Like Clockwork

43

Theresa Angelo lay on her back, legs splayed, arms flung out like a sleeping child. Her long hair was matted around her head, tumbling onto the stone floor. There were rat droppings between the coiled ropes that supported the naked mattress she lay on. Her coat had slipped to the floor. Her exposed skin was mottled, puckered with gooseflesh. Her wrists were bruised. There was bloody skin under the nails of her right hand. The contusion under her thick black hair had seeped blood all night. It was very cold, even though the sun had hoisted itself as high as it could, so deep into the winter.

Her shallow breath misted the air above her bruised mouth just regularly enough to show she was alive. Then the noise that had penetrated her unconscious mind started up again. The mournful bellow of the foghorn vibrated deep into the recesses of her mind. It sought out and found crevices of consciousness beyond the drug that had held her inert for hours. It penetrated the most hidden places of her mind and activated again the basic impulse to stay alive. Slowly, the insistent rhythm of the foghorn summoned her to consciousness, cell by cell. A pulse jumped at the base of her throat, she shivered as her body fought to keep itself warm. The fog momentarily released a ray of sun. It shot through the small barred window, striking her face.

She would not have seen it, even if she had opened her eyes, but on the shelf above her head was a twist of blue rope and a key. There was no knife – but that anyone might have at hand.