Page 59 of On Fire

Chapter Fifteen

Nic Silvano

It’s hard to breathe, that’s the first thing I notice. And I can’t move. I’m sitting in a chair with hands tied behind me. Handcuffs? Yes. There’s the bite of metal. And my legs are also manacled to the chair legs. I open my eyes to a dingy dark room with shafts of brilliant sunlight cutting in through slits in windows. Metal slits.

Where am I?

The back of my mouth tastes sweet and dry. My throat hurts. Whoever did this didn’t want to kill me. A bad headache is coming on though.

I cough and my ribs scream.

This won’t be hard to get out of. All I have to do is tip backward and slip the legs of the chair out of the handcuffs on my ankles. Then I can raise the chair over my head and smash it.

I pitch forward to gain momentum and start to hurl backward, but then the chair abruptly stops. Someone stands behind me. I can feel his hands on the back of the wooden chair.

“You’re not going anywhere. This is a little too early,” says a familiar voice and then that hand clamps over my nose and mouth again and the sweet smells fills me up. I struggle, hard, toss my head back, but he’s got a tight grip on my head and chin. It takes several minutes, a long time, but with each breath, I grow weaker. At some point I slip into the dark abyss again.

I can’t count how many times this scenario plays out. Every time I start to come to, he’s there waiting, sliding me back into torment. Each time, I struggle less. By the end, he just has to grab my hair, tilt my head back, place a bottle under my hose and I black out.

I don’t know how long this has been going on. This last time when I rise to consciousness, it’s really hard to breathe. I can only manage small breaths. I’m no longer in the chair and blood trickles down the side of my face. It takes a few minutes for me to loll my head back and see that my hands are shackled together from above. I’m strung up on a hook, on a chain swaying from a blackened ceiling.

My back and shoulders ache. My hands, though not numb yet, will be soon.

I find my legs and stand. Instantly the pressure on my shoulders eases. I can also breathe easier.

There’s a movement to my right and then Jimmy Graham steps into view.

Jim Graham.

“Now’s not the time either. You are something,” he says to himself. He takes a wide strip of cloth, but instead of gagging me, he ties it across the bridge of my nose and pulls it down, so it covers my mouth. Then he takes that small evil bottle of liquid and pours some on the cloth. I jerk, trying to escape that sickly smell. He sets the bottle down and places one hand behind my head. He pulls the cloth over my nose and mouth with the other. I cough, painfully stricken, and my vision warps.

Despite the movies, chloroform doesn’t knock you out right away. It takes four or five minutes.

And that’s when I realize he doesn’t want to knock me out. He wants me disoriented, weak, unable to escape, but conscious.

The sounds from a police scanner on a table overlap with itself as senses begin to merge. My heart thuds so hard against my ribcage I can feel my shirt quiver. I’m too far gone to be afraid.

“That’s right, don’t fight it,” he says and moves away. He’s doing something at the table, but my vision is too blurry to make much out. During this time, he moves slowly, walking over twice to hold my head and pour more on the cloth. Each time I nearly pass out. I can’t even writhe. Chloroform doesn’t last very long, but it’s brutal.

The chain rattles when my legs buckle. I can hardly draw a breath.

My vision is blurry but he’s moving fluidly around a table set up in the center of this room. He’s bending over, doing something. A soft blue light starts to blink.

Squinting helps until sweat trickles into my eyes. I stand again and the release of pressure is agony itself.

“Here,” he says swimming back into vision. “This will work.”

His breath his vinegary and sweet as well. Meth?

My shirt is completely open, except for the last button at the bottom. Sweat pours down my stomach. He lifts a heavy vest over my head snapping in place at both sides. The added weight makes the pressure on my arms worse. Muscles scream but I don’t give him the satisfaction.

Then he takes a roll of silver duct tape and starts wrapping it around me, passing it twice, handing it off to himself and then stopping at my chest, where he adds what was on the table, pressing it to my sternum and then more tape. He rips it with his teeth.

Without additional hits of chloroform, my head clears more quickly. My mouth is so dry I can’t speak.

Suddenly he steps behind me and unties the soaked cloth. It drops to the ground. “I need you bright eyed and bushytailed now.” He takes a second cloth and ties it over my mouth.

Then he kicks a shallow wooden box to where I’m standing. It’s no more than two inches high.