turn signal. Now, please. Bucky is not going to be here tomorrow.”
“You…you shot her!” Her breath came in short, shallow gasps.
“Signal, Chris.”
She passed the entrance and continued along the city street.
I closed my eyes and shook my head.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just…I’m just freaking out here.”
I understood her panic. In spite of her girlfriend’s small-time dealing, she hadn’t been exposed to violence. The gunshots had shaken her.
There had been no sirens yet, so the neighbors must have been out for the evening when I fired the pistol. We had a few minutes. I had some suspicion of where Lilly Bett would be heading, and I didn’t want her to have a long head start. But soothing Chris was most necessary for the moment.
“Well, let me finish getting dressed first. Can you just pull over?”
She found a gas station on the right, pulled around to the back where it was dark. Killed the lights.
I got my clothes all in place, and Chris helped me light a cigarette.
“Let’s talk about what’s going to happen,” I said.
She looked at me in the darkness, said nothing.
“I’m going to go in the store there and get something to drink.”
“Please. I don’t want you passing out on me. You’ve already had so much to drink…”
“I’m only getting a half pint, alright? Fuck. Any punk could handle that much. While I’m doing that, you’re going to top the car off with gas.”
She nodded.
“Go pee. Get some water. Do whatever.”
She looked like she was going to cry.
“Then we’re going to turn around. You’re going to take us to the interstate, and we’re going north. Understand?”
“I’m just scared,” she said.
“Nothing to be scared of now, honey. We got away from her. That’s the important thing.”
“I just…I just don’t like violence, okay?” She sobbed. “I’m a pacifist. I don’t like fights.”
“Look, Chris. Look at me, okay?”
She took a deep breath, nodded, and looked into my eyes.
“I’ll drop you off anywhere you want. Okay? Just say the word.”
Another deep breath. “I’m going to go with you. I just don’t want violence.”
I shook my head. “I’ve got to catch Bucky. I can’t promise there won’t be violence.”
She considered my words. “If you don’t think Bucky is really coming here, and we don’t know where Lilly Bett is, how are we going to find him?”
“Easy. Read your shirt.”
“Huh?” She looked down.
“Best damned barbecue in South Carolina,” I said.
***
Chris took Interstate 95 north.
I’d promised not to pass out, but I’d had nothing to eat all day and too much to drink. The half pint of Dickel went to my head. Before I got too far into the bottle, my face grew warm and numb and I nodded off.
***
My righ
t wrist was caught in the needle-sharp, steel jaws of a trap. There was fine white hair around the wrist, mottled with blackened blood. Fur. I pulled at the trap, but there was no give. I tried to pry the jaws loose with my left paw, but that paw was all but useless.
The night air was cold, the ground frozen. My breath formed puffs of white steam.
I studied the trap mechanism, but my dumb animal brain couldn’t figure it out.
In the darkness, in a circle around me, were glowing eyes. Predators. Everywhere I looked, snarling jaws, salivated fangs, ready to pounce and suck the blood and pull the meat away from my carcass.
My heart pounded in my chest.
I sniffed at the bloody steel. It smelled of rot, of death, of things that did not escape.
I nipped at the tight skin around my wrist.
The predators in the darkness surrounding me sniffed at the air and licked their snarling fangs.
I bit into a furry fold of skin. A metallic taste filled my mouth. I chewed through leathery flesh, strings of veins, tough bits of muscle, and gristled tendons until my teeth encountered bone.
The glowing eyes in the darkness neared, their nostrils testing the scent of blood on the night’s breeze.
I took my weak hand and tried breaking the bones in my wrist. My grip was too weak, and there was nothing to use as leverage.
I growled at the beasts in the blackness. They backed away a step.
I took my wrist bones deep into my jaw, my back teeth clamping down, crunching into them.
There was a deep growling noise off in front of me. I shifted my eyes that way, peering into the darkness. I bit deeper into my wrist bones. Blood dripped from my chin.
I saw movement above me. I shifted my gaze. Someone looked down from above on the whole affair. A fat, older, bald man with a navy jacket and crimson necktie; beside him was a younger man in a white business shirt.
A creature to my left poked my shoulder. “Hey,” it said.
I opened my eyes.
“Hey,” Chris said. She nudged me. “Wake up.”
“What is it?” My mouth was dry.
“I think you were having a nightmare.”
I checked my hands. No chains, no traps. Just some bruising around my left wrist. “Where are we?”
“Uh…looks like the middle of nowhere. We’ll get on Interstate twenty-six in a bit.”
I looked around, tried to get my bearings.