Mind Prey

eye.
    They tried twisting the stuff into spirals, but that wasn’t as good as folding it. Grace suggested that since the edges of the aluminum were quite sharp when freshly torn, if they could somehow mount an edge between folded pieces, they might be able to use it like a razor. Again, it seemed that it might cut, but not enough to do mortal damage.
    “If he was…on you, and I tried to cut his throat…” Grace suggested, her face pale.
    Andi shook her head and pressed a strip of aluminum ingot into the back of her arm. “It takes too much force,” she said. “Look.”
    She pressed hard, and got a long red line with just a hint of blood at one end. “It’s harder to cut really deeply than you’d think. I remember from med school: the bodies cut like clay.” She looked at the ceiling, and the bent nail. “The nail would do it, though. If we could get it out…”
    “We’ll just have to work on it,” Grace said.
    And they did, Grace sitting on Andi’s shoulders, digging at the wood with small pieces of the torn aluminum. The nail head was free, but stubbornly unmoving, when they heard him coming.
    Grace took her arm, and Andi was struck at how old her daughter had become. “Don’t fight him,” Grace said. “Please, don’t fight.”
     
    B UT SHE WOULD .
    She had to. If she didn’t, he might start losing interest, and look at Grace, or…just get rid of them. Mail wanted her to fight. Wanted to conquer her, she’d figured that much.
    Mail took her out of the cell, locked it, and then spun her toward the mattress. She let herself spin, stumbled, and went down hard. Better to go down than be knocked down.
    And he liked the fear in her voice. He’d beat her to inspire it, if he had to, so she’d learned to beg: “Please, John,” she said. “Please, you don’t have to hurt me.”
    “Get out of the clothes,” Mail said. Andi started pulling off her blouse. But now she looked around, carefully, the fearful look pasted on her face. Was there anything in the basement that might be used in a brawl?
    “Come on, hurry up, goddamnit,” Mail said. He was nude, erect, coming across the basement at her.
    “John…”
    He was standing over her. “We’re gonna move on, try something new. If I get bit—I really don’t wanna get bit—if I get bit, I’ll beat the shit out of you, then I’ll take Grace down to the house and put her hands in the garbage disposal, then bring her back here so you can look at her. You got that?”
    She nodded dumbly, and he said, “Okay, then…”
     
    A FTERWARDS, LYING ON the mattress, he said, “You know what that fuckin’ Davenport did?” And he told her about the radio. “I saw it, though,” he bragged. “They took me for a minute, but I saw right through it and I said it right on the air, ‘Davenport, you cocksucker,’ I said.” He was animated as he talked, and they might have been teenage lovers lying on a mattress in a cold-water flat, talking about dreams. “He thinks he’s pretty fuckin’ smart. But what he don’t know is hurtin’ him.”
    “I…what?” She was responding automatically, keeping the talk going as she inventoried the basement. Mail hadn’t beaten her this time, and the sex had become inconsequential; there just wasn’t much more that he could do to her, and she could handle it…she thought.
    The inventory: a stack of old terra-cotta pots in the corner—they could be thrown, or used as a club. And over there, was that a beer bottle? God, if she could get that bottle, they could break off an end of it, maybe get some glass splinters. Those would be real weapons.
    Mail said, “I’ve got a spy watching his every move.”
    Andi, doing her reconnaissance, had lost track of the conversation. A spy? “A spy?” she asked. A delusion?
    “Somebody you know,” Mail said to her, turning to watch her reaction. “A friend of yours; put me on you in the first place.”
    “Who?” His voice suggested this was more than a delusion—he was too matter-of-fact.
    “Can’t tell you,” Mail said.
    “Why?”
    “’Cause I want you thinking about it. Maybe it’s your husband, trying to get rid of you and the daughters. Maybe it’s your mother…”
    “My mother’s dead.”
    “Yeah? How’d she die?”
    “She drowned.”
    “Huh.” Mail seemed about to say something else, but then he rolled to his knees, looming over her again. “Well, then, maybe it’s your partner. Maybe it’s your father.”
    She took the risk. “John, I