Ryan Thomas - The Summer I Died

We worked tirelessly to get the gags out of our mouths, until our jaws were damn near swollen. It was worse for Tooth, because every time he moved his jaw his burnt lips split and bled like squashed cockroaches. And the gags were tight; Skinny Man hadn’t been playing when he tied them. It took about a half hour of mandible work before we loosened them enough to converse coherently. We left them wrapped around our bottom lips so we could put them back in our mouths if we sensed trouble.

First thing I did was call out to Jamie, to see if she was okay. Her faint response was disheartening. She couldn’t tell it was me; I guess she thought I was Skinny Man because she kept begging me to let her go, saying she wouldn’t tell anyone. It was a familiar plea, and I realized how crazy it sounded when I put myself in our maniac’s shoes.

I shouted, “Jamie, it’s me, Roger. I’m in the next room. Can you move?”

She just babbled and cried and told God she hurt. She was alive, but no help to us. I could only imagine what had been done to her. Every time I blinked I saw Butch licking his lips-it made me ill.

“She doesn’t know it’s you. You’re just scaring her,” Tooth said.

“Exactly why I want her to know it’s me.”

“She’s in shock, it won’t register. Worry about the chains first and then we’ll get Jamie.”

“These chains are welded tight,” I said as I yanked on them. “I can’t break ’em. You make any progress?”

“No. Plus I can’t feel my leg anymore, feels like I’m floating on air.”

“Can you move your foot?”

He shifted his foot just a little. “I guess, but I don’t feel myself doing it. We have to stop this guy.”

“I’m way ahead of you. But how, when he’s got us bound like this?”

“I think we’re going about this all wrong. The chains can’t be broken, and he ain’t going to let us out. He wants us tightly wrapped so he can pick at us like leftover turkeys in a fridge. So let’s think about this in a different way. How can we get him while we’re chained up?”

We looked about the room, reevaluating what we had noticed earlier. Nothing had changed; it was the same dank cellar with a couple of future murder victims chained to the wall. The shovel was in the stove, the hedge shears were against the wall near the table. The boiler still droned its incessant hum. The arm that had been on the ground near the dog dish was stripped bare and covered in dirt. But those few items made little difference toward escaping.

“This is useless,” I said, “there’s nothing here to help us. He’s crazy but he’s not stupid. Look, he left those shears there to remind us of what he did to my sister. He knows these chains are foolproof and we can’t get out of them.”

“There’s got to be something. You read a lot of comics, what would someone in our position do to escape?”

“Fuck, Tooth, this is real. Nobody in a comic would be in this position unless it involved kryptonite chains or laser beams or some piece of science fiction. But this ain’t fiction. Not even the best writers could get a regular hero out of this.” I thought about Batman using his utility belt again. What would he do without it? He’d probably have to rely on Robin to save him or tricking his captor into setting him free. When it came to real life situations, comic writers weren’t all that imaginative. “They’d just write a rusty link into the chains and break it. But these fucking chains are like new. And the cuffs are sharp enough to cut us open.”

“What about the wall?’

I looked at the concrete behind me, leaned back against it. It was thick. I couldn’t be certain just how thick, but it was part of the foundation, and based on other foundations I’d seen, it had to be at least twelve inches. We weren’t going to break it, which is what I told Tooth.

He ignored me and tried to pull his hands through his handcuffs. He did it until it cut into his wrists and blood trickled down the chain. Finally, resignation settled across his face and he gave up and leaned back. “God, I’m tired,” he said.

So was I. The few minutes I’d been able to sleep had done nothing to revitalize me. And I ached as well. The chains were rubbing away the skin around my wrists, and I could feel blisters forming. My cut wrist stung every time it scraped my bindings. At least I wasn’t alone in that club. It happened to Tooth as well.

We thought silently for a bit, desperately inventing methods of escape that couldn’t come true without Hollywood special effects or an act of God. If only the chains would break. If only the plates could be pulled from the wall. If only someone would come by so we could yell to them. Anything.

Jamie was still crying. Mostly it was a low murmur, but at times it was worse. She would call for my mother or father, and that’s when I felt hopeless. I gave up thinking about escape and sort of floated out of my body, thinking about other things like how no one would ever know what happened to us. How the dog would eat us and shit us out in a small hole in the yard. How my parents would spend the rest of their lives hoping some day we’d walk in the front door saying, “Hi, sorry we were gone so long, just went sightseeing for a while, but we’re back now, what’s for dinner?” Then Jamie’s voice brought me back, because she said my name.

“I’m here!” I shouted.

But she didn’t respond. She was just going out of her mind, calling out any name that was lodged in her subconscious. Tooth met my eyes and then looked away, unsure how to console me. If we got out of this, the therapy we would undergo would be unearthly.

“I lied to you, Roger.”

I didn’t know what he was talking about. “What do you mean? About what?”

“I kind of dig your sister. I was going to try and fuck her when you went back to school. I’m sorry. I’m only human, and your sister is hot.”

I was mad. I couldn’t believe he would do that to me. I couldn’t believe he was even bringing it up right now. “You sonofabitch. Why do you have to screw every girl you see? She’s my sister.”

“It’s funny, you guys have been at each other’s throats for years, now all of a sudden you come back from school and you’re all Mr. Protective. Why the change? You really care about her, huh?”

“Yeah, I know, I never thought I’d see the day. I guess it’s because I’ve been at school. College guys only think of one thing.”

“Was it any different in high school?” he asked.

“No, but the difference is college girls give it up. And sometimes assholes think that because a girl has sex it means she’ll do it with anyone. A girl in my dorm was raped last semester. She didn’t come back this year.”

I didn’t tell him it was the one I had a crush on, with the Star Wars poster, or that it was her own boyfriend who raped her. I didn’t want to talk about it. When I came home and saw Jamie, saw how much she’d changed in those few months, with her tight clothes and low cut jeans, it made me think of what went on at college campuses all over the world. Tooth was right-Jamie was good looking, and he was exactly the kind of guy that would hurt her.

“If it means anything, I wouldn’t have fucked her and chucked her, I would have. . I mean. .”

But I think her cries got to him, because he suddenly jerked on the chains until he was almost out of breath.

“Shit! We can’t give up,” he said. “This can’t be our fate. No way, motherfucker, no way. We’re going to get out of here and go out West, sit under some palm trees and watch the waves.”

I thought about that, not the waves and palm trees, but fate. Like I said before, I wasn’t religious, although I was turning fast. I didn’t believe there was a cosmic plan, I just felt that shit happened and you dealt with it. But if fate existed, why was it our fate to become dog food? What end would it serve?