Shame

slipping from its hold. Caleb overreacted, pushing forward too hard against the drawer.
    The blade cut into him just under his sternum. At first, with so many places on his body hurting, he thought he had just scraped himself, but then he saw the redness spreading throughout his shirt and he felt the throbbing pain. Shit. Just what he didn’t need. But he couldn’t slow down. He went back to trying to free himself. His sawing was as ragged as his breath. Blood and sweat dripped on the blade, lubricating it.
    He tried to hold the tape taut, tried to offer resistance to the cutting edge of the knife, but the tape was slow to give. Caleb kept at it until there wasn’t any part of his arms and shoulders not in agony. When the last fiber finally separated, Caleb’s arms fell to his sides, and then he dropped to the floor. For a short time he didn’t have motor control over his hands. They flopped up and down like fish out of water. It seemed like minutes before they yielded to his directions. He pulled the tape off his hands and arms, then lifted off his bloodied shirt. He grabbed a dish towel and wiped the blood from his wound. For what looked like a relatively small cut, there seemed to be an awful lot of blood.
    Caleb applied pressure to the wound with his left hand, and with his right hand he reached for the knife and began cutting at the tape around his ankles and calves. It took him less than two minutes to free himself. He pushed himself halfway up, then slipped on the blood that had pooled on the floor. He reached out for a counter and righted himself. His bloody handprints were all over the linoleum and the counter.
    He tried to stanch the flow of blood before running down the hallway to Lola’s room. In her bathroom medicine cabinet he found gauze pads and bandage strips. He tried to doctor his wound but did a poor job of it. His hands were too slick, and the gauze pads filled with blood too quickly. Impatient, not wanting to waste time, he applied enough tape at least to slow the seepage of blood. He wasn’t used to dressing his own wounds. Anna always tended to his cuts. He thought of her sure hands, his memory taking him back to when they’d first met. She was ahealer, and he had been in need of her healing. How much, she’d never known.
    Caleb left his bloody shirt in the sink. He went to Lola’s walk-in closet and flipped through the hangers, desperate to find anything he could wear. The closet was overflowing with outfits, but there was nothing he could use. He continued his search, rummaging through a wardrobe, then a dresser, then a second dresser. In the bottom drawer of the second dresser he found a sweat suit. The top was oversized, would have been stylishly baggy on Lola. As it was, it was a size too small for Caleb. He put it on anyway.
    As he ran for the door, Caleb caught a glimpse of the cat clock. Small whiskers on the eleven, large whiskers on the five. Caleb seemed to remember that his father had attacked Elizabeth line’s sorority sisters at a little after midnight.
    The cat’s eyes moved from side to side, and its pendulum tail flicked back and forth. It was a clock, Caleb knew, but it was still a black cat.
    He ran out of the house.

23

    “S H, SH, SH, sh.”
    Dana Roberts awoke to the shushing sounds coming from right above her.
    She thought she was dreaming, until a hand slapped tape across her mouth and a body fell on her, pinioning her arms. She tried to scream, but the tape swallowed the sounds. The only sounds that filled the room were his.
    “Sh, sh, sh, sh.”
    Dana tried bucking him off, but he was too heavy. She lifted her head and attempted to butt him, but he slammed her forehead with the flat of his palm, a blow that snapped her head back and left her dazed.
    And the whole time she heard “Sh, sh, sh, sh.”
    Dana tried to take in her situation and think through her panic. As her thrashing ceased, the intruder’s tone changed, becoming more lulling than demanding.
    “Shhhhhhhhhh.”
    The sound gradually became softer until there was only silence in the room.
    “I won’t harm you,” he said.
    Dana exhaled pent-up breath through her nose. She had wanted to hear those words more than any others.
    “I need money for a fix,” he said. “I want your jewelry and cash.”
    Her head moved forward, a frightened nod, but glad.
    “I need your cooperation.”
    Another nod.
    “Give me your hands.”
    In the darkness she could see him holding plastic ties. Dana