Intensity

hoisted off the floor by the tightening chain that circled behind her from wrist to wrist and wound through the vertical spindles behind the tie-on pad. Now she was lifting the table in front and the chair at her back. The hard edge of the seat jammed against her thighs, and the curved pine headpiece of the railed back pressed cruelly below her shoulder blades, as the chair began to act like a V-clamp to prevent her from rising much further.
        Nevertheless, Chyna squeezed against the table as she lifted it, separating herself from the confining chair enough to be able to rise out of her crouch just one more inch, then one more. At the extreme limits of strength and endurance, she grunted loudly, rhythmically: " Uh, uh, uh, uh! " Sweat glazed her face, stung her eyes, but there was no light in the kitchen anyway, no reason she had to see what she was doing in order to get it done. Her burning eyes didn't bother her; this was small-time pain; but she felt as though she was about to burst a blood vessel from the straining-or throw a clot off an artery wall and recapture it deep in her brain.
        Fear was with her again, for the first time in hours, because even as she strained against the table, she couldn't help thinking about what Edgler Vess would do with her if he returned home to find her on the floor, dazed and incoherent from a stroke. With her mind reduced to hasty pudding, she would no longer be the sophisticated toy she had been; she'd be insufficiently responsive to provide him with the requisite thrills when he tortured her. Then perhaps Vess would revert to the crude turtle games of his youth. Maybe he would drag her into the backyard to set her on fire for the pleasure of watching her crawl jerkily in circles on crippled, blazing limbs.
        The table crashed onto its side hard enough to jar the dishes in the kitchen cabinets and rattle a loose pane in a window.
        Though she had been striving fiercely for precisely this result, she was so surprised by her abrupt success that she didn't cry out in triumph. She leaned against the curve of the tilted table and gasped for breath.
        Half a minute later, when she tried to pull away, she discovered that the chain was still wrapped tightly around the barrel pedestal and that she remained encumbered.
        She attempted to tug it loose. No luck.
        Dropping to her hands and knees, carrying the chair on her back, she reached under the canted table, as though she were at the seashore and seeking shade beneath a giant beach umbrella. In the darkness she felt around the bottom of the barrel that served as the pedestal, and she discovered that this part of the job was not yet finished.
        The table was tipped on its side-like a mushroom with a large cap, stem meeting the floor at an angle. Given the position from which she'd had to work, she had not been able to tip it completely over, with the pedestal straight up in the air. The bottom of the barrel, recessed inside a chime hoop, was fully exposed; however, the tethering chain was trapped in the angle between the floor and the side of the barrel.
        Lifting the chair with her, Chyna struggled to her feet but rose only to a crouch. She reached down with both hands, hooked her fingers around the chime hoop, paused to gather her strength, and pulled upward.
        Although she tried to hold her injured trigger finger out of the way, her sweaty hands slipped on the painted iron hoop. She stubbed the fingertips of her right hand hard against the rough bottom of the barrel, and such a brilliant pain flashed through her swollen index finger that she cried out in dazzled agony.
        For a while she hunched over, protectively holding her injured hand against her breast, waiting for the pain to subside. Eventually it faded somewhat.
        After blotting her hands on her jeans, she hooked her fingers around the chime hoop once more, hesitated, heaved, and the barrel pedestal came off the floor half an inch, an inch. With her left foot, she pawed at the loop of chain until she thought it was free, and then she let the pedestal drop to the floor again.
        She scooted backward in her chair, and this time nothing impeded her. The loop of chain rattled across the floor, no longer anchoring her to the table.
        Her chair bumped into the wall that separated the kitchen from the laundry room. She hitched sideways, out from behind the table, toward the window, which