Chapter 227: One Way Out

Sunday, May 22 to Monday, May 23, 2005

Prof and I were starting to get worried. The atmosphere was tenser, and we were much more serious about doing everything we could to try to get ourselves out of there. Rather than assuming that the best transmission point was as close to the stair's door as I could get, we tried transmitting text messages from every part of the room in case one corner had a thinner wall, or something else helpful. We even tried transmitting with the cellphone next to the electric light in case the electric wires somehow acted as a supplementary antenna helping the cellphone's transmitter. We did that with both cellphones and with the light on and off. No messages got out.

Prof and I debated whether we should set a cellphone to transmit a text message, then have me 'throw' it toward where I thought the doorway at the top of the stairs was. Hopefully it land on the stairs high enough to get a signal, or I might even be lucky enough to get it through the doorway and therefore above ground, which might make a huge difference. We decided not to because we'd almost certainly never see that phone again since wherever it fell it'd be out of my sight, and we were already having to conserve battery power with two phones because we were frequently trying to send messages or connect calls. Another reason was that Boss had been a cautious guy - he'd nearly always stood near our open door during our interrogations, and he always closed our door deliberately when he left - so we believed it was extremely unlikely that he'd left the door at the top of the stairs open while he was torturing prisoners downstairs. We thought that even if I was accurate, all that I'd achieve would be to throw the phone into the door, where it would bounce back and fall to its doom on the concrete floor at the base of the stairs. We tested that hypothesis with Goon's knuckle dusters, which we heard hit wood (probably the door, we guessed) followed by the unmistakable sound of it clanging its way down a few stairs until it seemed to have fallen over the side, as there was a longer pause before a much louder clang, and then nothing. The dusters never reappeared in my sight, so they were lost to us.

We were strict that one of us had to be awake at all times, to watch the signal strength bars on the phones. We had no idea of the weather outside, and it was always possible that a freak weather pattern might cause signal from the next valley to leak over, or something like that.

We decided against shooting the padlocks. We did one experiment where I aimed the gun at a piece of chain, in the direction that took the bullet into the next room. I put the piece of timber immediately over the chain to hopefully catch the ricochet if it came back at me. With considerable trepidation I NP'd the trigger. I lived through the experience totally unscathed, as did the link of chain the bullet hit.

I tried accelerating the 2-by-4 along the floor and into Prof's padlock over and over again, hoping to push the catch open. It did nothing other than mess up the end of the wood. I used a gag to clean up all the bits of wood from the area and scattered them around the place in a hopefully innocuous pattern.

I tried all the keys we had several more times, in case I'd messed up the first, second or third times.

We tried smashing a hole in the ceiling near me with the abused piece of 2-by-4, with the hope that I could NP a cellphone up into the next level and get a signal there, but the ceiling was far too strong. It sounded so solid that we discarded the idea of shooting all the remaining bullets into a small area to help the 2-by-4 bashing.

Every now and then I'd ram the 2-by-4 into the ceiling a few times, just in case someone was in the immediate area. I did that frequently, because I didn't have anything better to do.

The rest of our ideas were even less successful.

^

Sunday was our fourth day of captivity, and of no water. Being chained to chairs we'd not been exerting ourselves, and the temperature was low so we weren't sweating at all, but four days was distressingly too long to go without water - our bodies started letting us know that things were starting to go wrong. Both of us had been experiencing headaches since a day or so ago. I had turned my headache off the better to keep a clear head, but Prof had to suffer his. He winced with increasing frequency when he was struck with particularly painful throbs. I turned mine back on occasionally, to get a feel for how bad Prof was feeling. The headache was BAD, and getting worse.

We had also informed each other that our faces were starting to look different as the fluid loss progressed. They'd started changing quite a while earlier, but neither of us had mentioned it before, not wanting to depress each other. Our lips were very much smaller than normal, our noses shrunken, and neither of us could blink as our eye sockets were pulled so tight and recessed into our skulls.

Prof was the first of us to experience functional difficulties, with they and him getting steadily worse during the day. He became clumsier and mentally slower, the latter being especially obvious when he was trying to type messages or numbers into one of the cellphones. After the second time a phone slipped through his fingers and fell toward the floor (I caught it both times), My second cellphone catch had occurred after Prof had unsuccessfully tried to call 9-1-1, as we did from time to time. I happened to glance at the screen after I retrieved it, and noticed he'd dialed 9-9-1 and hadn't hit the button to dial the call yet. He'd made two mistakes in only four buttons, and had probably imagined hearing the usual sounds of the call not going through. After that, I kept the phones to myself. They appeared to be our only faint hope, but they could smash if they hit the concrete floor badly. In addition, we'd both put messages into the phones that we wanted to be retrieved if we weren't found in time, which was looking all too likely now.

Speaking was difficult for both of us because our mouths were so dry, but we could make ourselves understood if we made the effort. Prof started having periods in which he was oblivious and mumbling unintelligibly. On another occasion, shortly after I'd given him another mint and his mouth was a little lubricated, he thought I was Vanessa and he clearly told me he knew he was going to die and how much he loved me. He spent five minutes thanking me for his life with me, while I sobbed tearlessly.

Other times he was his usual, lucid self. During one conversation we talked openly - between coughs, rasping breaths and pauses to try to lubricate our mouths - about the trouble we were in. Prof added, "Don't give up. I not. Go long as possible. Hope. Sure huge effort at home. Could find us any time. Hang on long you can."

"I'm SO SORRY. I've let you down. Put you in terrible danger. If only I didn't kill both..."

"Mark. Two murderers try kill you. You naked, hands leg hurt. Chained. You save us. You incredible man. I very proud known you..."

#3: <I wish he hadn't used past tense at the end.>

#4: <While you're making wishes, I've got a few more I wouldn't mind tacking on.>

" ... Keys not in room. Dom say 'leave nothing useful'. If you leave one alive for keys. He escape, kill us. No one do better than you. You gain days. Good days. I make peace. Leave messages. Spend time you. Have hope."

We didn't have any conversations that long again; Prof couldn't physically or mentally participate for that long. I was starting to have increasingly long and serious lapses too.

There were conversations that Prof and I chose not to have. He wanted no recriminations or "If only" regrets, so I kept those conversations within my head. Prof set the tone that we weren't going to have unpleasant conversations. We didn't have much time left, and even though our bodies were getting increasingly sick and painful Prof wanted our time to be as mentally peaceful and, in a way, as enjoyable as possible.

Prof never said, "I'm an old man, so I don't really mind dying," nor anything else so pessimistic. I knew he was probably more upset about my dying than his, as he considered me to be far more important than himself, but he didn't comment on that either.

Another topic we didn't touch was what the people we were leaving behind would experience. Without Prof's example, I would've been a maudlin mess over thoughts like those. Julia was the one that sent shivers up my spine. She was losing her father and what I'd call her husband, except I'm so much the center of her life that "husband" doesn't capture her feelings nearly strongly enough. And when she learns - as she probably will - that it happened because Prof and I went to Vegas to earn a lot of money, she'll blame herself for pushing us into it. It's horrific to imagine what that'll do to her.

Prof didn't talk of his symptoms. He pretended they were not important, even though they were getting extreme. His headaches were getting intolerably bad, his breathing was speeding up alarmingly, and at times he struggled not to throw up, not that there was anything at all to throw. His lips had totally vanished, as if they'd been cut off, and mine felt the same. His nose had shrunk to less than half its normal size, and his eyeballs were recessed so far back that they looked like black pits. His face, and surely mine too, looked like something out of a horror movie; like a long-dead zombie risen from the grave, except that Prof and I were heading toward it. If dehydration was having such an horrific effect on our faces, what damage was it doing inside our body? We didn't discuss that, but it was impossible not to think of it - when we were capable of thinking, because that was going downhill too.

Despite all his symptoms, when Prof could, he smiled at me.

I started experiencing the same mental symptoms as Prof, probably about half a day behind him. On one occasion I was flying one of the cellphones into the other room to get it near the stairs, when I turned around to ask Prof to get me a class of milk. I turned back to the cellphone just in time to stop it from crashing out of sight. I decided from then on to move the cellphones by sliding them slowly along at floor level, only raising vertically when they were near the door, but even that got difficult for me as my ability to concentrate on long tasks failed. More than once I noticed a cellphone on the floor and didn't know whether I was in the middle of bringing it back or was still sending it to the other room.

I increasingly caught myself mumbling, usually to myself because Prof was sleeping more often than not. Sometimes I was talking to other people, usually Julia, Carol, Mom and/or Dad. Julia was very often in my thoughts, I thought because of my being with Prof now. Although I feared Prof wasn't going to be with me for much longer. Sometimes I was talking to people like my second grade teacher, or a fat ginger-headed boy who used to beat me up every Wednesday, or a woman who rebuked me for peeing behind a tree when I was four.

Prof croaked, "MARK!" "MARK!" "MARK!"

"Huh?"

"Mark!"

"Yes?"

"Put ring on."

It took a second to sink in. I sat up. "Yes. Thank you. Prof. On wedding finger. I love your family, Prof."

"We. Love you. Mark."

It took me a couple of seconds to see it, which scared me because it shouldn't have taken that long. I fetched it to me as fast as I could, letting my body provide the deceleration because I was having trouble managing the flying process. I floated it up to my left hand and put it on.

I held up my left hand with the fingers spread, saying, "On third finger, Prof. No second. No third. {Giggle}." Prof had passed out, so he missed my lunacy.

Sleeping sounded good, so I made sure someone had put the cat out (which was silly because we don't have a cat, but if we did, I think it'd be better if the cat put me out, haha), then I went to sleep too.

I woke fifteen minutes later with the OBVIOUS solution for how to escape from a dungeon. All I had to do was what Julia had so often told me to do: google it!

I reached for the keyboard. It took me several seconds to give up looking for my study computer, even though it'd been right in front of me a minute ago. I was very angry at Boss for not bringing my computer.

While I was awake I checked the cellphones. They had the usual "No Service", but the time seemed wrong, as it was a three or four hours later than I thought.

I looked at Prof. He was sleeping, if you could call it that. His breathing was very irregular and rapid; his arms, legs and head were jerking in spasms; and his face was horrific to look at, especially with the grimaces of pain passing almost continuously across it. I formed an NP-fingertip and used it to feel for his pulse. When his arm was still for long enough, I could feel that his pulse was racing. I stroked his forehead, the way I like Mom to stroke mine when I'm sick, hoping it'd calm him.

#1: <SHIT! He doesn't look good.>

#3: <God, this is going to be terrible. He's such a great guy, and this is so fucking stupid! Fucking Dom King is fucking lucky he's dead for what he's done to us.>

#4: <And to everyone back home.>

#2: <Yeah, and them. What a huge fucking disaster for so many good people just because this fuckwit didn't care how much harm he causes innocent people.>

#1: <I hate to see Prof suffer like this. You can see he's in terrible pain. It's a horrible thing to ask, but would we think about using the gun on him?>

#4: <I don't think he's going to last much longer, not at the rate he's going downhill.>

#3: <I think Prof implied he wanted to hang tough. He IS a staunch guy.> | #3: <It's not nearly that bad yet, and Prof's a staunch guy.>

#4: <We've still got a day or two we could get rescued in.> | #4: <We've still got a day or two to get rescued in.>

#4: <Déjà vu guys!>

#1: <This could be another hallucination. It certainly feels like one.> #1: <We're not having hallucinations yet. They're probably not far away, but so far mostly just concentration lapses and slurred speech.>

#4: <Look at our Prof! Does that look like the sort of thing we're going to hallucinate about?> #4: <Look at our Prof. He's ill, but he's not nearly as bad as yours. What date and time is it where you are?>

#3: <Monday, May 23 at 5am.> #3: <Monday, May 23 at 5am.>

#4: <When were you captured?>

#3: <Very early Thursday morning.> #3: <Very early Thursday morning.>

#2: < Why the difference? Your Prof looks about twelve hours healthier than ours, which is quite a big difference over four and a bit days.>