Fuzzy Navel

10:13 P.M.
KORK

I OPEN MY EYES and wonder where I am. I try to lift my hands, and see I’m chained under a sink. My body hurts all over.

I must have been a bad girl. Father punishes us when we’re bad. He calls it Penance. I’m afraid of Father, afraid of his punishments. I feel like crying.

Then my mind clears. I’m not ten years old anymore. I’m all grown up. And this isn’t our house. It’s Jack’s.

I’m in the kitchen, all alone.

Anger replaces fear.

My eyes sting. I rub my face on my shoulder, wipe away some blood. My forehead is cut. My head aches. My right hand still stings from when the gun was shot from my grip. None of the damage is serious.

I test the pipe I’m chained to. It’s cold, metal, two inches thick. A drain trap, under the sink. I give it a hard yank. Then another. It’s solid.

I scoot up closer, rest my head on the bottom of the cabinet. It smells like dish soap and moldy sponges. I can’t see very well – so I work by feel, palpating the U pipe, seeking the joint. I think righty tighty, lefty-loosey, and lock both fists around the octagonal coupling. It isn’t a pipe wrench, but it’s all I have.

I twist. My hands are strong, from thousands of fingertip pushups while in Heathrow. My arms are bigger than most guys’. But the pipe doesn’t want to cooperate. It refuses to turn, preferring instead to dig a nice trench of skin out of my palm.

I twist and twist until it feels like my veins are going to burst out of my temples. The joint won’t budge.

I stop, then spend a few minutes trying to use my handcuff chain as a tool, levering and turning and pulling.

My efforts leave me with sore wrists, but no closer to escape.

I close my eyes, let the solution come to me. I broke out of a maximum security prison for the criminally insane. I should be able to get out from under a stupid sink.

Voices, elsewhere in the house. I make out a few words, but they don’t interest me. I’m not the only one trying to kill Jack and her family. But I don’t believe those jokers outside pose much of a threat to my plans. If they had any skills, everyone would already be dead. They’re jackals. I’m a lion. Lions don’t fear jackals.

I feel the pipe, higher up, where it meets the sink. The joint here is plastic, bigger, the size of a peanut butter jar. And it has nubs on it, to grip when attaching the drain to the pipe. I form my fingers around them and twist.

Red and yellow spots form in my vision, and my head begins to shake. I strain and strain until my entire world is reduced to five square inches of force and pain.

I release it and forcibly exhale. My hands are trembling.

But it moved a fraction of an inch.

I crack my knuckles, then go at it again, a smile enveloping half my face.