My neck was so stiff it was on fire. My face was numb. I tried to work the dry cloth forward in my mouth, pushing it around with my tongue without him noticing. Saliva was trickling down the back of my throat.
The house was absolutely silent. My ears were filled with the pounding of my blood. Lucy. Please, God.
The other women did what he said. I saw their suffused faces, their dead faces.
As I tried to remember what I knew about him, tried to make sense of what I knew about him. The knife was just inches from me, glinting in the lamplight. Lunge for the lamp and smash it to the floor.
My arms and legs were under the covers. I couldn’t kick or grab or move. If the lamp crashed to the floor, the room would go black.
I wouldn’t be able to see. He had the knife.
I could talk him out of it. If only I could talk, I could reason with him.
Their suffused faces, the cords cutting into their necks.
Twelve inches, no more. It was the longest distance I’d ever known.
He didn’t know about the gun.
He was nervous, jerky, and seemed confused. His neck was flushed and dripping with sweat, his breathing labored and fast.
He wasn’t looking at my pillow. He was looking around at everything, but he wasn’t looking at my pillow.
“You move . . .”
He lightly touched the needle point of the knife to my throat.
My eyes were widely fixed on him.
“You’re going to enjoy this, bitch.”
It was a low, cold voice straight out of hell. “I’ve been saving the best for last.”
The stocking sucking in and out. “You want to know how I’ve been doing it. Going to show you real slow.”
The voice. It was familiar.
My right hand. Where was the gun? Was it farther to the right or to the left? Was it directly centered under my pillow? I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t think! He had to get to the cords. He couldn’t cut the cord to the lamp. The lamp was the only light on. The switch to the overhead light was near the door. He was looking at it, at the vacant dark rectangle.
I eased my right hand up an inch.
The eyes darted toward me, then toward the draperies again.
My right hand was on my chest, almost to my right shoulder under the sheet.
I felt the edge of the mattress lift as he got up from the bed. The stains under his arms were bigger. He was soaking wet with sweat.
Looking at the light switch near the blank doorway, looking across the bedroom at the draperies again, he seemed indecisive.
It happened so fast. The hard cold shape knocked against my hand and my fingers seized it and I was rolling off the bed, pulling the covers with me, thudding to the floor. The hammer clicked back and locked and I was sitting straight up, the sheet twisted around my hips, all of it happening at once.
I don’t remember doing it. I don’t remember doing any of it. It was instinct, someone else. My finger was against the trigger, hands trembling so badly the revolver was jumping up and down.
I don’t remember taking the gag out.
I could only hear my voice.
I was screaming at him.
“You son of a bitch! You goddam son of a bitch!”
The gun was bobbing up and down as I screamed, my terror, my rage exploding in profanities that seemed to be coming from someone else. Screaming, I was screaming at him to take off his mask.
He was frozen on the other side of the bed. It was an odd detached awareness. The knife in his gloved hand, I noticed, was just a folding knife.
His eyes were riveted to the revolver.
“TAKE IT OFF!”
His arm moved slowly and the white sheath fluttered to the floor . . .
As he spun around . . .
I was screaming and explosions were going off, spitting fire and splintering glass, so fast I didn’t know what was happening.
It was madness. Things were flying and disconnected, the knife flashing out of his hand as he slammed against the bedside table, pulling the lamp to the floor as he fell, and a voice said something. The room went black.