The Taking

seemed too dry for speech, but she worked up a simple question: "Cassie?"
        The cellar took in the name and gave nothing back.
        Sweat as cold as ice water trickled along her right temple and curled around her ear.
        She raised her voice because she had previously spoken in little more than a whisper: "Cassie?"
        A response came not from the girl, not from the realm below, but from the receiving room behind Molly: "I can bite, but I can't cut."

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    47
        
        CROUCH, PIVOT, POINT, SQUEEZE, ALL IN ONE FLUID action: Molly did the first three, checked herself halfway through the trigger squeeze, and did not shoot the woman.
        Clarinetist, lover of swing music, waitress at Benson's Good Eats, twentysomething, dark-haired, gray-eyed, Angie Boteen stood in the receiving room, naked, holding a broken Corona bottle by the neck.
        "Always been squeamish, especially about knives, razor blades… broken glass," Angie said.
        She sounded like herself, yet didn't. She looked like herself, yet wasn't. Anxiety in her voice made it real, but at the same time she seemed to be dreaming on her feet, detached.
        "I need to be cut, I want to be cut, I want to obey, I really do, but I've always been afraid of sharpness more than anything."
        Relying on the candles, Molly shoved her flashlight under her waistband, in the small of her back, freeing both hands for the gun.
        "Angie, what the hell happened here?"
        Ignoring the question, as if she didn't hear it, Angie Boteen appeared to have stepped out of the dance of life, out of the still point, and stood in the past:
        "When I was six, Uncle Carl, he cut Aunt Veda 'cause she cheated on him, slit her throat. I was there, saw it."
        "Angie-"
        "She lived, croaked when she talked, scar on her throat. He went to prison, and when he got out, she took him back."
        Molly felt as naked as Angie, exposed, standing in this doorway with the basement stairs at her back.
        "After prison, people treated Uncle Carl different. Not worse. More careful, more respectful."
        Reluctant to look away from Angie Boteen, Molly nevertheless glanced back, to her left, and down. No one on the stairs.
        Refocusing on Angie and on the jagged bottle, she discovered that during this moment of distraction, the woman had taken a step toward her.
        "No closer," Molly warned, thrusting the pistol at arm's length, in a two-hand grip.
        In the globes on the floor, inconstant candle flames leaped, languished, and leaped, fattened and thinned, so upward across the woman's face flowed light, flowed shadow, continuously distorting, making it difficult for Molly to read her expression.
        "So then what happened," Angie said, "is I hook up with Billy Marek, he's been in trouble with knives, cut some people, done time."
        Under the appearance of a trance, repressed emotions tore at the woman and could be detected in her voice. Anguish. Anxiety. Wild terror on a choke chain. But what other sensibilities did the fluctuant candle flames disguise? Psychotic needs? Anger? Homicidal rage? Hard to tell.
        "I know he'll never cut me 'cause I'll never cheat, but people respect him, so they respect me."
        Although Molly had a moment ago checked the stairs, already she imagined an ascending presence. Maybe it wasn't imagined. Maybe it would be real this time.
        "He cut someone for me once," said Angie. "I wanted it done, and Billy did it. I felt bad later. I was sorry later. But he did it. And he would've done it again if I asked, and that made me feel safe."
        Molly eased out of the doorway, to the left, her back against the wall, putting distance between herself and the naked woman but also between herself and the stairs.
        "If he was here," Angie said, "I'd ask him, and he'd cut me, Billy would, he'd cut me just right, not too deep, so I wouldn't have to do it myself."
        Molly could almost believe madness was in the air: contagious, carried on dust mites, easily inhaled, following a path of infection straight from lungs to heart to brain.
        Reminding herself of her purpose, trying to get control of the situation, she said, "Listen, there was a little girl here earlier. Her name was Cassie."
        "I want to obey, I really do, I want to obey and satisfy like the others. Will you cut me?"
        "Obey who? Angie, I want to