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TKR Story Hour: The Lady In The Basement

Those eyes focused on the shovel first. And of course that was only natural, given her situation. He jammed the blade of it down into the soft, thick earth of the unfinished cellar floor, prompting a pitiable shriek from her. He smiled at that, a smile that in the half-darkness of the barely lit place must have seemed like the smile of the Cheshire Cat.
 
“You son of a bitch.” That wasn’t precisely how it sounded, of course, the words coming thickly muffled from around a thick wadding of old t-shirt in her mouth. But he’d heard her say plenty with her mouth full, and this wasn’t terribly difficult for him to decipher.
 
“I am.” he nodded. “I am a rotten son of a bitch, quite right.” he leaned against the shovel, still grinning with the sleeves of his gray work shirt rolled up, the feeble, faintly orange light of the bare sodium bulb behind him caught on his bare scalp. “But now, let’s think about that for a minute, hm? Let’s just.” He nudged the massive bundle of wool at her feet with the toe of his boot. “Don’t you think you should be nicer to me, knowing what a horrible son of a bitch I am?” She only stared balefully at him. He continued, “I mean, that just seems to me to be the smart way to play it.” He sighed, seeming genuinely disappointed. “You never were as smart as you thought you were, though.”
 
He put his booted heel down on the spine of the shovel’s blade, driving it down into the moist, packed sod, then leveraged it out, tossed the soil aside. “I know you can’t say much right now, dear. And that’s just fine. Who knows?” he paused for a moment to regard her with a wide-eyed look, as if genuinely taken by surprise by the thought that had just entered his mind. “Maybe if you’d been a mute, we’d still be walking rosy fields, as they say, like we were before…” his face darkened. “Before…” he couldn’t seem to force the last part of that thought past his lips. Instead, he went back to digging.
 
He looked up, some minutes later, to see that she’d fallen asleep again. Or maybe -- and he liked this idea better -- she’d guess just a little part of what was coming and had fainted. He grinned at that idea, well pleased by it, and redoubled his efforts. As he whistled a merry tune, the shallow furrow widened, lengthened. The blankets hunched at her feet like an idle beast. Soon enough, he’d put that idle beast to work.
 
This time, his steps were soft as silk on satin as he crept down the stairs, placing his feet carefully while bringing his supplies down. There would be no waking her; not yet. He wanted her well and truly taken by surprise when he finally sprang the real machinery of her fate.
 
His planning — once he’d settled on a plan — had been meticulous. He had, of course, spent a good many months fantasizing about this particular little bit of fun. Half the fun, of course, was not in the doing, but in the watching. Watching her reactions, naturally, but also watching the glint and flash and flare of his tools as he laid them out on the wooden shelf under the orange glare of that bare bulb. He was looking forward to that already as he returned down those cellar steps once more. One heavy, thumping footstep at a time.
 
The bundle in his arms wasn’t blankets this time. Instead, he stepped over to a rough wooden shelf, about waist height, and let the heavy duffle bag fall to the hard surface so that the sound of metal on metal would carry through the cloth. He grinned over his shoulder at her as the sound brought her out of a fitful slumber. Bound to the chair hand and foot as she was, her convulsive awakening only made him laugh.
 
Boy, re-reading this was fun, especially PP quitting the board twice and threatening everyone in earshot.

Very cool.
 
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