That’s why when I surface enough to find myself lying flat on a hard surface with voices drifting in and out around me, and they bring out the ragagain, I know that I’m probably going to die. Doctors stopped using chloroform to knock patients out years ago for a reason. Sometimes they just didn’t wake up.
I fade in and out to hands on my skin, cool air blowing over my face, the tidal motion of being lifted and carried. Voices, always voices, speaking around and over me. A rag is pressed to my mouth for the fourth, maybe tenth time.
And then, finally, I surface for real.
I blink up at buzzing fluorescents and ceiling tiles, then throw myself to my side to hurl up everything I’ve ever eaten. What comes up is nothing but water and stomach acid. I clear my throat and spit onto the carpet, then lie onmy side. I lie there, drifting, until the drum pounding away in my temple can’t be ignored.
I go to touch my temple and stop short. My hands are bound. Cuffed together. They’re so tight that lines have formed under the metal where they cut into my skin. It doesn’t feel real, this thing restricting my movement.
It takes a beat to realize why my palms look so strange above the handcuffs.
They’re clean.
My fingernails are trimmed and rounded, and my cuticles have been oiled. Any trace of the woods, of the black gunk in the killing field is gone. I hold my hands to my nose, and my skin smells like I’ve been crushing lemon rinds and sage.
There’s a hummingbird trapped in my chest. Its wings beat faster and faster as I push up my sleeves to find bruised but clean skin underneath. And then faster still when I see I’m not pushing up a grimy flannel, but a soft white dress.
The hummingbird propels me off the thin carpeted floor. I don’t get far before there’s a hard jerk just under my ribs.
A chain, silver and thick, is secured around my waist. It’s tight enough to leave marks. The chain, in turn, is secured to a metal plate screwed into the cinder-block wall. The air is musty and cool. I’m in a basement. No amount of pulling or clawing could get the chain free. You’d need bolt cutters—big ones—to make a dent, and then probably not even then.
Trapped, the goblin says.
What comes next isn’t a word, but a feeling. A torrent offeelingsof being trapped, unable to move, unable to escape, stuck in the dark—
And then I scream.
If my throat was raw before, now it’s bloody. Every thought that isn’tGet out,get out,get out,get it OFF, pours out of my head. I scream and try to push the chain down over my hips but the—
walls press back, contorting your limbs and trapping you in the dark
If I had something sharp, I could carve away my flesh until it fit over my hip bones. I could carve off my breasts and dislocate my shoulders and gnaw off any bits that were keeping me—
locked in this box
—chained to this fucking wall.
Arms wrap around my chest from behind.Again.
A moment of vertigo takes me, and then I throw my unpinned arm back as hard as I can. The crunch of cartilage under my elbow is almost satisfying enough to overshadow the instant pain radiating up my arm. There’s a warm rush of liquid on the nape of my neck, and then I’m released. Before I can turn to face whoever it is, I’m thrown on the ground.
I’m being held down by people with faces smudged out by a thumb. They tell me to stop, to calm down, other things that don’t make sense. I shriek and kick and tell them to go fuck themselves. One lets out an “Oof!” when I get him in the gut. He presses his forearm to my throat. Footsteps pound down the stairs. Let them come. I’ll hurt them all.
Haircut’s face materializes out of the blur. The man whose nose I crushed with my elbow pulls away, choking and sputtering blood. I recognize him. It’s Greg.
Haircut is in my face, shouting. “We’ll kill her! We’ll fucking kill her if you don’t stop!”
He fists a hand in my hair and yanks. The world goes blurry from the pain radiating from the gash at the back of my skull. A whine whistles out of my lips.
“Look! Just look!”
I do. It’s two people—one standing in front of the other. I know one of them.
Her arms are behind her back and she’s gagged with a bandanna. A bruise swells her left cheek. Hair has escaped from the claw clip at the back of her head and sticks to her sweaty skin. There’s a wickedly curved knife pressed to the soft skin of her neck.
“Emma?” Her name is more wheeze than word.
Haircut leans more heavily on my throat. He’s panting. “Are you calm?”
