Bare Bones

I mumbled an apology, stepped sideways to pass.

An arm shot out. Steely fingers closed around my biceps.

I felt my body spin, saw thick black hair, my face reflected off metallic lenses, mouth wide with surprise.

Fingers splayed across my left ear. My head shot forward and cracked against the door.

Pain screamed through my skull.

I struggled to free myself. The hands held me like a vise.

Fingers clawed my hair. My head whipped back. I felt blood and tears on my cheeks.

Again, my head shot forward and slammed into wood.

My neck snapped back yet again.

Forward.

I felt an impact, heard a dull thud.

Then nothing.

35

I SMELLED MILDEW, MOSS, A FAINT SWEETNESS, LIKE LIVER FRYING in a pan.

I heard geese overhead, or calling to one another on some distant lake.

Where was I? Lying prone on something hard, but where?

My brain offered only disconnected fragments. The Cobb trailer. A gas station. A funeral home. Someone named Maples.

My fingers groped the ground around me.

Smooth. Cool. Flat.

I caressed the surface, breathed in the odor.

Cement.

I moved a hand over my face, felt crusted blood, a swollen eye, a lump on my cheek the size of an apple.

Another mind flash.

Pin-striped black. Antiseptic white.

The attack!

Then what?

I felt panic start to rise in my chest. My tortured gray cells shot orders, not answers.

Wake up!

Now!

Drawing both palms beneath me, I tried to push up to my knees.

My arms were rubber. Pain sluiced through my skull. A spasm gripped my stomach.

I eased back down, the cold cement good against my cheek.

My heartbeat hammered in my ears.

Where? Where? Where?

Another barked command.

Move!

Rolling onto my back, I sat up slowly. White light fired through my brain. Tremors twitched the underbelly of my tongue.

I drew my ankles to my bum, lowered my chin, and breathed deeply.

Little by little, the nausea and dizziness subsided.

Slowly, I raised my head, opened my one good eye, and peered intently into my surroundings.

The darkness was like a solid thing.

I waited for my pupil to dilate. It didn’t.

Gingerly, I rolled to my knees and stood, groping the darkness, crouching, hands extended. Blindman’s buff and I was it.

Two steps and my palms hit vertical cement. I crab-walked sideways. Three steps to a corner. Turning ninety degrees, I followed the perpendicular wall, right hand in front of me, left hand Brailling the concrete.

Oh, dear God. How small was my prison? How small? I felt perspiration form on my face, my neck.

Four steps and my left toe jammed a solid object. I pitched forward. Both my hands shot out and downward into darkness, then slammed something rough and hard as my shin cracked against an edge of something on the