This choice: Wait for Blackwell to return. • Go Back...Chapter #5A Not-So-Great Escape by: Seuzz   The night is long and cold, because Lucy has the bed and the sheets and you have the concrete floor. You might have dozed off at a few points, but you doubt it.
You stir when daylight begins to seep through the window, but you don't move until you hear Lucy shift and raise her head. "Do we get breakfast?" you ask her.
She grunts and makes a face, and it's a minute before she answers through a heavy yawn. "Every few days he'll bring something down, but you better get used to the hunger pains."
* * * * *
You pace the room, trying to keep warm, and communicating with Lucy in only short bursts. Hours pass.
Finally the door at top of the staircase opens and Blackwell—the man himself and not your double—smiles down at you.
"You may come up now, Miss Vredenburg," he says lightly, as though ushering her in for an appointment. He comes halfway down the stairs and holds out his hand. "You'll be quite alright, I assure you."
She looks at him, and looks at you, and pulls the sheets up to her chin. The professor clucks impatiently.
"You first, Miss Vredenburg, then Mr. Prescott a little later. I wish to thank you children for your indulgence, but it is time for you to go home."
"You're not really letting us go, are you?" Lucy says.
"My dear child, I can hardly keep you down here forever, and I don't really want to."
"You want us to promise we won't say anything?"
"I can hardly demand that of you, as you would instantly renege. But I have made arrangements. I needed test subjects, and you have served admirably. A little light amnesia will wash away the lingering stains, and you'll be quite happy again, I assure you."
Still Lucy doesn't stir.
"Of course," Blackwell says with a shrug, "if you'd prefer my brand of hospitality—"
That gets her up, and she winds the sheet about her. But you pluck at her elbow as she totters toward the staircase. "Don't go," you tell her. "It's a trap of some kind."
"Yes, of course it is," Blackwell retorts, "whereas this basement is a holiday resort. Do hurry, Miss Vredenburg."
She pulls away from you. "It's the only chance I've got," she says. "And he'll be back for you. Right?" She looks up at Blackwell. He nods with a benign smile.
Slowly, she ascends the stairs, but seems to find new strength when she clasps his hand, and she fairly runs the rest of the way up behind him. The door closes.
A few minutes later it opens again. "Time for you now, Mr. Prescott," Blackwell says with oily benignity. "And to show there are no hard feelings, you will find your night's wages—almost two hundred dollars—on the table in the foyer. Your clothes and keys are in your truck. Oh, I almost forgot." He tosses down small object shaped something like a bone. "You'll need that to get out." He disappears again.
It all seems too easy, and you linger for quite a while. Then, girding yourself, you run up the stairs, and find yourself back in the library.
True to Blackwell's word, there is a stack of ten twenties next to the front door, and you find your truck parked outside, with the keys in the ignition and a fresh set of clothes in the seat. You quickly dress, gun the engine, and rush down the road.
You can hardly believe it would be as simple as that. Is the man mad? Does he really think you won't tell anyone? Except what could you say, given that, to all appearances, you spent the night at your house last night? Maybe that's why he didn't give you that amnesia treatment?
Wait. Didn't he say there would be some kind of memory wipe?
While you are puzzling that out, something gets in the truck behind your seat. You wheel to look over your shoulder. Of course there isn't anything there, and with a shake of your head you chide yourself for thinking that something could get inside your truck while you're hurtling down the street at fifty miles an hour.
Then, as you approach a sharp turn in the road, something closes its hands over yours, presses its foot into the accelerator, and jerks the truck from your control. A large brick wall looms ...
* * * * *
For the next few weeks, after you waken, you are mercifully kept on a cocktail of powerful painkillers. You are only intermittently lucid, and more than once you bat away people that you know you should love and trust, screaming that they are imposters. More than once you find yourself back in Blackwell's basement. But the fog gradually clears and the pains increase until they pass over a sort of hump and begin to decrease again. You are pulled from school, naturally, and it's a depressing Halloween and Thanksgiving, even with the constant visits from your family and friends. Missing the rest of the school year is not much consolation when you know that you'll just have to pick up again next year.
And it's less than a consolation for knowing that you will never walk again.
* * * * *
"Sucks to be us," Andrew Gary says a few days before Christmas. Your neighbor is also a wheelchair-bound invalid, and he's been showing you the finer points of maneuvering. Now, though, it's a toast with clinking beer bottles that he offers you. You both chug.
"Teach me computer programming?" you ask after letting out a long belch.
"I can do that," he says. "But, you know, there's lots more you can do without needing your legs."
"Yeah, but I can just come next door for lessons."
He grunts. "You're gonna have to get used to going out in public, doing things out there for yourself."
"I know. But—and I don't want you to think I'm gay—I like hanging out with you."
"Nothing gay about thinking me a handsome boy." He grins. "There's nothing gay about truth." You bump him with your own chair.
"Oh, that reminds me," he says after a pause. "A girl called last night, looking for you. Just after you left. Did she get ahold of you?"
"I turned my phone off. Trying to avoid some people."
"Well, she sounded sexy. So I don't know why she'd be interested in you."
"Fuck," you exclaim as you examine the call list on your cell phone. "Fucking hell."
"Who is it?"
You ignore him as you dial her number. You swallow, trying to hide the tremble in your voice as she answers. "Hello. Uh, Lucy? This is Will Prescott. You called me yesterday?"
* * * * *
It was one of the more painful—even infuriating—mysteries after your accident that Lucy should have gotten off scot-free. No accident for her, which went a long way toward convincing you that the whole thing was your fault, and so you never told anyone (at least when you were lucid) about your time at Blackwell's. But she never called you, and when you tried calling or emailing her you got no reply or response. So for her to reappear this way ...
She is as sexy as ever as she steps from her SUV, to smile knowingly as you watch her from the front yard. "It's nice to see you, Will," she says softly.
"Nice to see you too, I guess. Well, better late than never, I should add if I'm going to be honest."
She smiles faintly. "How mobile are you in that thing?"
"I can get around. Why?"
"Can we go for a ... well, for a walk?"
You indicate that she should lead the way.
"So, I ignored all those messages you sent me after your accident," she says as you slowly roll down the sidewalk beside her.
"Did you even know what I was talking about?"
"Of course I did."
"So Blackwell was lying when he talked about making you and me forget what happened."
"Naturally. The man was a liar through and through."
"So why didn't you tell anyone about it all?"
"Why didn't you?"
You grimace. "I think I did. But I was drugged out of my mind and no one would believe me, then or afterward."
"The same here. I wasn't in an accident, but no one would have believed me."
"So he gets away with it," you say bitterly.
"Maybe, maybe not."
"What does that mean?"
She turns to look at you steadily. "Do you think you could stand to see him again, Will? If I drove you out there, would you go and talk to him?"  | Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
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