Chapter 23 twenty three

If you can get through this, Jesse, I advise you to stop thinking about the past and plan what to do in the future—start with what to do for the next ten minutes.I figured it wouldn't be nice to die of thirst in this bed, would it? Yes, not in a good taste.She knew in her heart that thirst was by no means the worst thing.Almost since she awoke, the image of the crucifixion had been in the back of her mind, bobbing up and down like a disgusting drowning person.Due to being soaked in water, it cannot fully float to the surface.In her college history class, she had read an article about this magical, ancient method of inflicting punishment and putting people to death.She was amazed to learn that the age-old trick of pricking hands and feet with nails was just the beginning.Like magazine discounts and pocket calculators, crucifixion is a gift that keeps on giving.

The real pain starts with cramping and muscle twitching.Jessie realized with great reluctance that what she had suffered so far, even stopping the paralyzing convulsions of her initial panic, was nothing compared to the pain that awaited her. up.Spasms and muscle twitches would jerk her arms, diaphragm, abdomen violently.It will continue to intensify over time, occur more frequently, and affect more places.No matter how hard she tried to keep her blood flowing, the numbness would eventually hit her extremities.But numbness brings no comfort.By then, she was sure to suffer from severe chest and abdominal cramps.There were no nails in her hands and feet, and she was lying down, not hanging from a roadside cross like a defeated gladiator in a Spartacus movie.However, this strange posture only caused her pain.

So what are you going to do now?Now you are fortunately not in too much pain and can still think. "Do whatever you can," she said in a low, husky voice, "so why don't you shut up and let me think about it?" Think about it—go ahead. She'll start with the most obvious and work her way up from there - if she has one.What's the most obvious solution?Of course, it's the key.They were still on the dresser, where he had put them.Two keys, exactly the same.Gerald, almost tender and sentimental, referred to the two keys as "hitman" and "reserve" (Jessie heard the accent of those words distinctly in her husband's tone).

If only for the sake of argument, could she drag the bed across the room to the dresser, get the keys and use them anyway?Jesse reluctantly realized that those were two problems, not one.She thought, She could pick up a key between her teeth, and then what?She still couldn't get it into the lock.Her experience holding a water glass suggests this.No matter how far the hand stretches, there will still be some distance. Well, get rid of the idea of ​​fetching keys.Descending one rung on the ladder of possibility, what would it be? She thought about it for about five minutes, to no avail.She turned it over and over in her head, as if turning a Rubik's cube, while jerking her arms up and down.While she was thinking over and over again, her eyes still fell on the phone placed on the low table by the east window.Previously, she thought it belonged to another world, so she didn't think about it.Perhaps that conclusion was drawn too hastily.After all, the desk was closer to her than the dresser, and the phone was much bigger than the handcuff keys.

If she could move the bed next to the telephone table, maybe she could use her feet to pick up the handset from the stand.If she can do that, maybe she can use her big toe to press on the base.and # are the wiring buttons between the two keypads.It sounds like juggling, but— Press the button, wait, and scream like hell. Yes, in half an hour either the big blue Norwegian ambulance or the big orange one with the Castle Town Ambulance logo would show up and take her away to safety.A crazy idea, indeed.But it was also a crazy idea to turn a magazine insert into a drinking straw, and crazy or not, she succeeded, and that was the point.It's certainly more likely than pushing the bed all the way across and trying to find a way to slip the key into the handcuff lock.However, there was one big problem with this idea: she would have to find a way to move the bed to the right anyway, which was a tricky problem.It occurred to her that the bed, with its mahogany headboard and footboard, must have weighed at least three hundred pounds.This estimate may be somewhat conservative.

But, you've got to at least try it out, and maybe you'll get a surprise — the floors got waxed after Labor Day, remember?If a bony wild dog can drag your husband, it should be said that you can drag this bed.You have nothing to lose by trying, do you? good idea. Jessie moves her legs to the left side of the bed while patiently moving her back and shoulders to the right.When she moved to a position where she could use that method, she pivoted on her left hip and pushed her feet toward the edge of the bed—suddenly, her legs and body not only moved to the left, but slid to the left, as if A horrible spasm ran through her left side like an avalanche, her body stretched into a position she wouldn't even try under the best of circumstances.It felt like someone had unexpectedly stabbed her hard with a hot poker.

The chains of the handcuffs on her right hand tightened, and for a moment, sharp pains in her right arm and shoulder prevented her from feeling her left side.It felt like someone was going to tear her whole arm off. Now I know what the bottom part of a turkey leg is like.she thinks. The heel of her left leg hit the floor with a thump, and her right foot dangled three inches off the ground.Her body was unnaturally twisted to the left, and her right arm was strenuously hanging backwards, twisting into a solid wave shape.In the morning sun, the taut chains of the handcuffs on the rubber sheaths gleamed coldly.

Jessie was suddenly convinced that she was going to die in this position.Her left side of body and right arm hurt as if screaming.Her weakening heart had lost the battle, unable to pump blood to every part of her stretched and twisted body.If you stay numb like this, you will die here.Panic seized her again, and she screamed for help.She forgot that there was no one else around but a shaggy dog ​​full of lawyer flesh.She flailed wildly with her right hand to catch the bedpost, but she slid a little farther, the dark mahogany bedpost within half an inch of her outstretched fingers. "Help! Please help me! Help! Help!"

no answer.In the silent, sun-drenched room, the only sounds were her own: hoarse, screaming, heavy wheezing, the pounding of a heart.No one else is here but herself.Unless she can get back to bed, she's going to die like a woman on a meat hook.Only by returning to the bed did the resulting situation not get worse: the right arm kept pulling back, forming an increasingly unbearable angle. Without thinking or planning (other than thinking about it when it hurts her body sometimes), Jessie arched the heel of her left foot on the ground and jumped back with all her strength, the only part of her painfully contorted body. support point.The action worked, her lower body arched, and the chains of the handcuffs that bound her right hand loosened.Frantically, she clutched at the bedpost like a drowning woman clutching a lifebuoy.She pulled herself back against the bedposts, ignoring the protests of her back and biceps.When she returned to the bed, she pounded her foot against the edge of the bed, as if she had just jumped into a swimming pool full of sharks, only to find it in time and save her toe.

She finally resumed her previous slumped sitting position.She was leaning on the rungs, her arms outstretched, her back resting on the sweat-soaked pillows, the cotton covers of which were now wrinkled badly.She rested her head lazily on the rung, panting heavily.Her chest is covered with sweat, and now she can't even lose the sweat!She closed her eyes and smiled weakly. Look, that's pretty exciting too, isn't it, Jesse?I think this is the fastest and hardest beating of your heart since 1985.That was the year you got the Christmas party kiss and the bed with Tommy Delgaydens, and around that time your heart beat too.You have nothing to lose by trying, isn't that what you think?Now you know better.

Yes, she knew something else. oh what's up baby "I know, I can't reach the goddamn phone," she said. It is true.When she kicked the floor just now, she pushed it with frightened frenzy, but the bed didn't budge.Now that she had had a chance to think, she was glad not to move.If moved to the right, she will still be hanging by the bed.Even if she could push the bed all the way to the phone desk that way, oops... "I'll be sadly hanging on the other side of the damn thing." She said with a half-cry smile, "God, someone kill me." It doesn't look good.An unknown voice told her.In fact, it looks a bit like it's just been informed that the Jesse Burlingame show has been canceled. "Make another choice," she said hoarsely. "I don't like this one." nothing else.First, there aren't that many options, and you've done your research. She closed her eyes again.For the second time since the nightmare began, she saw the elementary school playground behind Center Avenue in Falmouth.Only this time it wasn't the scene of two little girls playing on a seesaw that filled her mind.What she saw was a little boy—her brother Will—hanging by his legs from a monkey bar. She opened her eyes, flattened her body, and tilted her head back to get a closer look at the headboard.Hanging through the legs means hanging on a horizontal bar, then pulling up with your legs up, passing through your own shoulders, you turn quickly on a small axis to end the movement, and stand again.Will is good at this trick, and he does it cleanly.It seemed to Jesse that he was somersaulting in his own hands. What if I could do that?Just do the dangling leg piercing on the damn headboard, go over the top, and... For a while, the idea seemed dangerous to her, but seemed feasible.Of course, she'd have to move the bed away from the wall—it couldn't be done without a place to stand—but she knew she could figure it out.Once the headboard is out of the way (the headboard is separate from the headboard, so it's not difficult to lift it off), she'll roll over backwards and put her bare feet against the wall above the headboard.She hadn't been able to move the bed sideways, but pushing against the wall— "Same weight, ten times the effect," she muttered. "Modern physics comes in handy." She was about to reach for the headboard, to lift it off the L-brackets, when she took a closer look at Gerald's hideous police handcuffs, the chains of which were terribly short.Had he stuck the handcuffs a little higher up the bedposts—say, between the first and second rungs—she might have given it a try.The action might have broken a pair of wrists, but she'd gotten to the point where breaking her wrists in order to get away seemed perfectly acceptable - they could heal after all, couldn't they?However, the handcuffs aren't stuck between the first and second rungs, but on the second and third, which is a bit too low.Not only would the wrist be broken to have to hang over the headboard, but the weight of her falling body would dislocate the shoulder, meaning the arm would dislocate from its socket. Trying to move the damn bed anywhere with a broken wrist and a misaligned shoulder sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? "No," she said hoarsely, "it's not too funny." Let's get this out of the way, Jesse.You are stuck here.You can call me the Voice of Despair, if it makes you feel better, or helps you stay sane a little longer-God knows, I'm reasonable-but I'm the real Voice of Truth.The reality of this situation is that you are stuck here. Jessie jerked her head to the side, she didn't want to hear the authenticity of her style.She found that she could not avoid this voice, nor could she avoid the other voices. You're wearing real handcuffs, not one of those fancy little handcuffs that have pads around the wrists and hide an escape rod.If someone is addicted to this game and the joke goes too far, you can push this escape lever.Now you're literally chained, and you don't happen to be a mystical oriental ascetic curled up like a pretzel.Not a master escapee like Harry Houdini or David Copperfield.I'm just telling what I've seen, right?From what I've seen, you're stuck like toast. She suddenly remembered what happened after her dad left her bedroom on the day of the eclipse—how she flung herself on the bed and cried until her heart seemed either broken, melted, or maybe forever torn Living.At this moment, when her mouth began to quiver, her expression was very similar to that of the time: fatigue, confusion, fear, bewilderment, the last expression took a large part. Jesse started to cry.But after shedding some tears, there were no more tears in her eyes.Apparently the stricter sanity was at work.Yet she cried without tears, the sobs in her throat as dry as sandpaper.