Nevada Barr - The Rope

Deadly nightshade.

Did one get the “deadly” if one ate it? It was good to have options. Rising to her feet was too labor intensive, so, shutting out Molly’s “staying alive,” she held her worthless arm across her belly and knee-walked toward the plants. Chewing on the leaves or the blossoms might produce some moisture or it might kill her. Either way, she figured she was ahead.

Reaching for the juiciest-looking leaf, she noticed a deeper shadow , round and dark, like the back of a turtle—or a land mine—to one side of the scrap of living green. It was half hidden in the sand. Approaching the object with the suspicion of a cat in a new country, she shuffled toward it, each small movement driving knives into her skull and shoulder. Tentatively, she nudged it with her knee. It didn’t explode.

It was an old metal canteen, the brown-and-blue fabric cover faded to grays. Folding herself down, she tugged it free of the sand by its army green strap. It was heavy, nearly full. Thirst made unbearable by this promise of water, Anna jammed it between her thighs and awkwardly unscrewed the cap with her right hand. A bit slopped out, and she groaned at the waste and the luxury. Carefully curling it against her chest, lest it be too heavy to hold one-handed, she bent her head, locked her mouth around its metal lips, and drank deeply.

For a moment she felt good, almost giddy with relief. She drank a second time, then screwed the metal cap back on tightly. Her captor had left water for her. That meant he didn’t want her to die.

Didn’t want her to die yet.

If he wanted her alive, that meant he’d be coming back.

Daylight was nearly gone. Night was when predators hunted; at least the cats in New York hunted at night, as did the thugs for the most part. Would her predator make his appearance soon? Hours by herself to look forward to, with only her mind to play with and rocks to keep her company. She was beginning to understand why solitary confinement was such an effective punishment. She wanted her abductor to come even as she feared it. At least, after he came, she would know how frightened to be.

The sky turned from blue to gray to black so absolute the circular walls of her jar seemed to glow in contrast. Stars, bright enough Anna mistook the first for an airplane, pierced the inky eye high above. Clear and sharp, they seemed no more than a hundred feet from the sand and, paradoxically, incomprehensibly far from earth.

Cool air poured into the hole, welcome at first, then chilling. Silence settled like concrete as she strained to hear the approach of a car engine or a footstep, the stealthy scratch of boots on rock.

Lethargy claimed her. Stars became supernovas, then blurred. Her bladder emptied, yet she hadn’t the energy to move to clean sand. Fragments of thought bloomed, and in the blooms were serpents of color. Her shoulder no longer hurt, and the pain in her head hid behind a curtain of thick felt. Legs and arms were leaden, too heavy to move.

The water in the canteen was drugged.

When the monster came she would be unconscious, helpless, as she must have been when he’d taken her clothes and pack and wristwatch. She’d been drugged then, too; she should have known it from the hangover, the amnesia, the way her mind wouldn’t work, drugged and stripped naked and hurt, smashed on the head, her arm dragged from its socket. Had she fought back?

Pushed by terror, the torpor receded a few inches. It was only a short reprieve. A night blacker than the one above was coming to claim her. She roused herself enough to scream. The breathy uhhn didn’t get more than a foot from her lips.

She cried, then stopped. Yelled weakly, then quit.

Inner darkness pooled with that outside her skin. Soon she would drown in it.

“What the hell.” Her words were slurred and her head heavy with stupidity as she fought to her knees. No light, she found her way by touch. Using her good hand, she laid the knuckles of her useless arm’s hand on the sand palm up. “Gravity sucks,” she mumbled as her body swayed, threatening to topple her. Inch by inch she eased her left knee sideways until it was in the middle of the palm.

“Shit, shit, shit,” she whispered and, with what strength she had left, jerked upward. An agony of pain cut through the drug haze as she heard bones grind and snap and settle. Clutching her arm to her, she fell back moaning. After a minute agony dispersed, leaving behind soreness and a wild itching as blood moved through her veins into her fingers. Either she’d resocketed the bone or the drug was masking the consequences of the attempt. Chemical darkness clogged her eyes. Like a puppy, she curled up. She wanted to pray but wouldn’t let herself.

The Bastard didn’t exist and didn’t deserve to hear from her anytime soon.

Long after the Candors and Heckle and Jeckle, as Regis dubbed them, had gone to bed, Jenny sat on her porch and smoked. Her erstwhile roommate had been an odd duck, but Jenny had taken to her right off. That was not the usual for the Gorman girls. She and her sisters had to get used to people by degrees, ever wary for signs that they were untrustworthy or cruel or snitched food or lovers. A legacy from their parents.

Jenny didn’t often think of her folks. It wasn’t that she hated them. Mom and Dad Gorman weren’t evil; they’d never yelled or raised a hand to any of their five daughters. They weren’t drunks or pedophiles. They were wilting flower children, embracing tune in, turn on, and drop out with the younger generation. They made promises they didn’t remember to keep, left bills unpaid, forgot to pick up the children at school, spent birthday money Gramma and Grampa gave their daughters on things for themselves, always with the promise that they’d “pay it back with interest.”

Then, when Jenny was twelve, Jodie eleven, Jessie fourteen, Jean six, and Jenna two and a half, Mummy and Daddy got in the car to go see Terms of Endearment and didn’t come home for three years. Two weeks before Jenny’s fifteenth birthday they’d waltzed into Gramma’s kitchen streaming beads and skirts and hair and were hurt to find out nobody much gave a damn. Baby Jenna didn’t remember them, and even Jean was a little vague. Jenny and her other sisters remembered too well to believe in them anymore. They remembered too well to believe in anyone who was not yet tested and proven to be reliable.

How had the adorable little Pigeon fluttered so effortlessly through these defenses? Jenny wondered. Lust? As she watched cigarette smoke curling in the still air, drifting in a cloud across the fingernail of moon, she pondered that. What there was of Anna Pigeon was “cherce,” as Tracy had said of Hepburn. The long red-brown hair was a definite turn-on, as were the high cheekbones and clear hazel eyes. Her ears were small and neat and close to the head. Her nose was a perfectly respectable nose. If she smiled she might dazzle. A girl could do worse for a bedmate than Anna Pigeon. Customarily Jenny’s taste ran to the more lushly upholstered type. Ms. Pigeon’s clavicles stood out like a coat hanger, and her scapula could pass for wings when she stretched her arms back. Jenny always joked, to sleep with a skinny woman would be like sleeping in the knife drawer.

The joke was on Jenny this time. Fortunately, Ms. Pigeon had flown the coop before Jenny could get cut too bad.

Anna’s darkness had been part of the appeal, she had to admit. The woman walked in a cloud almost as visible as the dust that hung around Pig-Pen in the cartoons. Jenny was a sucker for stray kittens, wounded mongrels, meth-addicted girlfriends, and down-and-out boys. Anna definitely had the wounded bird syndrome going for her. Another lure was her mystery; she never said word one about the gigantic cross nailed to her skinny back.