Chapter 31 31

She's paying attention to what she's doing, and that's important.Because at the beginning she didn't feel any strange at all.She originally thought that the blood from her wrist would rush out like a fluttering ribbon.But nothing was felt other than a vague sense of oppression and warmth.She was greatly relieved to find that what she saw was no big deal.She had picked a good spot on the shelf to smash the glass, and her view was not obstructed in the slightest. Jessie slanted her hand back, pressing the inside of her wrist—what palm-readers call luck bracelet lines—to the curved pane of glass.She watched in fascination as the point of the glass slice first rippled the skin and then pierced.She kept pushing, her wrists kept eating into the glass, the ripples filled with blood, and then disappeared.

Jesse's first reaction was disappointment.The glass tip didn't produce the gush of blood she had hoped (and half feared).Then the blade severed the blue venous plexus closest to the skin's surface, and the blood began to flow faster.The blood didn't rush out as she expected, but kept flowing out quickly, like water flowing out of a faucet that was turned on.Then some larger vein cut open, and a flood of blood poured out.It ran down the shelf and onto her forearm.Now, it was too late to go back, she had to get on with it.Either way, she had to get on with it. At least pull out your hand!Mother's voice cried out.Don't mess things up - you've done enough!Try pulling now!

The idea is seductive.But Jessie thought that what she had done so far was not enough.She didn't know the meaning of the word "glove off," a technical term doctors usually use for burn patients.But now that she had begun this act of terror, she knew that freedom could not be achieved by blood alone.Blood may not be enough. She twisted her wrist carefully and slowly, tearing the taut skin beneath her hand.Now she felt a strange tingling across her palm, as if she had stabbed some small but vital nerve ending that had been half dead to begin with.The third and fourth fingers of her right hand drooped forward, as if killed.The second finger, along with the thumb, began to tremble wildly back and forth.Though Jessie's flesh was benevolently numb, she still found a certain inexpressible horror in this self-harming situation.Those two fallen fingers looked like two small corpses.Somehow, they were worse than the blood she'd bled so far.

Then another spasm hit her side like the front of a storm, overwhelming the horror of her broken finger and the mounting heat and pressure.The spasm stabbed at her mercilessly, trying to pull her out of the contorted position.Jesse fought back angrily, filled with fear.Now she can't move.If it moved, she would almost certainly knock her improvised cutting tool to the floor. "No, don't do that," she grumbled through her teeth. "No, you bastard—get out of the way." She froze in her original position, trying not to put any further pressure on the fragile glass.She didn't want to break it off and then have to use some not-so-handy tool to do it.However, if the spasm spreads from one side of her body to the right arm, as it apparently was trying to do—

"No," she moaned, "go away, do you hear? You goddamn go away!" She waited, she knew she couldn't afford to wait, and she knew there was nothing else she could do.She waited, listening to the sound of her lifeblood dripping from the bottom of the headboard to the floor.She watched as more blood trickled down the shelf like a stream.Small shards of glass glistened in the bloodstream.She starts to feel like a victim in a fight movie. You can't wait any longer, Jesse!Ruth spoke sharply and hastily to her.You are running out of time! What I don't really have is luck.Damn, I've never had such a bad start.

At that moment, she either felt less cramped or was able to laugh at herself.Jessie whirled her hands in the handcuffs as the spasm struck again, thrusting its hot teeth into the middle of her body, and she screamed in pain.She kept moving, however, and now, it was the back of the wrist that was tingling, and the soft inner part of the wrist was turned upside down.Jessie watched intently, the deep cut across the lucky bracelet opening its black and red mouth as if mocking her.She drove the piece of glass into the back of her hand as deeply as she dared, while still battling spasms in her upper abdomen and lower chest.Then she pulled her hand back, and a fine mist of blood sprayed on her forehead, her cheeks, and the bridge of her nose.The shards of glass she used for this rudimentary surgery spun and fell to the floor, where the pixie blade shattered.Jesse didn't even think about it, its job was done.At the same time, she wants to take the next step. She wants to see if the handcuffs are still tightly guarded and refuse to let go, or if even blood and flesh work together to not let her go.

The spasm in one side of her body squeezed her hard at last, and then began to let go of her.Jessie didn't notice the disappearance of the spasms, nor the loss of her pristine glass scalpel.She felt the power of her concentration--it seemed her brain was burned by it, like a rosin-coated torch--and all attention was focused on the right hand.She raised her right hand and looked at it under the golden light of the evening sun.The fingers are covered with thick blood channels, the forearm seems to be covered with bright red latex paint, and the handcuffs are just a sudden curved outline in a flood.Jesse knew this would be the case.As she had done the previous two times, she slanted her arms and pulled them down.The handcuffs slid...and some distance...and jammed again.It was blocked again by the protruding knuckle under the thumb.

"No!" she screamed, pulling down harder, "I will never die this way! Do you hear me? I will never die this way!" The handcuffs were jammed so deep that, for a moment, Jessie was horribly convinced that it couldn't move a millimeter.Maybe the next time it moves, some policeman with a cigarette in his mouth will open it and take it from her dead body.She couldn't move it, no power in the world could move it, neither the princes of heaven nor the kings of hell could move it. Then, the back of her wrist felt like a thermal current.The handcuffs tugged upward a little.It stopped, then started moving again.At this time, the stinging pain like thermal current began to spread.It quickly turned into a vague burning pain, first spreading around her hand like a bracelet, and then biting her like a swarm of hungry ants.

The handcuffs move because the skin it rests on moves.The way it moves is like when someone is dragging the rug, the weight on top of the rug is also moving.The jagged circular gash she had cut around her wrist widened, and strands of wet tendon pulled across it, forming a red bracelet.The skin on the back of her hand began to wrinkle and pile up in front of the handcuffs.Now all she could think about was what the coverlet would look like when she pushed it off the bed with her kicking feet. I'm peeling the skin off my hands.She thought, Oh my God, I'm peeling my hands like an orange.

"Let go!" she screamed at the handcuffs, suddenly bursting with irrational rage.At that moment the handcuffs became a living thing in her eyes, some odious, difficult animal, like a wood eel, or a rampaging weasel. "Hey, can't you let me go?" The cuff had slipped farther than she had in previous attempts, but it was still stuck, stubbornly refusing to budge the last quarter (and now perhaps only an eighth) of an inch.Now, the handcuffs, lubricated with blood and blurred, lodged in the partly skinned hand, sealing off the glistening web of tendons, the tendons red as fresh plums.The back of her hand looked like the lower part of a turkey leg with the crispy skin off.Her constant downward pressure stretched the gash inside her wrist wider, creating a gash clotted with blood.Jesse didn't know if he'd drop his hand in this last-ditch effort for freedom.Now, the handcuff, which had been moving ever so slightly—at least she thought it was moving—had stopped again.This time it definitely stopped.

Of course it stopped, Jesse!Baby screamed.Check it out!It's all crooked, if you could straighten it again— Jesse thrust his arms forward, and the chains snapped back onto his wrists.Then, before her arm could even convulse, she pulled down again with all the strength she had left.The handcuffs tugged on the wrists and the muscles exposed by wiping off the skin in the middle of the hands. The pain was unbearable, and a blood mist engulfed her hands.All the skin that had been pulled off was loosely piled up there, forming a diagonal line from the base of the little finger to the base of the thumb.For a moment, the loose mass of flesh covered the handcuffs.Then with a slight creaking sound the pile of skin rolled under the handcuffs so that only the last joint remained.But that was enough to stop her advance.Jesse tugged harder, but nothing happened. That's it, she thought.All bets are off. Then, just as she was about to release her aching arm, the handcuffs slid over the little protrusion that had been stuck for so long, past her fingertips, and clattered against the bedpost.This happened so quickly that Jesse couldn't comprehend at first that it had happened.Her hand no longer looked like the equipment it was for normal people, but it was her hand, and it was free. free. Jessie looked at the blood-stained empty handcuffs and at her own torn hands, and an expression of understanding slowly appeared on her face. It looked like a bird flew into a factory chimney and was sprayed out the other end.However, the handcuffs are no longer handcuffed on the hands, really gone. "Can't believe it," she said hoarsely. "Damn it, can't believe it." It's okay, Jesse, you gotta hurry up. She awoke like someone shaken out of sleep.pay close attention?Yes, you really have to hurry up.She didn't know how much she had bled—a pint seemed a reasonable enough guess, judging by the soaked mattress and the blood dripping from the rungs—but she knew that if she bled any more, she would Going into a coma.The distance from coma to death will be short - just cross a narrow river. That's not going to happen.she thinks.It was that nail-hard voice again.However, this time it only belongs to her.This made Jesse happy. I didn't go through all this nasty stuff just to pass out on the floor.I haven't seen the death certificate yet, but I'm absolutely sure it's not on my contract. OKBut your legs— She didn't really need the reminder.Her legs had not been standing for more than twenty-four hours.As much as she tried to keep them sane, it would be a mistake to rely too much on them, at least at first.They might convulse or curl up under her, perhaps both convulsing and bending.However, to be forewarned is to be forewarned...or so, they say.Of course, she had received much of that advice (often attributed to the ubiquitous occult group known as "them") throughout her life.Nothing she'd seen in Shooting Line or read in Reader's Digest prepared her for what she had just done.Still, she had to be as careful as possible.Jessie knew that on that front, she had no more wiggle room. She rolled to the left, her right arm trailing behind her like the tail of a kite, or the exhaust of an old car.The only part of her right arm that felt fully alive was the back of the hand.The exposed piles of tendon there were burning and painful.The pain felt bad, and the feeling of the right arm wanting to detach from the rest of the body was even worse.But in a surge of emotion mixed with hope and victory, all this disappeared.She felt an almost divine joy in being able to roll over the bed unhindered by the handcuffs on her wrists.Another spasm hit her, hitting her stomach like a Louisville boxer punch.She brushed it off, she called it joy, oh, that's such a gentle word, it was excitement, full, utter elation— Jesse!The edge of the bed!God, stop! It doesn't look like the edge of a bed, it looks like the edge of the world on an old pre-Columbian map. Beyond here, there are monsters and pythons.she thinks.Not to mention a broken left wrist.Stop it, Jesse! However, her body ignored the orders and continued to roll, spasm or not.She turned her left wrist in the handcuffs before she slammed her stomach against the edge of the bed and fell completely under the bed, her toes thumping on the floor.However, her screams were not entirely of pain.After all, her feet were on the ground again. They actually stood on the ground. She pulled herself awkwardly from the bed, her left arm, still shackled, stretched stiffly toward the bedpost, her right arm momentarily pinched between her chest and the edge of the bed.She could feel the blood being pumped against her skin and down her chest. Jesse turned his face away, then had to wait in this new painful position.Then a violent, paralyzing spasm went from the nape of her neck to the gap between her buttocks.Her breasts and the sheets pressed by her torn hands were soaked in blood. I must get up, I must get up now, or I will bleed and die here. The spasm in her back passed, and she found she could finally put her feet firmly on the ground.Her legs were not as weak and numb as she had feared.In fact, they are very eager to do the work assigned to them.Jessie pushed up, and the handcuffs stuck to the left bedpost slid as far as they could go until they touched the second highest rung, and Jessie suddenly found herself in a position she had strongly suspected would never be reached again: Standing on her own feet beside the bed that had been her prison—almost her coffin. A wave of overwhelming gratitude tried to overwhelm her, but she pushed it away as firmly as she had handled the panic.There will be time to be grateful later.But it's time to remember that she's still in the damn bed, and her time to be free is limited.True, she hadn't felt faint or light-headed yet, but she knew that didn't mean she was safe.Maybe a crash is about to come suddenly, knocking out all the lights. Yet standing—just standing and nothing else—is so great!So beautiful that it's hard to describe? "No," Jesse said hoarsely, "I don't think so." Jessie put his right arm across his chest, pressed the wound on the inside of his wrist tightly to the top of his left breast, pressed his buttocks against the wall, and turned half a circle.Now she stands on the left side of the bed in what looks like a soldier resting.She took a long, deep breath, and then, ordered her right arm and the poor right hand, which had been torn from the flesh, to resume work. The arm creaked up, like the arm of an old mechanical toy that hasn't been cared for, and her hand landed on the headboard.Her third and fourth fingers still refused to obey, but she was able to grab the headboard with her thumb and first two fingers and knock it off the bracket.The headboard of the bed fell on the mattress where she had been lying for so many hours, and the outline of her lying on the mattress was still clearly visible, a sweat stain.The sunken figure was branded on the pink mattress, and the upper half was still soaked in blood.Seeing that figure made Jesse sick, angry, and terrified.Watching it made her feel like she was going crazy. She looked from the mattress to her trembling right hand.She raised her hand to her mouth and used her teeth to extract the shards of glass protruding from her thumbnail.The piece of glass shook, and then got stuck between her top teeth and front teeth, piercing deep into the tender pink lining of the gums, and there was a quick sting, and Jessie felt the blood spurt into her mouth, the taste was sweet and salty , with a texture as thick as cherry cough syrup.She had to swallow that syrup when she had the flu as a child.She ignored the new wound—for the last few minutes, she had come to terms with the worse—and re-bited the splinter, pulling it out of the thumb smoothly.After pulling out the fragment, she poured it onto the bed, spitting out a mouthful of warm blood at the same time. "Okay," she muttered.She began to wriggle her body between the wall and the headboard, panting heavily. The bed moved away from the wall, moving more easily than she'd hoped.But one thing she never doubted was that if she could get enough strength, the bed would move.Now that she had the strength, she began moving the hideous bed along the waxed floor.The foot of the bed slid to the right because she could only push the bed on the left, but Jessie thought about it and was relieved.In fact, she had included it in the base plan. When your luck changes, everything changes.You could have pierced your upper gum, Jesse.And you didn't step on a piece of broken glass.So keep moving the bed, honey, keep counting your— One of her feet touched something.She looked down, and she kicked Gerald's fleshy right shoulder.Blood splattered on his chest and face.A drop of blood fell into one of his staring blue eyes.She felt no sympathy, no hatred, no love for him.She felt a kind of terror and loathing for herself.She felt that all the emotions she had had over the years—those so-called civilized emotions, the staples of every soap opera, talk show, and call-in show—were vindicated, compared to her survival instincts. Superficial, so insignificant compared with the desire to survive. "Get out of the way, Gerald," she said, kicking him.Gerald wouldn't move, as if the chemical changes that had partially rotted him stuck him to the floor.Right on the upper abdomen of his swollen body, a cloud of buzzing flies was startled. "Fuck you," Jesse said.She started pushing out of bed again.She managed to get her right foot over Gerald's body, but her left landed squarely on his stomach.The pressure produced a loud humming in his throat, and a short puff of foul air escaped from his open mouth. "You'll have to ask for forgiveness, Gerald, you brought it on," she muttered, and left him behind without looking at him again.Now she was looking at the dresser, the dresser with the keys on it. As soon as she left Gerald, the frightened swarm of flies settled back down to begin their day's work.After all, there is so much to do and so little time.