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THE COLD JOLTED SEPTEMBER back to consciousness. It took several seconds to understand she hung upside-down. Her head pounded from blood rush. She couldn’t move. Her arms ached, taped close to her body. A stabbing pulse throbbed in her side.
She couldn’t see anything. Or catch her breath.
A door slammed. Barking, snarling. Shadow? Shadow! His cries grew fainter as someone carried her away.
Jostled, up and down, shifted roughly. Blinded? Big breath to scream—no air...!
Understanding flooded her mind. She inhaled, tasted plastic against her tongue, nose, her lips, stopping breath. Frantic, hungry for air, she kicked but it didn’t help. September bucked, to make him drop her, escape... A car door screed open. He dumped her like garbage onto the back seat. The pain in her side flamed hot, but paled compared to God help me breathe, NO AIR!
Vibration and thrumming as the car started. Nothing mattered. Only air, sweet, fresh, fill-her-lungs-up air. She didn’t care or worry what would happen when the car stopped again. She’d be dead by then.
Plastic starved her lungs...
She poked out her tongue to push the cloying material away, give space for breath. Strained her face side to side, her head up and down, swiveling her neck. Plastic clung, cloying, clutching, smothering, a deathly lover’s kiss.
Arms bound to her sides, September’s hands clenched and unclenched, straining to break the wrist tape free, to tear the constriction from her mouth. Bindings so tight to her torso meant only her elbows moved. She shrugged her shoulders, wriggled back and forth. She flapped elbows to loosen the bindings. A fish drowning in the back of a pine-scented rental car.
The garage door rolled up. The car moved forward.
The flailing of her right elbow drove the wreath-shaped lamp finial deeper into her side. September screamed, the pain a white-bright laser of momentary clarity. She had moments left before blacking out, and would never reawaken. She forced stillness, swallowed hard and held her breath. That hurt less than futile gasp-sucking of plastic. Gingerly, she pressed the inside of her elbow against the decorative brass piece, back and forth, until the metal still hung in the fabric of her coat loosened, and fell out.
She felt the scimitar shape, caught in the plastic just above her tape-bound hands. September clutched the brass piece, holding it tight through the plastic with the fingers of both hands—she couldn’t drop it, had only one chance—and punched it through the flimsy plastic. Flexing her elbows brought the finial just high enough. She bent double, blessing her yoga flexibility. She brought her face as close to her hands as possible, and opened her mouth wide. September jabbed the sharp end of the brass wreath at the taut plastic covering her open mouth...
...and sucked in a sweet breath of fresh air.
She shuddered, afraid to make a sound. Afraid Mr. Bleak would hear, and shoot her.
The car continued to move. She held the butt end of the metal in her mouth, and used the sharp finial to cut the tape binding her wrists. She split the mouth hole wider and peeled plastic from her face.
“Damn dog!” His voice broke the spell.
She rose to her knees in the seat behind Mr. Bleak, clutching the finial. He goosed the accelerator, aiming for Shadow.
“You just made it personal.” September stabbed him in the neck.
