Nevada Barr - The Rope

Since, when her monster finally arrived, he was alone, she suspected two of the monster boys had run back to their real lives. Possibly they didn’t know Anna had survived—that or they trusted thirst would do away with her in a day or two—and were unaware that the third monster was interfering with her demise.

“I’m tired,” she said so pitifully it reminded her of the pain-in-the-ass little boy who’d starred in a production of Oliver! she stage-managed in college. “May I go to bed now?” Please sir.

Jim was either too nice or too inexperienced to say no. “Get some rest,” he said. “This can wait till morning.” He gathered up his medical paraphernalia and let himself out. Jenny crossed to the door and locked it.

“First time I’ve done that,” she said as she turned back.

“Thank you,” Anna said.

Jenny fetched her a Xanax. Dutifully, Anna swallowed it. She longed for sleep. Fear kept her from attempting it. What if she awoke in the jar, having only dreamed she’d escaped?

Jenny encouraged her to lie down on the sofa, then sat on the coffee table where Jim had put his EMS kit and took her hand. Anna let her. Waking up holding Kay’s dead hand was added to the fear of waking up back in the hole. Anna snatched it back. Jenny’s radio crackled, the hive of the park buzzing with the news of her miraculous return. Sounds of the living comforted Anna even as they rasped on nerves grown accustomed to the deep and abiding silence of sandstone. She would have to find that silence again, go back into the stone. But not until she knew how to come back out.

Exhaustion and tranquilizers finally dulled the dread. Anna allowed Jenny to put her to bed. She waited until Jenny’s back was turned before slipping out of the borrowed trousers and between the sheets. She didn’t want Jenny to see the cuts on her leg.

Buddy had been settled in her room, an old sweatshirt of Jenny’s sacrificed to make him a bed in the bottom drawer of the dresser that had been emptied of Anna’s clothes. Anna watched as her housemate put a teacup of water and a small salad of celery, bell pepper, and lettuce in his new home.

“Tomorrow we should take Buddy hunting for insects,” Jenny said.

“Bug hunting, tomorrow,” Anna promised her friend. Buddy sniffed at the celery.

“Want me to leave the light on?”

Light did not comfort Anna. Dark was safer. She could hide in the dark. “Could you just leave the door open an inch or so?” she asked.

“Your wish; my command,” Jenny said and smiled. She had a nice smile. The two front teeth were canted, the edges of the incisors crossing delicately like the feet of a dancer.

Still wearing underpants and the shirt, Anna lay between the worn flannel sheets Jenny had put on her bed and laid her head on the borrowed pillow. It smelled of Jenny, a beachy smell, hinting at coconut oil and salt and clean breezes.

The smell of good summertime things gave Anna a fragile sense of safety. She curled on her side to soak in the comfort. For tonight her own personal monster—she’d heard him call her name—was trapped in the jar. When she told the “good guys” where it was, they would take him out and she would never be safe again.

Had Kay’s corpse not called to her to witness her death, Anna would have left the monster to die, as he undoubtedly would have left her to die once she ceased to amuse him.

Anna surprised herself by sleeping soundly. Not even the dream of Zach came to break her heart before the sun broke the night. Lying in bed, staring into the dove gray sky that ushered in the new day, she absorbed the strangeness of waking without that familiar pain. Unconsciously, she laid her right hand over her heart. Had the monster burned it out of her the way doctors once burned wounds with a hot iron to clean and seal them?

Scarcely had the strangeness receded when it was replaced by relief at not waking in the jar to find salvation was only a dream. Today she woke in a bed, free to come and go as she pleased. There was food to eat in the refrigerator and clothing to wear and water to drink. These were so precious, the part of her that stayed afraid feared to lose them. A lesson to be learned: For a woman with nothing, courage came cheap. The brave part of her, the fearlessness she’d found when tarantulas of the mind attacked her, wished she needed no more than a shell at the bottom of the ocean, loved no one, had no baby skunk to die, no sister to get lung cancer.

As she dressed, Anna concentrated on how pleasurable the slide of soft cotton over her skin was, how sturdy feet felt when encased in rubber and straps, how grand it was to run a brush through her hair, wash her face and hands, how glorious to have ChapStick and Jergens.

Focusing on these once mundane marvels helped keep dark thoughts at bay.

Having cleaned the drawer of Buddy’s poop—piled neatly in a corner the way a tidy kitty-litter-less cat might have done—she took him into the relative cool of the predawn behind the apartments and turned over rocks for him. They found a grublike thing the little skunk thought delicious, a moth that was about to expire, and two vinegaroons. To Anna they looked as dangerous as the scorpions they so resembled, but Buddy seemed partial to them.

By the time she carried him back to the duplex, Jenny was up, sitting on her picnic table, a chipped mug with a bison’s head enameled on it held between her hands. “Coffee’s on the counter,” Jenny said and, “Can I play with the skunk?”

“Buddy,” Anna reminded her. “Don’t let him fall.”

When she returned with her coffee, she sat on the table next to Jenny. The Fecal Queen had folded her legs tailor fashion, forming a flesh-and-bone skunk pen. Buddy, full of breakfast bugs, didn’t seem in any hurry to escape.

“Andrew Madden and Steve will be here in about forty-five minutes,” Jenny said. “You’re going to have to tell them something.”

She said this without looking up from where she dragged a bit of grass around her lap, trying to get Buddy to play with it as if he were a kitten. Anna noticed Jenny didn’t say she’d have to tell them the truth, or what happened, or where she’d been for all those days. Only that she’d have to tell them something. Anna also noted the “them.” Jenny said it in a tone that suggested there was Them and there was Us and she was part of Anna’s Us.

“Yeah,” Anna agreed, took a sip of coffee, and moaned softly. All things liquid were revelations of life.

“Is there anything you want to tell me first?” Jenny slid her eyes to check Anna’s reaction to the question.

Anna did not react, not externally. She had the odd sensation that her ordeal had split her into two entities. The one with the fear burned from it housed a calculating mind figuring odds, assessing dangers, studying a situation from every angle. The other was like a puppy on a six-lane expressway, a tightrope walker watching the knots fray, a tasty morsel in a bikini treading water in a school of sharks.

As she considered Jenny’s offer to listen, the fearless part of her schizoid self ruled, the seemingly sane self who conducted interactions with the outside world. The frightened puppy with nowhere to run curled tight around her breastbone, nose to tail, and tried to close out everything but the reassuring sound of her heartbeat.

Jenny was looking at her with a concerned frown. By normal conversational standards Anna had been quiet too long. Silence was her new normal, Anna realized. In silence, as in solitude, there was a chance of peace.

Taking it for reticence, Jenny offered Anna the coin shared so readily among women and so rarely among men. She offered up her pain so Anna might not feel alone or fear judgment.