(no subject)

[seymoure]

37.

The mental fog started to lift, but nothing good came to light.

Actually there was no light to come.

Mickey was aware that his hands were tied to the arms of a chair, and there was something restraining his chest. He knew there was rope of some kind around his wrists by the amount of “give” he could feel. These were things he knew from researching “escape artists” from those days he wanted to be a superhero.

He also knew that his eyes were not covered, since he could see the vaguest outline of other things in the room. He knew there was a tiny shaft of light escaping into the room under what he assumed was the door.

His ankles were wrapped in something. He thought it might be rope also, since it gave in the same way as what was around his arms, and it was not wide like duct tape.

In many stories the hero could escape being tied to a wooden chair by smashing the chair into a wall and breaking it up.

His fingers told him this was a metal chair.

His movement relinquished more information. The chair had casters or wheels of some kind. It was some sort of office chair.

He began pushing with his joined feet to move the chair around the room. He was successful, but he ran into something that caused a thump, and then something came crashing down to the floor.

He didn’t hear anything break, but the sound was big.

He heard movement from the next room, and so he pretended to be “out.”

Through his eyelids he perceived light blazing into the room from an open door.

He recognized Throop’s voice, saying, “Probably just a muscle spasm or something. He’s still out. You hit him with a lot of juice.”

The door closed, but Mickey kept his eyes closed, just in case it was a trick. After a few minutes he decided that it wasn’t, and opened his eyes again.

He heard a slight bit of talking in the next room, but couldn’t really make it out.

Within the room it was very dark. The boy was grateful for that slash of light that kept him from being in total blindness. He was not a great fan of lack of light. He wasn’t scared of the dark, but he would rather have some light, somewhere.

In the room of shadows where he sat, Mickey could see a couch or table across from him. There was, maybe, a hat rack of some kind between the door and the table/couch and the door. On the other side of the door he thought he saw the edge of a bookcase of some sort.

He tried to move the chair just a bit, and realized that it was somehow secured to something. When he had made things fall, it was because those things were on the table or whatever he was tied to.

So he sat quietly.

He became fixated on that slice of light at the bottom of the door.

It is amazing how much you can depend on something when it gives you something you need so badly.

He searched the inside of his head trying to get hold of David, but was sure he was too far away to find his brother.

And, it was kind of dark and he, way back in the back of his head, wondered if there might be something else in the room besides himself.

He just sat, silent, and stared at that little bit of bright.

What was going to happen to him?

What was going to happen to David?

“Just cool it, kid,” came an answer in his head.

“David?” He thought.

“I’m not going to be able to keep this up for long, but, yeah. How’re you?”

Mickey smiled in the dark.

“I thought I was going to lose you,” Mickey told his brother.

“No way, it was close for a while,” The voice in his head told him, “But I’m okay now.”

There was something wrong. David would have called him “Kiddo.” He could feel an ever so slight variance in the voice.

“I couldn’t lose you,” He told the voice.

“You’re not gonna, bro.,” Came the answer.

This wasn’t David. “Bro,” was not in his vocabulary.

“He knows,” Came a voice from the other room.

The room was an explosion of light as the door was thrown open. Throop held the doorknob, Sanna was standing with him along with a man without any facial features at all. This was the source of the fake voice.

The voice in his head said, “How did you know?”

He knew that he shouldn’t give the enemy any more help than he had too.

“I watch ’24,’ I don’t trust anybody!” He said in absolute truth.

Sanna looked to Throop and said, “What is ’24?’”

Throop gritted his teeth and slammed the door.

Mickey felt just a little triumphant. They had tried to trick him and he had been up to it.

He was only a kid and they couldn’t beat him if he kept himself together.

He heard some discussion on the other side of the door as he was focusing on the pool of light on the floor. And then, the terrible thing happened.

There was a click and the light vanished.

He heard a distant door slam.

They had left the room next to his, and turned off the light in that room.

Now he was really alone, and in total darkness.

(c) 2005 by C. Wayne Owens