Chapter 22 Below
Below
Once, I wanted to die. I even made a plan. I couldn’t see a way out. No light at the end of the tunnel. If only I could whisper to my past self, make a form of gossamer and tell that girl how accustomed to the dark I could truly become.
Once, I had friends. Better than that. Had a best friend.
But for every ounce of love in my body, there was an equal measure of hate, because it hurt, standing at the edge of a life where love was not just expected but assumed.
I would watch the way her family moved around each other with such casual affection and feel something sharp and broken lodged between my lungs.
Eventually, it hurt too much. So I ruined it, all of it. But it wasn’t just my fault.
Couldn’t you see? Couldn’t you hear me asking for help?
But I never had, of course. I lied and lied and waited to be called on it.
For someone to swoop in and wrap their arms around me and tell me, I know, I know, but it’ll be all right.
They didn’t. Just as well. I would have sunk my teeth into them if they tried.
I tried running away. I thought I could be someone else if I could be somewhere else, but the world doesn’t work like that.
It demands a name. It despises reinvention.
I carried my failures with me, and eventually, I came limping home.
But when I got back, things had changed.
The people I knew turned away from me. Treated me like I was tainted.
So I made my plan.
I’d met lots of men and women, boys and girls, who’d tried and failed.
I had a good grasp of the available methods.
My approach was rational: the best chance of success balanced against the least chance of lasting effects if I failed.
Lorraine, the woman I met in the shelter with her sunken skull and slack jaw, the curled--in fingers that failed to hold the gun steady as it leapt, would not be my future.
It was the best I’d felt in a long time, those days that were supposed to be my last. Everyone I spoke to said I was doing so much better, and I was. I was about to be free. A smile lodged itself at the corner of my mouth and wouldn’t quit.
Six hours, more or less. Six hours more, and there would have been no girl to cage. I would have been gossamer, but instead, I was still locked in this net of sinew and bone, weak blood and dumb nerves, this dull thing of meat, when I was brought to this place.
It was going to be my choice. Mine. And maybe I don’t know how to live, but I’m not going to die because of someone else.
Dad always said I was a contrary bitch.
I wedge the bolt, retrieved from a dusty corner, against the wall once again. I steady it. My efforts have chipped the concrete wall, giving me a pit that helps brace it. I position myself more carefully. Jenny doesn’t need any more of my teeth today.
With all the meager strength I have left, I push the end of the bolt downward.
This time, there is no doubt. The metal gives, a stiff surrender.
I pause, adjust my weight, try again. Another easing, and I stop, feeling at the link with my fingers.
The amateur welding has given way. There’s a gap.
Narrower than my finger. Wider than the links of the chain.
My hands shake as I ease the next link up and feed it through the gap, and then—-
The chain is broken. One end in my hand, the other hanging from the wall. For an instant, I sit frozen, uncomprehending.
And then I scramble for the door.
I hit the table on the way, clipping it hard with my hip.
I fall to one knee and give a bark of pain but shove right back up to my feet.
One hand gropes ahead of me, the other holding the chain wrapped around my fist to keep it from dragging.
There’s the wall. And the doorway. I force myself to slow down as I reach the steps. The last thing I want is to fall.
I make my way up one at a time, fingers reaching ahead and above until they bump against the hard barrier of the door.
I know it’s locked. It has to be. But still, I shove at it. It lifts a fraction and my heart leaps—-but then it sticks.
I swallow down panic, but the darkness lights up with purples and yellows, and my knees go suddenly slack. I collapse onto the step, my breath thin, my limbs weak.
You knew it was locked, I chide myself. Come on, come on, what’s next?
Light. I need light, and then I can see what I need to do next. I half crawl down the steps again, the retreat feeling all too much like failure. My mouth is uncomfortably dry. My limbs frighteningly weak.
The light switch is to the right of the stairs. I feel along, my palms scraping at the wall. There. A box sticking out, cords running from it. I find the switch and flip it.
Nothing.
I flick it again, up and down, but nothing happens.
No water. No electricity, either.
No light.
This time, when I sink to the ground, it isn’t my knees going out but the whole of me.
I can’t do this in the dark.
Even the exertion of walking these few steps has my heart hammering, my head spinning.
I was never going to get out.
I see that now. My dreams always ended at the bottom of the stairs. I could never see the door. Never quite picture it opening.
But I tried. Didn’t I? I tried, and I got close, I really did, and that matters. It has to matter.
Of course it does, says the girl with copper hair. Her eyes are made of copper, too. Bright pennies for the dead.
She takes my hand. The chain sings behind me on the floor as I drag it. The bed is where I left it. The sharp stone, too. The gossamer girl holds it out to me (it’s already in my hand).
It’s time, she says.
Yes.
Time at last to add my name, my real name, to the list of the dead. They gather around me, moths in their eyes and lichen in their hair. Their footsteps bloom with mushroom caps.
Now, they say, and here, and what is—-but they aren’t speaking at all.
There are voices. Outside. Voices, and the sound of metal being struck.
Someone is here.