Chapter 12 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!
It was functioning as one now, but the room Callum was trapped in wasn’t built to be a cell. A purpose-built cell would have been bare. Maybe with brackets bolted into the walls for manacles. Maybe a slot in the door for food (which would actually have been useful). But this was a room pressed into service as a cell, after being built for something else, with features to fit that purpose, not its current one. There was a glimmer of hope in that.
Callum didn’t spot the glimmer until he’d worn himself out smashing the chair to bits against the door.
In the unlikely event there was someone just the other side of the door, could they have heard the racket he was making? Without an introduction, Callum was invisible and inaudible – but how far did that extend? It definitely affected words he spoke – or yelled. Whistling, clicking his fingers, clapping, all worked the same way, he knew from experience. But if he smashed a plate in the floor in a restaurant, all heads turned. If he slammed a door in front of someone who didn’t know him, they’d see it move and hear the crash. Would throwing a chair leg at the door have a better chance of being heard than keeping hold of it and swinging it like a gong beater? How many steps removed from his unremarkability, his effective non-existence, did a sound have to be before it became ambient noise? These were questions he’d pondered idly, philosophically, now turned horrifyingly practical.
Exhausted, Callum picked his way through the debris by the weak light filtering under the door, and explored the limits of his prison. The floor was concrete. The walls, brick, flaked with remnants of paint. There were alcoves in two of the corners. The darkest alcove, farthest from the door, was where he found clues to the room’s original purpose. The texture under his fingers changed from rough brick to cold, hard metal. Sharp corners and protruding rivets. The jagged crevice of a keyhole. Cable conduits, bolted to the brick, following the line of the wall and ending in a locked cupboard kind of thing. Maybe a junction box or fuse box. This had probably been some kind of utility room. Somewhere out of the way to put appliances no one in the building would want to see or hear: industrial fridges or washing machines or something. Without knowing what the building had been before it was subdivided into bookie’s, nail salon and subterranean drug processing workshop, Callum couldn’t guess any more specifically.
He hunted on his hands and knees among the shattered remains of the chair for more bits he could improvise into lockpicks. His world narrowed to that purpose, so much that when one hand came away from the floor wet, he just stopped for a long moment, confused. Then jerked back, slipping, jarring a knee on the concrete and tearing the other palm on sheared metal shards, hearing Anton’s gunshot again, seeing recognition dawn in the eyes of the woman whose blood he was crawling around in.
His breathing was shallow. His hands shook. Pain, shock, fear. Dehydration setting in. Panic jellying his muscles, frying his fine motor control. The makeshift picks slipped in his bloody grip. An ache crept into his forehead as he strained in the darkest corner of the room to see the coin-sized lock.
The mechanism rotated through a grating, excruciating quarter turn before the pick bent and jammed it solid.
What would a stranger in the room have heard as Callum beat bloody dents into the door of the box?
One last blow as his strength bled out of him, and two things gave way: something in his right wrist, and the lock. With the latch half lifted out of its slot and the door dented out of shape, it popped free.
The stars bursting in Callum’s eyes resolved into twinkling LEDs. There were no appliances connected in this room any more, but the junction box was still connected to something. He could still connect to something outside the room.
Callum caught his breath, and set to work breaking even more things.