Chapter 11 of A Net Too Wide To Break His Fall, by Matt Boothman
I wrote this story chapter by chapter, without outlining first. It was an experiment in writing consistently, producing a chapter once a month, without fail, for the Foggy Outline newsletter. So don’t expect something polished or finished; but what it does have is momentum, and a fluidity that came from wanting to change things up enough to keep myself interested enough to write more.
If you’d be interested in a properly edited, fleshed out, finished version of this story, let me know!
On the bright side, the one other person locked in the basement cell with Callum was someone he’d been introduced to; someone he existed for.
On the darker side, she was dead.
Callum wasn’t usually much of a glass half full person, but in this case he clung to the bright side for longer than was probably rational.
“Hey,” he said, “come on,” as he checked for a pulse, “don’t give up,” as a sluggish flow of blood soaked his wadded jacket, “it’s not over,” as he pushed down on the chest and heard a wet sucking in the throat, “don’t leave me alone.”
Once, when he was ten, Callum got himself stuck in a restaurant bathroom for over an hour.
When his sister Marielena finally found him, she said, “We were looking everywhere. Why didn’t you yell?”
Ten-year-old Callum had no answer to that. Yelling, making noise, getting the attention of a passer-by: the notion hadn’t crossed his mind. Only three people in the restaurant could hear him. Unless he knew one of them was the other side of the door, any call for help was futile.
Big Anton had taken his tools, but there was a keyring in the body’s pocket, which he uncoiled, and the chair she was tied to had metal parts, which he freed, only losing a couple of fingernails in the process.
It took a long time to stop his hands shaking, but not long after that to throw the lock.
But there was nothing in his makeshift toolkit to deal with the deadbolt on the other side of the door.
He injured himself some more throwing himself at the door, but for much less reward. The door was heavy and the screws bracketing the deadbolt were sturdy.
Callum packed himself tightly into the corner farthest from the door and the body, and tried to imagine a plausible scenario in which he was rescued.
The cell was just a small corner of the basement floor, which had been one of Vivian Hithercombe’s warehouses. Vivian’s people would have cleared out as soon as someone blew the whistle on the supposed informant. Callum had no idea what the basement was meant to be officially, if anything, or whether it would revert to being that without Vivian’s influence. Probably not soon, if at all. He was willing to bet Big Anton had secured the street door behind him, too; the man did nothing by halves. So the chances of anyone even coming down the stairs from the street to the basement were slim, let alone coming down with a reason to open the cell door.
Vivian Hithercombe herself would wonder where Callum had gone. He was an asset, and she kept track of those. But the first explanation to spring to her mind for his absence would be betrayal and desertion, and Big Anton would be there ready with his version of events.
Briefly, Callum pictured Marielena framed in the open doorway. But he hadn’t spoken to Mari since she’d introduced him to Vivian Hithercombe nearly two years ago.
The blood was drying on his hands. He’d wiped away as much as possible, but there was nothing to rinse off the rest with.
He had about three days to escape. After that he’d be dead of thirst.