Arlene Sachitano - Quilter's Knot

"Thanks for sharing that."

"Your sympathy is overwhelming."

"Besides your head, how are you?"

"Oh, I'm just peachy. I'm tied here to my couch, and hey, now I have company. And if my life is going to end here, I can't think of anyone l like to see go down with me more."

"Do you have any other injuries? Assuming I can figure a way out of here, can you walk?” Harriet asked, but she was thinking, She has a couch? I'm here rolling around on the floor, and she has a couch and is still complaining?

"I'm fine,” Lauren said with a groan.

Harriet scooted backward until she located the wall behind her. The floorboards were rough, and her knuckles burned as she scraped the skin off of them in the process. She bent her body into a sitting position and, by pressing her back to the wall, was able to worm her way upright.

"Where are you going?” Lauren asked. “You're not leaving me here."

"Of course I'm not. I'm tied up, remember?"

With the wall for balance, and moving her feet in tiny shuffles, Harriet was able to inch along the perimeter of the room. She stopped and listened. She could hear the muffled rustle of wind in trees, but the structure they were in was silent save for the occasional creak of the floorboards.

"What are you doing?” Lauren asked.

Harriet sighed. “If you weren't interrupting me every minute, I'd be exploring my environment and trying to find something useful for getting us out of here. It might help if you would do the same thing."

"There's a smelly couch that I'm lying on and a large dead potted plant I've been retching into. Do you think you're the only clever one here? I searched as soon as I came to."

"Did you get off the couch?"

"Of course not, I'm tied up."

The wall behind Harriet became what felt like a doorway. She slowly turned her face toward the wall and began rubbing her cheek up and down where a switch plate should be. What's a little more lost skin, she thought, and promised herself a facial if she got out of this place alive. She'd even invite Lauren to join her.

She realized she was losing her touch with reality after that last thought. If she got out of this place alive, she was never going anywhere with Lauren Sawyer for the rest of her life.

Her search efforts were rewarded, and with a dull click weak yellow light illuminated the space. She looked around. The ceiling had open beams, and the walls were covered with a mismatched combination of plywood and drywall, with some sections not covered at all. Long wisps of cobweb coated with thick dust drooped in loops overhead while dust bunnies scampered along the floor.

Across the room, Lauren was slumped on a gray sofa with a broken leg that caused it to tilt at a crazy angle. Harriet began the slow shuffle across the plank floor to that corner, the rope around her ankles biting into her skin, sending burning pain up her calves with each step.

The closer she got the worse Lauren looked. The back of her straight blond hair was matted and dark. Her face was streaked with a combination of blood, dirt and tears. Her complexion was pale on a good day, but it now had a gray pallor.

"Tell me what happened to you,” Harriet said as she got closer.

She noticed blood on the sofa where Lauren had been resting her head. Her stomach lurched, and she took two slow breaths through her nose. When her stomach steadied, she began again.

"Start with your morning visit to my room."

"What difference does it make? We're here now."

"Please, humor me. Have you got something better to do?"

"I was busy dying until you interrupted."

She was being sarcastic, but a closer look at her face suggested her comments might be closer to the truth than she intended.

"I don't know what good it will do until you tell me. If we can figure out who did this to us, maybe we can figure out where we are. If we know where we are, we can figure out how to get out."

"That's a lot of if-ing and figuring,” Lauren said but began anyway. “I left your room and went to my brother's apartment. He had to go back to the school, and he was all worked up about those files he'd taken from Selestina's office. He was afraid the police would find them and think he'd killed her. He wanted to get rid of them, but he doesn't have a shredder, so I sat there with my scissors and cut each and every page into little tiny pieces."

"What was in the files?"

"I don't know. I was cutting, not reading. They were forms of some sort. Probably insurance. There were a few typed pages with signatures on them. It looked like it was employee benefits stuff. It took hours to cut it all up.

"When I was finished, I took the garbage bag full of pieces to the kitchen and put it under the sink, which is where Les keeps his recycling. He had nothing good to eat, so I made a piece of toast, ate it and then I lay down on his bed and took a nap.” She laid her head back down on her arm.

"Don't stop. How did you end up here?"

"If I knew that don't you think I'd tell you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Do I have to spell it out? One minute I was sleeping on my brother's bed, the next I'm tied up in this dungeon with a giant headache."

"So, you didn't hear anyone, see anyone, nothing?"

"Hello, didn't I just say that? Now, stop talking, you're making my head hurt."

Harriet reached the sofa and knelt on the seat at the opposite end, facing the wall. A spring poked her knee through the threadbare upholstery. The wall behind the sofa was covered with hinged shutters. If she could pry them open, there just might be a window. A small brass latch held the shutter panels together.

"What are you doing?” Lauren asked.

Harriet looked at her and could see fresh tears streaking her face.

"It looks like this might be a shuttered window. I'm going to see if I can reach the shutters and try to get them open. If I can do that, and then if there's a glass window, I'll break the glass and hopefully get a piece of it and use it to cut your ties and then you can cut mine."

Lauren closed her eyes. “Let me know how that goes."

Moving around when your hands are tied behind your back and your feet tied to each other is a lot more difficult than it seems when you watch people on television do it. Harriet fell down onto the couch several times before she was able to balance on the back and press her face to the shutter. She turned it sideways so her cheekbone took the force of the fall as she propelled herself forward and into contact with the hinged pieces of wood.

Tears filled her eyes, and her nose ran when she hit, but she knew if she stopped she wouldn't start again. She worked her mouth into position and used her tongue to poke at the latch. The brass tasted terrible, and she had to stop and spit before she could continue. The hinge pinched her tongue; and when she slipped, it hit her teeth, sending sharp shards of pain into her skull, but she kept working at it until the hook piece finally flipped off the peg that held the two halves together.

The momentum it took to pull the shutters open knocked her back to the seat of the sofa. Lauren moaned when Harriet accidentally jostled her in the process.

"Sorry, but I got the shutters open."

"Could you see where we are?"

"There's a window, but it's boarded up on the outside, but that's a good thing. When I break the window, the glass will all stay within reach. Hopefully."

As she talked, Harriet worked her way around until she was balanced on the back of the sofa on her side with her feet in position to kick the window glass.

"Here goes nothing,” she said, and kicked as hard as she could.

She fell back onto Lauren's legs, causing the prone woman to yelp, but the glass broke with a satisfying tinkle as broken pieces hit the sofa and floor. She spun around and looked at her handiwork. Several large shards remained in the window frame, held in place by the putty.