Sapphic Voices Mystery

The Ross/Fletcher Case

Part Five

Daddy walked into the room. He was wearing a maroon suit and hat. His black tie was skinny and had no appetite. An unlit cigar was wedged between the fingers of his right hand. He could have been an extra in a thirties gangster flick. He sauntered in, grabbed the chair opposite me, spun it around, and sat. With his arms draped over the reversed backrest he stared at me.

I stopped a waiter retreating from a nearby table and asked for drinks.
"Scotch," I said, "Neat. Two of them." It seems I had momentarily forgotten I didn't drink scotch, nor did my father. The waiter returned almost immediately carrying two umbrella drinks in wooden bowls. The liquid inside smelled sweet and tasted like honeysuckle flowers.

I noticed the band when swing music surged from near nothingness into blaring reality. A tall, pale man dressed in green tapped my shoulder. I looked from his cocky grin to my father, who nodded. I shrugged and rose from the table. My hat found my head. I smoothed my own gangster suit beneath sturdy fingers. The tall man and I danced to stares from the other patrons.

The song blurred into another and the man in green left me for the bar.
I decided to try my luck at the pool table against a shark in orange but he would have none of it. I shook my head and sneered.

Instead, I returned to the table with my father. He held an empty cola bottle. I opened my mouth to speak, to ask him about the bottle and his vacation from the realm of the dead. He silenced me with a wave of his hand and a stern look. Then his demeanor softened. He seemed about to cry when a sharp pain flashed through my abdomen.

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I woke, instinctively opening my eyes and mouth in a groan. I could detect no difference between the shade of my eyelids and the utter darkness of the space around me. My head throbbed. Dank air reached my nostrils. I shivered in the cold. My stomach felt as though it was trying to digest the rest of my abdomen.

I attempted to move but was almost instantly paralyzed. Fire sang through my left hip, knee and both forearms. It was enough to discover I was immobilized at both my wrists and ankles. The bonds didn't feel like typical nylon rope. My captors had used something much more coarse and thin. It could have been packing twine.

I tried once more to move. I twisted my wrists against each other in a vain effort to free them. I clenched my teeth through the pain and managed to pull my knees to my chest before passing from consciousness.

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I woke this time to sight. I was in a large room with many high windows. A small amount of gray light filtered in to illuminate the space. I couldn't make out the walls but could see the room was empty. Several large support beams anchored in the dirty concrete floor held what appeared to be a tin roof. One such support beam was very near. I inched my way toward it by
pulling my knees to my chest and pushing with my feet. I slid on my side and did my best to stifle moans as pain saturated my skin.

The beam was not square as it appeared in the sparse light. It was a vertical I-beam. I began the attempt to pull myself up into a sitting position but stopped. My hand brushed against something smooth hidden in the recess of the beam. It made a high pitched grating sound. Curious and hopeful I reached for the object. It was approximately an inch and a half across, very smooth and cold. It had sharp edges. I stifled a laugh when I realized it was a broken cola bottle.

A sigh of relief escaped me as I maneuvered into a position that would make the shard of glass more accessible. I picked it up easily, even with my hands tied behind my back, and began the slow work of sawing through the rough cord around my wrists. When they were free I sat up and began to cut through the bonds around my ankles.

The precise second the glass touched the cord I herd a car approach.
The unmistakable sound of tires on gravel frightened me into panic. I barely managed to sever the many strands and hide the evidence before I heard footsteps. I then curled up on the floor as if I hadn't moved with the bottle fragment secure in my hand.

A sharp, scraping, metal sound announced the door opening. Heavy boots approached, then were silent. I opened my eyes just enough to see a stocky human figure silhouetted against the high windows. The figure bent at the waist. A hand reached for me. I sprang forward. My arm flashed from its masquerade at my back and sank the bottle shard into the thigh of my kidnapper.

The figure howled and collapsed to the floor. I bolted in the direction of door, wincing with every step. I slammed my body against the faint outline.
It refused to open. I screamed in frustration and looked over my shoulder. A string of threats growled forth from a shadow rising slowly from the floor.
It got slowly to its feet and began to hobble toward me.

Desperate, I turned back to the door. I squinted in the growing light and explored what seemed to be its edges with my hands. A dull, pointed piece of metal stopped me. The threats were growing. I looked over my shoulder to see the shadow was carrying what looked to be a section of pipe.

I forced my fingers into the space occupied by the object they had recently found. It was a latch! I pushed it up and the door surged forward. It swung away from me and crashed against the side of the timid structure. Early morning light illuminated the nearby landscape, mounds of gravel and sand.

If you have enjoyed Tara Chen's "The Ross/Fletcher Case, Chapter Five", then please be certain to e-mail her at  tara[at]dementedkitty.com  and thank her for posting this Story.

Click here to continue on to "The Ross/Fletcher Case, Chapter Six"

Click here for a list of all of Tara Chen's  Stories and Poetry at  Sapphic Voices Authoresses.