Hot Revenge 5

Klempner

Juliana coughs and her face twists, more blood spilling now from her mouth. “Gotcha, Larry.”

I watch as, in a slow exhalation, the air escapes her throat. Her eyes lose their focus and freeze into a sightless stare.

“Juliana?”

She doesn't move, quite still. No lift to her chest. No flutter to her eyelids.

“Juliana?”

She doesn’t move again.

I’m quite alone.

No-one knows I’m here.

No-one is coming.

I gaze into the abyss.

*****

The blood pounds at my temples. My breath comes in short snatches. My vision is dark at the edges…

Flattening myself back against the wall, I scrutinize the prone Juliana, hoping that I might be mistaken; that there’s a breath of life in her.

I’m only fooling myself. Not even that. I know a corpse when I see one.

Juliana was the only person who knew I was here. She murdered anyone else who might know how to find me. Or even that I existed.

Arms wrapped around my knees, I shudder, muscles trembling and out of control. Head tilted back, I draw air… slowly…

And again…

Don’t panic…

Don’t panic…

Panic freezes thought, reduces us to the monkey-brain: perfect for fight-or-flight, but fucking useless for clear thinking.

Think…

Breathe…

A couple more breaths and I’m regaining my self-control.

The initial shock ebbing, I force myself to relax and the steel cuff at my ankle drags me back to reality. Trying to ease the soreness, I shift and pain stabs up my thigh from the knee I twisted when I slipped in the water.

More pain jabs down my wrist from where Juliana bit me, my nerves stretched to breaking, over-reacting to the small injury. Absently, I suck at the wound, then realize it’s actually two wounds: one where Juliana bit my hand, the other where she jabbed at me with her ridiculous spiked heels…

Her spiked heels…

Her spiked heels…

Discomfort forgotten, I scramble forward. My lunatic hostess collapsed and died several feet away…

Can I reach her?

Normally by now, Juliana would have departed by normal means and I’d be left with the green gloom of the solitary indicator light from the camera. Instead, I have full light: harsh and white, but clear.

What’s left of Juliana sprawls untidily on the concrete, arms and legs at awkward angles, the ridiculous 70’s Sci-Fi wig askew, make-up smeared and grotesque. She still wears her rictus grin of ‘triumph’.

I don’t care…

The boots…

One hand stretches toward me, to where I was sitting as I realised the key was a fake.

Lying flat to the ground, I stretch out, ignoring the scrape of my naked chest against the concrete…

And I reach for fingers which might just be in range…

My fingertips won’t quite reach hers, but it’s only an inch or so difference.

I stretch…

The ankle cuff bites into aching flesh…

… and my fingertips just brush hers…

How much more reach do I need? To get a hold? To get a grip on the hand, ideally the wrist, so I can haul the corpse towards me.

Four inches? Five?

I try again, straining every muscle, gritting my teeth against the torment from my ankle.

It buys me perhaps two inches, but the steel cuff grinds against my too-bony ankle…

… and…

… I can’t stretch any further…

Roaring my frustration, I slap my palm hard against the concrete, then regret it as the sting shimmers to kick-off the injury from where Juliana sank her teeth into my hand.

Gasping from the pain, I relax, then crawl back to sit against the wall again.

How to drag a corpse closer???

A loop of something around that outstretched hand?

Lasso her somehow?

Rope?

Rope… rope…

Rope…

My tattered shirt lies crumpled beside me, still where I left it when I took it off to get into the water. Filthy as it is, it’s still pretty much the cleanest thing in sight.

The worn linen doesn’t take much tearing. I chew a small hole into one hem to open up the seam, then rip. Even with my flaccid muscles, the fabric parts easily, with a small shredding sound. Five minutes later I have a series of strips eighteen inches or so long and an inch wide.

I know without trying that the cloth is too flimsy as it is. Threadbare, there’s no weight to it. But just for the hell of it, I try. I could strike lucky…

It’d make a fucking change…

Making a two-hands-sized loop at the end of one strip, once more flat to the floor, I stretch out, tossing my makeshift noose at Julian’s outstretched arm. It flutters across the small distance, then flops down over the dead hand.

Fucking useless…

… but it was a long shot anyway…

Over the next few minutes, I find myself humming as, sitting cross-legged in my spot by the wall, I plait together strips of semi-rotted linen into a ‘rope’, perhaps six feet long. The strips braided together have some real body and, experimentally, I heft it, tossing it from one hand to the other…

Still a bit lightweight…

I weave in a couple more strands, then try again…

Better…

But ideally, my rope could still use more weight.

Painfully, I stand, pausing to grab a couple of breaths as I straighten up. The air is stale and humid. Until now, I’d never really thought about how warm it is here; heat borrowed presumably, from the luke-warm water of the channel. Whatever my problems, cold isn’t one of them.

Fresh mountain air…

Clean and cold…

The dance of sunlight over the mountain lake…

After my lungs stop heaving, I reach up to my ‘fresh-water supply’, the small outlet that trickles cleanish water down to me. A few moments to cup hands, and suck up a mouthful of two of the brackish water, then I dangle the rope under the flow, soaking it.

Wetted, it weighs nicely in my hand, and with a flick, it zips, squelching around my wrist.

Back on my belly…

Reaching out for that outstretched arm…

Flick my noose at the hand…

And it lands, sitting atop the fingers, slopping water.

Got the range…

Not the technique…

I sniff, reel in my lasso and try again…

*****