Hostile HandsI
come to in a dark, muggy little room staring at ceiling tiles that are sagging toward me and covered with mold. The pain in my head makes it hard to focus on much more, and it just gets worse when I lift a hand to explore a huge pulsing lump behind my right ear. There’s no blood visible on my hand, so whatever caused the lump and my black-out didn’t break the scalp. Someone outside that place where I spotted Maria must have rapped me with a club of some kind. It’s likely he was practiced enough not to kill me. I have no memory of anything else, but I must have been hauled away somehow…to somewhere. This dingy room is clearly not a hospital. So where am I?
I’m lying on some kind of canvas cot which creaks under my weight as I prop myself up on elbows and stare into the shad
