Free Snake Skin by CJ Lyons

here? Bobby—she had gone
to meet Bobby. Oh God, had something happened to him?
    "Bobby?" Her voice was a hoarse croak. She
swallowed and tried again. "Bobby? Anyone, is there anyone
there?"
    Now she was screaming which only made her
head pound more and burned her throat. She had the feeling she'd
tried screaming the first time she woke, her throat felt
shredded.
    She flailed forward only to be yanked hard
by one ankle. Flopping over, she stretched, patting her clothing,
reassured that other than her jacket missing and her pockets
emptied, nothing seemed disturbed. Wait, that was weird—her shoes
were gone as well. Above her sock on her left ankle was a thick
wire cable, the kind used when you tied a dog to a stake.
    She wanted to scream again but instead
forced herself to examine the wire. It was cinched tight around her
leg, not even a fingertip could fit below it. A metal clasp held it
in place, fastened by a small padlock. Reversing her orientation,
she followed the cable back to its origin. A round pole, smooth,
metal, rose up from the floor.
    Hauling herself up the length of the pole,
she stood. A wave of nausea and dizziness hit her. She grabbed onto
the pole, liking its cold against her forehead and cheek. It helped
to ease the headache.
    Her clothing was soaked in sweat but her
teeth were chattering. Like she had a fever or something. Once the
vertigo passed, she stood on tiptoe, tried to follow the pole up.
And hit nothing. She tried to follow the wire, but couldn't walk.
The darkness was so complete and disorienting that without the pole
to hang on to, she fell. She couldn't even see her hand when she
waved it in front of her face.
    Blind, she was blind—no, no, it was just
dark. A basement—but basements had windows, basements had sounds:
water pipes and furnaces and outside noises. All right, not a
basement. A soundproofed room with no windows. Like a vault.
    She shuddered, hugging her pole. Or like a
coffin.
    What if there was no air either? Maybe she
was using up all her oxygen, wasting it by screaming and crawling
around when she should be saving it?
    Who cared? A distant voice echoed
through her brain. If she was dead, she was dead. But since it
hadn't happened yet, no sense giving up. What if Bobby was lying
just beyond her, what if she was his only hope?
    Emboldened by the thought, she dropped back
to her hands and knees and followed the wire out to its end,
measuring the dimensions of her prison. It stretched eight feet in
all directions, the pole at the center.
    Maybe she was trapped in a storage unit? Or
she could be underground in an old mine shaft or abandoned swimming
pool that had been built over or a secret government lab like in
that horror film...Quashing the leading edge of her hysteria, she
continued forward. No signs of Bobby or any other living person.
Her hand brushed something plastic. A bucket of water that she
almost up-dumped. No cup or ladle. She dunked her face into it,
slurping the lukewarm, stale water as fast as she could. She
couldn't remember ever being this thirsty.
    Next to the bucket she found a bedside
commode, like the ones at the nursing home where she'd gone to sing
Christmas carols last year. Better than wetting her pants. With her
bladder empty and her thirst slacked, she returned to sit with her
back against her pole, the new center of her universe, knees drawn
up to her chest, arms hugging herself.
    She'd almost gotten used to the stench—as
long as she remembered to breathe through her mouth. But now that
she had time to think, she remembered where she'd recognized the
odor from.
    It smelled like road kill.
     
     
    Burroughs led Gerald Yeager downstairs and
outside to the patio. Figured it was best to get the mister as far
away from his blushing ex-bride as possible. He gave Yeager the
seat in the shade, all the better to watch his eyes without the
sunlight making the man squint.
    Not that he was a suspect in his daughter's
disappearance. No, of course not. This