Hell's Gate

biting match would be perfect. Behind, the chair rattled closer, snarling thickly. He screamed again.
        This time when he woke from the room of living furniture, there were two voices. He recognized one as the same that had gotten him to open his eyes earlier. It was soft, concerned, and sweet, the sort one hears in television commercials and over public address systems in some of the more pleasant airline terminals. The new voice was gruff, older, definitely male. It was closer to Salsbury, almost directly over him.
        Then he saw the face that matched the second voice: heavy-jowled and wide-mouthed with a ski-slope nose, two velvety black eyes, a heavy, bushy mustache the same gun-metal gray as the thinning head of hair.
        “I think it's chiefly exhaustion,” the man said.
        “Will he be all right then?” the woman asked.
        “With some rest, yes.”
        “What about his… his chest?”
        “Nothing deep here. I don't see how the deuce he got that. Doesn't make sense.”
        “You've seen the car?”
        “Yes. That still answers nothing.”
        “Will it hurt when you take the slivers out?”
        “It won't hurt me a bit,” the man said. When she slapped him playfully, he said, “I've never seen you so solicitous of anyone.” He chuckled deep in his throat. “Especially a man.”
        “You're an old goat,” she said.
        “And you're a young lamb. About time you found yourself another pasture mate. One marriage doesn't mean a thing, dear. This one might not be anything like Henry.”
        “You're insane!” she said. Then she said, “He isn't.”
        The man chuckled again. “Well, it won't hurt him. I'll just give him a sedative first to make sure. A mild one. He won't feel a thing.”
        “I don't want to have a sedative,” Salsbury said, still dazed. His voice sounded as if he had the vocal chords of a frog.
        “What's that?” the man asked.
        The woman's face appeared, a truly lovely face that he had seen somewhere before… Certainly… he just could not remember where. He could not remember much of anything, in fact.
        “Vic,” she said, reaching a hand to touch his face.
        “Shush,” the gruff man said. “He's delirious. You can wait to talk to him.”
        “If you give me a sedative,” Salsbury said, “The door will swallow me up.”
        “No it won't,” the gruff one answered. “I've muzzled the door.”
        “The chair, then. The chair or the desk will eat me alive!”
        “Not much chance,” he said. “I've given both of those devils a very strict warning.”
        Then there was a sudden sharpness in Salsbury's arm, a coolness, a moment of exhilaration, and darkness. It was a quiet, empty darkness this time, without any mystery room or cannibalistic furniture or other horrors. He settled into it, pulled a flap of blackness across him like a blanket, and stopped thinking.
        When he woke much later, he was one big stomach. There was no room in him for any sensation but hunger. He blinked at the white ceiling until he was certain he was not dizzy, then took stock of his body, lying there quietly letting the nerves signal the brain, cautiously interpreting the reports they made. There was a dull ache in his jaw; he remembered cracking it against the floor. His hands tingled as if he might have scraped them. His chest felt odd, as if it might be afire, though the feeling was not altogether unpleasant. His feet were tender; he had a brief memory of running barefoot across sharp stones.
        Then the whole fabric of his memory returned like a gunshot. He sat up in bed, trembling, expecting a hot and golden beam of light to slice through him. Instead, he saw only Lynda Harvey.
        She had been sitting in the emerald colored chair to the left of the bed. She rose and came to him, put her hands on his shoulders and pressed him down. He allowed himself to relax. The robot was dead. A pile of debris in the other bedroom. He could afford to relax now, surely.
        “How do you feel?” she asked.
        He stretched, considered the question, said, “Not too bad, considering.”
        “Don't try to get up. I'm supposed to feed and water you the moment you come around.”
        “I'm about to start gnawing on the furniture.”
        “No need. I've got everything downstairs that you'll need. Give me a few minutes.” She started for the