Chapter 4 4

This time, with her eyes closed, she imagined not her body in the dark, but the whole room.Of course, she's still in the middle of the room.Goodness, yes—Jesse Mechter Burlingame, not more than forty, five foot seven feet, one hundred and twenty-five pounds, still charming.Gray eyes, reddish-brown hair (she had dyed it with a glossy hair dye about five years ago, when it had started to turn gray. She was sure Jerrodmond was in the picture).Jesse Mecht Burlingame, inexplicably, has found himself in this predicament.Jesse Mecht Burlingame, probably now Gerald's widow, still childless, bound to this damned bed by two sets of police handcuffs, the nerves of her mind governing the imagination and the aforementioned The content is linked.She closed her eyes and meditated, her brow wrinkled.

There are four handcuffs in total.Each pair was connected by a six-inch steel chain with a rubber boot, and each had M-17—serial number, she presumed—engraved on the lock plate.She remembered Gerald telling her at the beginning of the game that each handcuff had a notched telescoping arm, which allowed the handcuffs to be adjusted.The handcuffs can also be tightened until the prisoner's hands are squeezed together, wrist to wrist, and the pain is unbearable.But Gerald gave her the maximum range of movement of the handcuffs. Why the hell not?she thought now.After all, it was just a game... wasn't it, Gerald?However, now she remembered a problem that she didn't understand before.She wondered again if it had really been just a game for Gerald.

What is a woman? Some other voice - the voice of a UFO - whispered softly in the inner well of her being.Life support system due to its vagina. go away.Jesse thought.Go away, don't meddle. However, the voice of the UFO refused to obey the order. Why do women have mouths and vaginas?Instead, it asked again.This way she can urinate and moan at the same time.Little lady, do you have any other questions? there is none left.Given the embarrassingly surreal nature of the answer, she had no other questions.Her hands turned in the cuffs.The little flesh on her wrist was tugging at the steel cuffs, making her frown.But the pain wasn't severe enough for her to move her wrist freely.Gerald may or may not have believed that the only purpose of a woman is to serve as a life support system with her vagina.But he didn't lock the handcuffs so hard it hurt her.Of course, she should have avoided the matter even before today.About that, she told herself, and no inner voice was mean enough to argue with her on the subject.However, the handcuffs were still too tight and I couldn't get my hands off.

Is that so? Jesse tugged tentatively.With her hand down pumping.The handcuffs moved up, and the steel cuffs wedged tightly into the juncture of bone and cartilage, where the wrist and hand formed a complex, solid union. She tugged harder.Now the pain is worse.She suddenly remembered the time Dad closed the driver's side door of the old squire station wagon. He didn't know that Maddy didn't get out of the car on his side, but changed direction and slid to his side, and the door Pressed her left hand.How she screamed!A certain bone was crushed—Jessie couldn't remember the name of the bone.However, she does remember Meddy proudly showing off her cast, saying "I also tore my posterior ligament".This line amused Jesse and Will, since everyone knew that rear was the scientific word for ass.They all laughed, more from surprise than contempt.But Maddy still had a face as dark as the sky about to thunderstorm, and she ran to tell her mother furiously.

Posterior ligaments, she thought.She intentionally increased the pressure despite the increasing pain. Posterior ligaments and ulna or whatever, it doesn't matter, if you can slip out of these handcuffs, I think you'd better do it, baby.Let some doctor bother to fix that broken thing later. Slowly and steadily, she added pressure, hoping the handcuffs would slide off.If they could move just a little bit—a quarter of an inch maybe, half an inch almost certainly—she would be able to get over the most protruding bony parts, and she would be able to deal with the more manageable musculature.Or so she hoped.Of course, there's the bone in the thumb, but she can worry about that later.

She pulled down harder, grinning from the pain and effort, and now the muscles of her forearm stood out in a shallow white arc.Beads of sweat began to seep from her brows, cheeks, and even the little dimples in her chin just below her nose.She stuck out her tongue to lick the sweat off her face, without even realizing it. The pain was bad, but the pain wasn't what stopped her.The reason is simple, realizing that she has used as much force as her muscles can bear, but it doesn't make the handcuffs move any more than before.Her simple wish to squeeze her hand out flickered for a moment, and then died.

Are you sure you're pulling as hard as you can?Or maybe you're just deluding yourself a bit because the hand pulls hurt so much? "No," she said, her eyes still closed, "I pulled as hard as I could, really." Yet the other voice was still there, vaguely felt rather than heard—a bit like the question mark in a comic book. There were deep white grooves in the flesh of her wrist—under the pad of the thumb, across the back of the hand, past the thin blue veins below—where the handcuffs snapped.Even though she raised her hands until she could grab the rail at the head of the bed, freeing herself from the pressure of the handcuffs, her wrists continued to throb. "Ouch, my God!" Her voice was trembling, isn't this just stuck in the big head?

Didn't she pull as hard as she could?Didn't really try hard?It doesn't matter.she thinks.She looked up at the glimmer of light reflected on the ceiling to her left. Never mind, I'll tell you why - if I could pull harder, what happened to Meddy's left wrist with the car door would happen to me: Bones would snap, posterior ligaments snap like rubber bands, scratch the ulna Somewhere on the top I don't know what it's called is about to burst apart like shooting clay pigeons in a gallery.The only thing that's changed is that I'm not lying here with my hands tied, thirsty, and a pair of broken wrists.They can also swell up.I think so!Gerald died before he had a chance to start, but he also completely destroyed me.

Well, what other options are there? No.said Mrs. Burlingame in a listless tone.It was the tone of a woman on the verge of total breakdown. Jesse waited to see if another voice—Ruth's voice—would offer an opinion.but no.For all she knew, Ruth was floating in the cool water of the office with the other loons.In any case, Ruth's withdrawal left Jesse to fend for herself. Well, then, take care of yourself.she thinks.Now that you've determined that getting out of the handcuffs is impossible, what are you going to do with them?what can you do There were two handcuffs—the young voice, whose name she had not yet thought of, spoke hesitantly.You've tried to slip out of one of the handcuffs, and that doesn't work - but what about the other?The one around the bedpost?Have you thought about them?

Jessie pressed the back of his head against the pillows, arching his neck so he could see the slats and posts.She hardly noticed that she was looking at these things upside down.The bed had some fancy name—court jester, maybe, or matron.As she got older, she found it increasingly difficult to remember such things.She didn't know if people called this a sensible thing or just getting old.In any case, she found that the bed she was in now was fine for sex, but a little too small for them to sleep comfortably in each other's arms. For her and Gerald, this was no shortcoming.Because for the past five years, both here and in Portland, they have slept in separate rooms.This is her decision, not his.She got tired of his snoring, which got worse every year.Occasionally, when they had guests staying overnight, she and Gerald slept together—uncomfortably in the same room.Otherwise they only share the bed when they have sex.It would be tactful to say that his snoring wasn't the real reason she moved out.The real cause is a problem with the sense of smell.Jessie grew to dislike, then loathe, the smell of her husband's night sweat.Even if he showered before bed, at two o'clock in the morning, the sour smell of Scotch began to ooze from his pores.

Up until this year, they had been in this pattern of more and more casual sex, followed by lethargy (which actually became her favorite part of the whole affair), and when it was over He got up to shower and left her.However, things changed in March.The scarves and handcuffs—especially the latter—seem to drain Gerald in a way that old boring missionary sex just can't do.He often fell beside her and fell asleep side by side with her.She doesn't care anymore.Most of these things happened in the afternoon, and afterward Gerald smelled lightly of sweat instead of the sour smell of light whiskey mixed with water.He doesn't snore too much. But all those occasions—all those occasions where scarves or handcuffs were used—were in the Portland house.We've spent most of July and some of August here, she thought.But on those occasions when we made love—not many times, but some—it was the old dull, tinned, mashed potato way: Tarzan on top, Jane on bottom.We've never done this game here until tomorrow.Why is this so?I do not understand. Perhaps it was the windows, which were so high that they looked oddly shaped with curtains.They couldn't find the time to replace the white glass with reflective glass, though Gerald was still talking about doing that until... well... until today.Mrs. Burlingame ended the sentence.Jess appreciated her flexibility. And you're right—maybe it's the windows.At least largely so.He wouldn't like Fred Ragland or Jamie Brook driving up and impulsively asking him if he'd like to play a round of nine holes of golf only to see him being rude to Mrs Burlingame , the lady happened to be strapped to the bedpost with a pair of Craig handcuffs.Gossip about such things might spread.Fred and Jamie are good guys, I think— Those are a disgusting couple, if you ask me.Ruth interrupted angrily. But they are just ordinary people.Stories like that are too good not to talk about, and there's something else, Jesse...   Jessie didn't let her finish.That was not the thought she wanted to hear, uttered in Mrs. Burlingame's melodious but prim, pale voice. Gerald never wanted her to come here for the game, probably because he was afraid of some ridiculous hidden danger popping up, what hidden danger?Well, she thought, let's put it this way, there's that part of Gerald's mind that really believes that women are just life support with their vaginas...the other part, for lack of a clearer term, I can call "Jerrod's good nature", knowing this, this part will keep worrying about things getting out of hand, after all, isn't that what happens? This idea is hard to argue with.If this situation doesn't fit the definition of being out of control, Jesse doesn't know what does. For a moment she felt sad, and she had to suppress a desire not to look back at where Gerald lay.She didn't know if she was sad about her late husband, but she did know that if she was, now was not the time.However, it's nice to remember some of the benefits of the people she spent many years with.It was good to remember how he sometimes fell asleep next to her after sex.She didn't like scarves then, and she grew to loathe handcuffs, too.But she liked to watch him drift off to sleep, to watch the wrinkles unfurl in his big pink face. And, in a sense, he's sleeping next to her again now... isn't he? The thought even chilled the muscles of her upper thighs, where the narrowing patch of sunlight shone.She pushed the thought away—or at least tried to—and turned back to studying the head of the bed. The bedposts were close to the edge of the bed, allowing her to stretch her arms without being too uncomfortable, especially since the chains of the handcuffs gave her about six inches of freedom of movement.There are four parallel baffles between the two bedposts.These, too, are of mahogany, carved with simple but pleasing ripples.Jerrod had offered to have their initials engraved on the center panel, and he said he knew a guy from Tashmore's, Glen, who would be happy to drive over to do it, but she hadn't given him the idea. cold water.To her it seemed striking and unnaturally childlike, like teenage lovers carving hearts on study-room desks. The bed frame sits above the headboard, high enough to keep them from bumping their heads when they jerk up.On the shelf was Gerald's glass of water, and some paperbacks from the summer.On her side, there are some cosmetics scattered, which are also left over from Xia Tian.Now they're dry, she thought.Shame, too—this little bit of country morning rose makeup does more to cheer up a handcuffed woman than anything else.All the women's magazines said so. Jessie raised her hands slowly, extending her arms at a slight angle so her fists wouldn't touch the bottom edge of the shelf.She looked up, trying to see what was going on at the end of the chain of the handcuffs.Two other handcuffs were attached to the bedpost between the second and third crosspieces.She raised her fisted hands like a woman lifting an invisible barbell.The handcuffs slid up the bedpost to the bottom of the last rail, and if she could pull off that rail, and the one above it, she could easily slide the handcuffs off the end of the bedpost.Voila, that's it! Maybe too good to be true, dear—too easy to be true—but you might as well try.Anyway, it's a way to pass the time. She clutched the corrugated horizontal board, which now blocked the upward movement of the handcuffs clamped to the bedposts.She took a deep breath, held her breath, and pulled herself up.But a hard tug was enough to tell her that the way wasn't going to work.It's like trying to pull the rebar cast in it from a concrete wall.She couldn't feel a single millimeter of looseness. The wretch wouldn't be able to shake it for ten years, let alone pull it off the bedpost.She thought, returning her hand to the loose position above the bed where the handcuffs had supported it.She groaned in despair.To her it sounded like the cry of a thirsty crow. "What am I going to do?" she asked the dim light on the ceiling.She finally cried out in despair and terror. "What am I going to do?" The dog barked again, as if in answer.This time it was so close that she screamed.In fact, it sounds like it's just outside the east window, in the driveway.