Chapter 32 32

Her biggest concern is that the foot of the bed is either getting caught by the bathroom door or in the far corner of the house, forcing her to back up like a woman trying to force a large car into a small parking lot .As a result, the bed arced almost perfectly to the right as she slowly pushed it across the room.She only needs to correct course once midway, pulling her end of the bed slightly to the left, which ensures the other end of the bed is clear of the dresser.It was while she was pushing the bed like this—head down, hips pouted, arms tight around the bedposts—she felt her first bout of dizziness...she leaned against the bedposts and looked Like a drunk, tired woman who can only get up when she dances cheek-to-cheek with her boyfriend.She thought that the blackness in front of her eyes might describe this feeling more vividly.This feeling is primarily a sense of loss—not just loss of thought and will, but loss of sensory information as well.For a moment of bewilderment, she was sure that time had whipped her and thrown her to a place that was neither Daxkot nor Cashwickmark, but somewhere else entirely.This place is not any inland lake, but on the ocean.It was no longer the smell of oysters and coins, but the salty smell of sea water.It was the day of the solar eclipse again, only this thing was the same.She ran off into the blackberry bushes to run off with someone else, with some other daddy who wanted to do a lot more than cum in the back of her shorts.Now he's down the well.

The scene that seemed to have been experienced before was like water splashed on her head for no reason. oh my god what is thisshe thinks.But there was no answer.Only that puzzling image, one she hadn't thought about since returning to change in her sheet-separated bedroom on the day of the eclipse: a thin woman in civilian clothes, with her dark hair tied in a bun, beside her A pile of white petticoats. Call!Jesse thought, clutching the bedpost with his battered right hand, trying desperately to keep his knees from buckling.Hold on, Jesse—hold on hard.Leave the woman alone, leave the smell alone, leave the darkness in front of you.Hang in there, and the darkness will pass.

She held on, and the darkness passed.First the figure of the thin woman kneeling beside the village skirt, looking at the hole in the old plank disappeared, and then the darkness before her eyes began to recede.The bedroom was bright again, gradually taking on the autumn colors of the previous five o'clock.She saw dust flying in the daylight slanting in from the window by the lake, and saw the shadow of her own legs stretching across the floor.The shadow was folded at the knee so the rest of the shadow could climb up the wall.The darkness had returned, but it left a high, humming sound in her ears that was so pleasant.She looked down at her feet and saw that they too were stained with blood.She walked in blood, leaving a trail of blood marks.

Your time is almost up, Jesse. she knows. Jesse pressed his chest against the headboard again.This time it was more difficult to move the bed, but eventually she managed to move it.Two minutes later, she was standing by the dresser, which she had stared hopelessly across the room for so long.There was a silent smile on the corner of her lips. A woman who's dreamed of the black sand beaches of Kona her whole life can't believe it's real when she finally stands on it.I am like that woman.This seems to be just another dream, perhaps slightly more real than most, because in this dream your nose is itching.

Her nose didn't itch anymore, but she looked down and saw Gerald's snakelike crumpled tie, still on top.Even the most realistic dreams rarely offer this kind of detail.Beside the red tie were two small round keys, apparently identical.This is the key to the handcuffs. Jess raised his right hand and looked at it critically.The third and fourth fingers were still drooping listlessly.She pondered for a while how damaged the nerves in her hands were, and then rejected the idea.That might matter later—the tense struggle of the hands in the shackles earlier, while freeing that last quarter of an inch, had also repelled other thoughts.Right now, the damage to the nerve in her right hand is as unimportant to her as the future price of pork bellies in Omaha is to her.It is important that the thumb and first two fingers of that hand still receive command messages.They trembled a little, as if appalled at the sudden loss of their lifelong neighbor, but they responded nonetheless.

Jesse bowed his head and spoke to them. "You have to stop shaking. You can shake as much as you want in the future if you want. But now you have to help me, you have to help me." Yes, because, thinking of getting to this point but putting Keys dropped on the floor, or knocked off the dresser...that's unimaginable.She stared sternly at her fingers, which didn't stop shaking, didn't quite stop.But as she watched, the trembling gradually calmed down, and it was almost impossible to feel that they were bouncing. "Okay," she said softly, "I don't know if that's enough. But we'll find out."

At least the key is the same, which gives her two chances.She was not surprised that Gerald had brought back both sets of keys.He was really methodical.He often said that rainy silk is the difference between good and great.The only contingency he didn't expect this time was the heart attack and the kick that led to it.The result, of course, was that he was neither good nor great, but dead. "It's a dog's dinner," Jessie muttered.Once again she had no idea she was talking out loud. "Jerald was always a winner. But now he's just a dog's dinner. Isn't it, Ruth? Isn't it, sweetie?"

She gripped a steel key between the aching thumb and forefinger of her right hand (the pervasive feeling that it was all a dream came back when she touched the metal), and she took the key, looked at it, then looked again Handcuffs on her left wrist.The lock is installed on the side of the handcuff, which is a small circle.It seemed to Jesse like the kind of doorbell that rich people install at the workers' entrances to manor mansions.To open this lock, you just insert the hollow tube of the key into the circle, hear it click into place, and turn it. She pointed the key to the lock.But before she had time to insert the hollow tube, she felt a special dizziness, and her eyes turned black.Her feet faltered a little, and she found herself thinking of Carl Wallenda again.Her hands began to shake again.

"Don't tremble!" she screamed, pushing the key desperately into the lock. "Stop—" The key didn't fit into the keyhole, but stuck to the hard steel ring next to it, turned it in her blood-slick fingers, and within a second, it shot out from between her fingers—— out of lube, some would say - on the floor.Now there was only one key left, and if she lost that one again— You won't, baby said.I swear you won't.Get it before you lose your nerve. She bent her right arm again, bringing her fingers to her eyes.She looked at them carefully.The shaking slowed down again, but still not to the extent she was satisfied, but she couldn't wait.She worried that if she waited longer she would pass out.

She stretched out a slightly trembling hand, and when she was about to grab the key, she almost pushed the remaining key to the edge of the dresser.Numbness—the damned numbness wouldn't leave her fingers.She took a deep breath, held her breath, and clenched her fists tightly, regardless of which made her bleed again, and the pain was unbearable.Then she let out a long whistling sound and exhaled the breath from her lungs.She feels better.This time, she put her first finger on the small end of the key and dragged it toward the edge of the dresser instead of removing it right away, until the key protruded a little from the edge.

Jessie, if you drop that, said Mrs. Burlingame gloomily, well, if you drop all this too . . . "Shut up, ma'am!" said Jessie, pressing his thumb up under the key like a pair of pliers.Immediately afterwards, without even thinking about what would happen if this action went wrong, she raised the key and sent it to the handcuffs.For a few seconds it was bad.She couldn't line the wobbling keybar into the keyhole, and to make matters worse the lock itself doubled for a split second...then quadruple.Jessie squeezed her eyes shut, took another deep breath, then snapped them open, and now all she could see was a keyhole again.She slipped the key into the keyhole without waiting for the eyes to play any more tricks. "Okay." She took a breath, "Let's take a look." She pushed clockwise and nothing happened.Her heart jumped in her throat, and then she remembered the rusted pick-up truck that Bill Town had driven to tend the house, and the happy sticker on the rear bumper that read : Left loose and right tight.A big screw is drawn on the top of the word. "Left pine," Jesse muttered, trying to turn the key counterclockwise.For a moment she did not know that the handcuffs had snapped open, and thought that the loud click she heard was the snap of a key in the lock.She screamed, blood splattering the top of the dresser from her wounded mouth.Some splashed onto Gerald's tie, red on red.Then, seeing the notch of the latch open, she realized that she had done it—she had done it. Jesse Burlingame pulled his left hand out of the open handcuffs, a little swelling at the wrist, but nothing serious.The handcuff hit the headboard as it fell back, just as its mate handcuff had done before.Then, with an expression of bewilderment and deep awe, Jesse slowly raised his hands to his eyes.She looked from her left hand to her right hand, and then back to her left hand.Her right hand was covered with blood, she didn't take it seriously.Blood wasn't something she was interested in, at least not for the time being.For a moment, she just wanted to find out for sure if she was really free. She looked at her hands back and forth for about thirty seconds, her eyes moving side to side like the eyes of a woman watching a ping pong game.Then, she took a deep breath, tilted her head, and let out another shrill cry.She felt a huge, smooth, violent black wave hit her like never before, but she ignored it and continued screaming.She seemed to have no choice but to scream or die.There was no doubt a shard of shattered glass madness in that scream, but it was still a cry of utter ecstasy and triumph.Two hundred yards away, in the woods at the end of the drive, the ex-prince looked up uneasily toward the house. She can't seem to take her eyes off her hands, and she can't seem to stop screaming.She felt like she had never felt before.Some part of her thought vaguely: If only sex was half what it felt like, people would be having sex on every street corner—they couldn't help it. Then, she was out of breath.She fell backwards.She scrambled to grab the headboard, but it was too late—she lost her balance and fell to the bedroom floor.As she fell, Jesse realized that part of her had been waiting for the chains to catch her before she fell.It's ridiculous to think of this. The wound on the inside of her wrist broke away as she fell to the ground.The pain ignited her right arm like light bulbs on a Christmas tree.This time her scream was full of pain.When she felt that she was going to pass out again, she quickly gritted her teeth and held on.She opened her eyes and stared at her husband's torn face.Gerald stared at her with the same expression of surprise—this kind of thing should never happen to me.I'm a lawyer and my name is printed on the door.At this time, the fly that had been washing his front feet on his upper lip disappeared into one of his nostrils.Jesse turned his head quickly and hit the floor with a thud, staring at him.This time when she opened her eyes, she saw the headboard, with bright drops and streams of blood on it.Wasn't she standing there just a few seconds ago?She was sure it was, but it was unbelievable—that damned bed was about as tall as the Chrysler Building from here. Get moving, Jesse! It's baby, yelling again in her eager, annoying voice.For someone with such a cute little face, as long as she made up her mind, Baby would definitely be a shrew. "Not a shrew," she said.She narrowed her eyes and a dreamy smile played over her mouth, "A squeaky wheel." Get moving, damn it! Can't move.First, take a short rest. If you don't get moving right away, you're going to be rested forever!Move your fat ass now! That sentence hit home. "Not fat at all, Miss Mean," she muttered angrily, trying to stand up.It took only two attempts (the second was defeated by a paralyzing spasm that hit her diaphragm) to convince her that it was a bad idea, at least temporarily.Doing so actually creates more problems than it solves.Because she needs to go to the bathroom, and now the foot of the bed is lying in the hallway like a barricade. Jessie came under the bed, moving in a swimming gliding motion, almost graceful.As she slid, she blew off some erratic net of dust that stood in her way, and it floated away like little gray tumbleweeds.For some reason, the dust web reminded her of the woman in her vision again—the woman kneeling among the blackberry bushes, the white petticoat piled beside her.As she crawled into the dim bathroom, a new smell entered her nostrils: a gray, mossy smell of water.Water dripped from the bathtub faucet, from the shower head, from the washbasin faucet.She could even smell the peculiar smell of wet towels about to grow mold in the basket behind the door.Water, water, water everywhere, drinkable in every drop.The dry throat in his neck tightened, as if he was about to cry out.She realized that she was actually touching the water—a puddle of water coming from a leaky pipe under the sink.The plumber just can't seem to fix that pipe, no matter how many times he's called.Gasping for breath, Jesse dragged himself to the pool of water.She hung her head and began to lick the linoleum.The taste of the water is indescribable.That silky feel on her lips and tongue surpassed all sweet, happy dreams. The only problem is not enough water.That alluring dank, alluring green smell lingers all around her.But the river water under the pool was gone, but her thirst was not quenched, but she just woke up.That smell, that smell of shady springs and ancient unknown sources, did more than Baby's voice could: it made Jessie stand again. She pulled herself up on the edge of the pool.She caught a glimpse of an eight-hundred-year-old woman looking at her in the mirror.Then she turned on the sink tap marked fresh water—all the water in the world—and gushed out.She wanted to let out that triumphant scream again, but this time she managed only a hoarse rustle.She was bent over the sink, her mouth opening and closing like a fish's.She inhales the scent of that mossy fountain.It's also a mild taste of that mineral.In the years since her dad molested her during the eclipse, that faint smell had stuck with her.But now it's normal.Now it's not the smell of fear, it's not the smell of shame, it's the smell of life.Jessie inhaled the smell, then coughed it up gleefully.Simultaneously dip your open mouth into the water gushing from the faucet.She drank the water and spasmed it all out again in a strong but no longer painful convulsion.The water stays in the stomach for a short time, but it still feels cool, and small pink droplets splash on the mirror.Then she took a few breaths and tried to drink again. The second time the water remained in the stomach.