When he awoke again, she was kneeling between his legs. He pulled on his wrist manacles, raised his head and watched her fellate him. Her face was flushed, but the look in her eyes was confident as she glanced up at him, then crawled forward and plunged down on him with her hips. He longed to piss again, but held back, hoping she would finish quickly.
As her pitiless pace increased, he heard a rustling somewhere on the floor to his right. He turned his head and saw a large rat pushing through a hole at the base of the brick wall.
“We have a visitor,” he said, hoping to frighten her.
But she continued to rock as she turned her head and watched the animal struggling through the hole. Then her moves became frenzied as the rat broke through, stumbled on the brick floor, and came to an abrupt stop.
He saw it look up at her warily, back up, and cringe, as if fearing her gaze.
She let out a strange grunt and continued with slower strokes—
—and he saw something come up out of the rat, a bloody mass from its head, as if the animal were cut open. The lump shot across the room, glanced off one of the brass bars at the head of the bed with a wet crunch, and slapped him across his left cheek.
Dierdre stopped moving on him, breathing deeply, and seemed angry with herself as she wrapped her arms around her torso. He went limp within her as he caught the odor of the bloody mess near his cheek, then began hyperventilating as his reason rebelled against what had happened; something had ripped the rat’s brain from its body.
Gulping air and struggling to control his bladder, he looked past the bloody organ on the bed to the rat down on its belly in a pool of blood.
He cried out and tugged at his manacles.
“Be still!” Dierdre shouted, brushing the sticky brains from the bed as she climbed off him and stood by the bed. He closed his eyes and tried to float free of pain and fear in the bright red space behind his eyelids.
His breath came in fits and starts as he heard her closing the door and climbing the wooden stairs. He opened his eyes, but would not look at the dead rat on the floor, thinking that he might wake up at any moment, telling himself that it was possible for a dream to fool him; this was the third, maybe the fourth time he had dreamed a lifelike dream. It didn’t happen often, but it could happen, and here it was again in full stereo, color, smell and three dimensions. The completeness of the illusion had to be a mark against its reality, because it was the business of really good nightmares to be convincing.
Finally, he heard her coming back down the stairs. The lock clicked, the door opened, and she came in wearing a dirty house coat and carrying a large metal can, a plastic bag, and a small spatula. He watched as she knelt, set down the can, and swept the rat into the bag; then she crawled over to the bed and scraped the brain mess from the floor into the bag, sealed it with a metal tie, and tossed it over by the door, not once looking up at him, as if in a trance.
She seemed sluggish crawling over to the hole in the wall, where she pried open the lid of the metal can, scooped out some of the pre-mixed sealing compound with her hands, slapped it into the opening and said, “There, that should keep out visitors,” and worked to smooth over the opening. “As soon as this sets, you’ll be safe in here. It’s quick setting, says so on the label.”
He clenched his teeth until his jaw muscles hurt.
She resealed the can, then sat down on the floor and leaned back against the wall. “Did you see what I did?” she asked tiredly, eyes closed. “Did you see it, lover?” she said with pride, like a child in a show-and-tell grade school exercise.
He watched her, unable to answer.
She opened her eyes with a start and leaned forward. “Do you fucking understand?” she demanded, fighting fatigue with her pride. This was the tell part, except that she expected him to tell the ridiculous part of it to himself, and believe it.
He stared at her. His full bladder was a cold stone. She leaned back again and seemed to fall asleep, twitching as if dreaming in her tiredness. In that dream, he imagined, was the real world.
The timer clicked, turning on the copper heater. It reached a white-hot glow and he began to sweat. Humiliated, he could no longer hold back, and tried to send his stream onto the floor, but soaked the edge of the mattress as he finished.
She opened her eyes and looked at him. He stared back, determined to show no fear or weakness, but she gave him a contemptuous smile when she saw the wet floor.
“Oh,” she said, “I thought I heard a sound. Can’t hold your water, can you? You should see someone about that.”
He struggled to pull himself together. “What do you want from me?” he demanded, startled by the growl in his voice.
She stretched, and seemed alert again. “Any reasonably presentable male would have served as well,” she said, “but I picked you.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
She sighed. “Maybe I want a child.”
“What?” he asked, dumbfounded. “But why... why me?”
“Stupid! It’s got nothing to do with you personally.”
He stared at her. “But... you can’t be sure... I mean you can’t know if the trait, if that’s what it is, will be passed on,” he managed to say, realizing that he was accepting her claim, her delusion, which was all it could be; she could not have done what he had seen.
“What do you know,” she said in a whisper. “You’re just a dumb cop. I’ll find out one way or another when I have the kid.”
He took a deep breath, let his head fall back, and looked up at the ceiling, which might be a sky, for all he knew; he had been drugged, she had told him.
“Don’t worry,” she said loudly. “I’ll take care of you in here, for as long as it takes.”
“You’re going to keep me like this?” he said without raising his head.
She answered, “Look, it was your own fault for wanting to use a bag. We could have screwed our brains out for a few weeks and that would have been the end of it. You wouldn’t have known a thing after I brushed you off. Too late now that you know too much, so it’ll have to be the hard way. I have to do it this way. I’m stuck with you. My mistake.”
“And after, when you’re pregnant, what then?” he asked hoarsely, raising his head again to look at her.
“We’ll see,” she said, looking away, and he knew suddenly that she felt nothing for him, that it had all been a trap, and that he might die in this cellar room, if it was possible to die in a nightmare.
9
As she drifted into sleep that night, Dierdre quieted her fears. It did not matter what he had learned about her, if it was anything he could accept as true; he wouldn’t live long enough to use it against her.
She entered the basement cell the next day, dropped her robe and lowered herself onto him. She felt him rise slowly between her thighs, as he struggled to restrain himself, shouting that it was a hallucination. The fool.
She laughed suddenly as he slipped out. “Sorry about that. We won’t get anywhere that way.”
She slipped him back inside her, watching the look of resignation on his face as he closed his eyes and pulled impotently at his shackles. A man is vain about his entrance, and cherishes the illusion of penetration. It made her happy to have denied him that, she realized as she began to move. A man is specialized, entering discretely, specifically; a woman embraces with her whole body, too often with her entire self and surrenders too much. A man penetrates; a woman should engulf.
As she hunted her orgasm, strength filled her, and she felt the impulse to core him at completion; but she had to be sure of pregnancy before disposing of him. She cried out and saw him grimace as if in pain, then sat on him quietly as he went limp inside her.
He opened his eyes and said, “Your imaginary child may be a threat to you one day,” and laughed. “There won’t be room for two of you. That is, if you can even have a child.”
She got up and put on her robe, irritated by his words, and felt emptiness, then turned away so he wo
uldn’t see her anger. “But you do think my child can inherit my strength,” she said without looking at him.
“Why not,” he answered, “but I’ve been thinking about you. What good are you? I mean what good is this ability of yours, unless you let professionals study it. At least they might find out something important.”
“Like what?” she asked.
“Something new—who knows. It’s a waste to have you... go on doing what you’ve been doing, if you’re doing it.”
She turned and glared at him. “You think I’m a fool? They’d only lock me up for murder and then study me like an animal,” she said.
“But what can you do with it?” he asked, sounding almost sympathetic, but she knew he’d say anything to get free, or just to annoy her. He was brave, or reckless. “Besides passing it on,” he added. “You know, there may be others, and unlike a child you’d raise to obey you, they’d be a threat.”
“There are no others. You’re just supposing.”
“No,” he said. “A story in the paper reported a brain found on the street. Did you do that?”
She did not answer, but she felt uneasy, wondering what he believed.
“Then you didn’t see the story,” he said, recalling Gibney’s note.
“No, I didn’t,” she said, “and you’re lying to annoy me.”
“I’m not,” he said softly. “Tell me,” he continued, “can you move inanimate objects?”
“Of course,” she replied, remembering how she had tried and failed. A living will had to grasp another living will, it seemed. She felt threatened by his doubts. His face was composed, gazing at her coldly. She knelt down and checked each of his four shackles.
“How much interest has there been?” she asked, standing up. “Were there any autopsies?”
He was silent.
“Tell me!” she shouted.
“The wino,” he said. “I don’t know about the priest yet.”
“Who did it?” she asked. “Where?”
He refused to answer.
“His name!” she shrieked.
He looked up at her and tried to appear calm. “I don’t have the report in front of me. Someone in the city morgue. It could be anyone there.”
“In one second your brains will steam on this stone floor!” she shouted, watching as he tried to keep from shaking. “Tell me!”
He was silent, but she saw his fear as he began to sweat.
“What’s his name!” she cried, shaking a fist at him. “You saw what I did to the priest, didn’t you?”
“Frank Gibney,” he said, closing his eyes and turning his head away in shame. “But he doesn’t know anything, and wouldn’t know where to start. All he knows is the wino he’s seen—and he doesn’t think it means anything.”
“Does he have assistants or colleagues?”
“Yes, but they do what he says.”
“Would he come looking for you?”
“No. Why should he?”
“But the precinct must be looking for you by now. You questioned me, so they’ll come here.”
“I made no report of questioning you.”
“Liar. But it doesn’t matter. Let them come. What can they suspect? They’ll never find this room.” She backed away and left, turning the light off and locking the door behind her, because she remembered how much she had hated darkness. A small mercy would have cost her nothing, she told herself with some surprise; but he had made her doubt herself and deserved to wait in the dark.
When she did not turn his sexuality against him, she was in the next chamber, digging and scraping. He was hot and cold as the heater went on and off. He was here, he told himself. That much seemed certain, unless he was completely out of his mind and yet still able to consider madness. A special kind of madness, with too much sanity in it, enough to protect him from complete chaos...
And when he was alone, his imagination tormented him with what she could do to him, if not with the power she claimed to have demonstrated then with an axe, a saw, an ice cream scoop. Everything that he was sat in his skull, and would be ripped out, all the blood vessels torn, and his personality would die in his eyes. Nothing of him would remain to look out or inward again, all past gone, all present empty and unable to father a future...
How had he come to this, how could he have done so unless it was a delusion?
He pulled at his handcuffs and insisted that he was asleep at home, and was startled by the involuntary quivering sounds of dismay struggling in his throat.
“Wake up!” he shouted to his sleeping body, imagining that he had suffered a stroke and was dying in this strange dream-coma, with no one to save him.
“Carla!” he shouted to his neighbor.
They would break down his door and find him dead, but he would still be here in this basement room.
She turned on all the lights in her living room, feeling feverish and full of hope as she reclined on her sofa. There was a lot she could do with her power, she told herself. Even a limited chess piece has a moment when the entire game hangs in the balance. She could threaten powerful people into doing what she wanted. True, that would take time and planning, careful intimidation and disciplined demonstration. She would build a cell structure, first one, then another, of people who would do her bidding. She would accumulate money by simple extortion until it became as powerful as her ability. No one would be able to resist her. She would raise a daughter, maybe two, and they would rule the world...
But her wild hopes faltered as she tried to imagine the exact steps it would take to do what she wanted with her power. Her fatigue seemed to stay longer with her...
She closed her eyes and drifted into the gallery of the Senate. Below, the blowhards were making speeches. One by one she emptied several figures seated at their desks, bloodying the surfaces, until the President pro-tem stood up and cries of panic filled the chamber. She felt no fatigue as her mind twitched and took aim again, still without tiring, and his world was torn from his head...
She came awake with a start and knew that the man Gibney had to die as soon as possible, and Benek too, as soon as she was pregnant. Revealing herself to him with the rat had been an accident; but his knowing would be a threat for as long as she held him alive, even if he doubted. Suddenly she knew that no one who might have the slightest suspicion that she existed could be left alive.
10
“Dierdre!” he shouted in the darkness, then listened for sounds up in the hall, even though he knew it was unlikely that she or anyone else could hear him from this dungeon. She had made sure of that. She was probably sleeping, or had gone out to get Gibney, and that possibility filled him with anguish, then with resolve.
He tensed as the heater clicked on, then began to struggle against his manacles in the dim, orange light; this might be his only chance to escape and save Gibney’s life.
He pulled the right manacle tight against the vertical brass header bar to which it was attached, and strained. The cuff would not spring. He pulled harder, until his wrist hurt, then stopped, realizing that if he could loosen the brass bar from its horizontal seat he would be able to slip the manacle free.
He grabbed the bar with his right hand and wrenched. The hollow shaft moved—and he began to hope. He jerked it three times; it moved again. There was some dried blood on it, where the rat’s brain had hit.
He paused, held his breath, and listened. There were no sounds from upstairs. He took a deep breath and worked the bar back and forth, managing to move it a quarter of an inch each way. The hollow brass was soft, promising to bend and possibly to slip out of its mooring in the larger horizontal bar. Dierdre had not foreseen that he might not have to open or break the manacles, but only to free them from the bed, although the manacles seemed to be of good quality—not police issue, but stainless steel with good locksets, probably bought in an expensive novelty sex shop.
He worked the bar back and forth, bending it at the middle.
Suddenly it came loose from its low
er mooring, and he slipped the handcuff from the bar. With his right hand free, he reached over to the left bar and began to rock it loose.
It was slow going; this one seemed stronger. He took a deep breath and jerked at the center. The bar bent and came out from its upper mooring. He slipped the cuff over and sat up, telling himself that he could not let Frank Gibney die.
He stared at his ankles and caught his breath as the heater went off, but the sudden blackness stopped him for only a moment. He did not need to see that even with his legs spread only halfway, he could not bend his knees easily. Slowly, he bent forward at the waist and probed for the bar beyond his right ankle. If he could free his right ankle, reaching the left bar would be much easier.
Bending nearly double at the waist, he found and grasped the bar and held on tightly, breathing heavily. He would not be able to hold this position for very long.
It was hard to get a rocking motion started in this position, so he began to pull from the center, hoping to bend the bar with one continuous effort. After all, this kind of bed was not made to be a prison, but only to be decorative. It was sturdy in the spring and mattress supports, but the rest had not been made to resist sustained violence.
Slowly, the bar began to bend, then snapped free of both moorings. He fell on his back. As he relaxed and regained his breath, he told himself to hurry, that there was only one bar left, that all his effort would be for nothing if Dierdre came back suddenly, or if she reached Gibney before he could warn him.
He sat up and inched forward, bending his left knee, and grasped the left bar with both hands. He began to pull, but the bar resisted until it seemed that he would pull out his wrists and shoulders. He paused and breathed deeply, then tried again, giving it everything. It began to bend at the middle as he strained, then popped out of its moorings. He threw the bar away and got out of bed.
He stood there, unsteady on his feet from so much bed rest, dangling the now useless cuffs as the heater came on again. He stumbled to the wall switch and turned on the bulb above the bed.
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