The Medusa Stone

Southern Lebanon

Harry White woke with a raging thirst, not for water, but for bourbon. He’d consumed at least two bottles of Tennessee whiskey a week for years. Though he rarely got drunk — his tolerance having been built up over the years — his body needed liquor as surely as it needed oxygen. His hands trembled, adding a new agony to his broken but splintered finger. For the first few days after his abduction, he’d been sufficiently drugged so he didn’t know how long it had been since alcohol had passed his lips, but after a couple of conscious hours in the cell, he knew down to the second.

Every waking moment was a torture crueler than anything he’d ever conceived of. He shivered in the twelve-by-twelve room despite the heat that soaked through the stone walls and beaded his body with perspiration. He kept the ragged blanket he’d been given clutched around his bony shoulders.

His need for a drink was an overpowering craving that was driving his mind beyond the realm of sanity.

He used the blanket not only to ward off the chills, but also to protect him from the flying monkeys that circled the room with the maddening persistence of hornets. He knew they were a DT-created hallucination, but they were terrifying nevertheless.

He’d seen the first one only an hour after waking and had called out in horror. The rational part of his mind told him it wasn’t real, but he was too weak to prevent its wheeling attack. A guard had come to check on him, a red and white kefflaya headdress covering his features. As Harry cowered, the man determined that nothing was wrong and left. The monkey clung to the wall near where it joined the ceiling and winked.

Two more appeared to terrorize him. They flew at him without mercy, breaking off their aerial charges just inches from his face. He could feel the air move from their swift passage, and their unearthly screeches were like nails drawn across a chalkboard. They would swoop by briefly and then land on the walls, their sharp little claws digging into the stone.

None of the monkeys had touched him yet, but it was only a matter of time.

“There’s no place like Tiny’s,” he moaned aloud, praying the invocation would transport him away from here.

After three long hours his hallucinations ended, and Harry fell into a nightmarish sleep more haunting than his periods of wakefulness. Demons more cunning than the monkeys were after him, chasing him down an endless hallway. They carried bottles of Jack Daniel’s, which they tried to pass to him like relay runners, but the bottles slipped out of Harry’s hands.

When he woke, his mind had cleared some. A breakfast tray lay on the floor near the bed, the coffee still steaming. His stomach was too knotted to eat the fruit or the jam-smeared bread, but he drank the coffee quickly. And then his lungs reminded him that he’d smoked a couple packs a day for the past six decades and he wanted a cigarette. Needed one.

“For the love of God, you sadistic sons of bitches, give me a smoke,” he yelled.

The guard appeared again, and Harry repeated his request with a little more civility, shouting just a few decibels quieter. The guard didn’t seem to understand the words, so the octogenarian pantomimed smoking a cigarette. With a sympathy known by smokers the world over, the guard pulled a half-empty pack from his pocket and tossed them on the floor with a book of matches.

“How about some booze, you bastard,” Harry said halfheartedly as he scooped up the rumpled pack. The splint made it difficult to light one of the cigarettes, and it took him several tries.

As the nicotine coursed through his system, he looked at the monkey that had appeared on the wall again, its teeth bared in an aggressive display.

“Screw you, too,” Harry said to the apparition, a filterless cigarette hanging from his lips. He knew from experience that the DTs would pass quickly and the monkeys wouldn’t bother him much longer.

He sat back on the bed, keeping one eye on the monkey just in case, and massaged his injured hand. He didn’t know where he was or who had grabbed him, or even why. He hadn’t seen the guard’s face, but the colorful headdress made him pretty sure they were Arabs and that his abduction involved Mercer and his search for the diamond vent.

Harry chuckled darkly. He’d seen what Mercer was capable of when he was riled and knew that his kidnappers were going to pay. Still, Harry wasn’t the type to sit back and wait to be rescued. He’d gotten himself out of a few tough scrapes before. Former Senator John Glenn was only three years younger when he went into space, he thought. If Glenn could pull that one off, surely he could escape this bunch. The guard had given him cigarettes, and it was only a matter of time before Harry figured a way to get the man to give him his freedom too.