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RAMA WOKE FROM his nightmare to an even worse reality. His hand was cuffed to a dirty hotel bed. A steady drip, drip, drip from the roof landed on the pillow next to him.
Where was he?
Had his politics finally caught up with him?
Had she?
Rama struggled to sit up. He noticed three hunting knives laid out neatly on the bedside table. They weren’t his. His heart froze. He checked himself for injuries. There were no cuts on his body. No blood on the sheets. Not yet. Rama thought about yelling for help but didn’t. The owner of the blades might arrive instead, as cold and sharp as those implements of pain.
Rama rattled the handcuff around his wrist as quietly as he could. No use. Held tight. He twisted to look at the bedhead he was tethered to. Old. Metal. The frame was joined to the base in a rusted corner. Pushing his weight back, Rama tested the strength of it. The joint groaned and cracked a touch.
A noise in the hall. Rama’s eyes darted to the door. He held his breath. One count. Two. Three. Silence.
Quietly, carefully, Rama leaned back onto the bedhead again. It separated further. Rama rocked back and forth, pulling at the bedhead with his spare hand, eyes trained on the door. He strained with everything he could. No use. He was weak. Skinny. Out of shape. He wished he’d used his muscles more. Had done the workouts recommended for people like him.
Rama pushed back and forth on the headboard with his shoulder, trying to gain leverage.
Another noise outside. Scraping?
Rama stopped his rocking. Waited. The door remained mercifully closed. Rama eased the end of his cuff down the bedhead, onto the cracked joint. He pulled again, hard. The metal around his wrist dug into his skin. Pain lanced up his arm. The thought of those knives digging instead kept Rama trying, desperate, tug after tug. The bracelet of the cuff started to pull through the joint. The metal was now slick with blood that seeped from his wrist.
More scraping in the hall. Rama could feel himself getting frantic, his breath coming in gasps. Sweat joined the drips from the roof.
Still, he pulled.
Almost there.
Rama wiggled the cuffs.
Wrenched.
He pulled free to a groan of metal. Bang! The headboard snapped back into place. The noise sent a jolt through Rama. He scrambled up from the bed and snatched one of the knives from the dresser, holding it in front of him. The blade point shook, as unsteady as Rama’s heartbeat.
No other movement.
Rama crept toward the door and looked through the peephole. Outside seemed deserted. Then something made him pause.
It couldn’t be.
The carpet. Red with yellow swirls.
He was in his own apartment building.
Rama opened the door, creeping out, knife first. He looked left, right. The hallway was empty.
Where had that scraping come from?
No marks on the carpet. No scratches along the walls.
Not waiting for an answer, Rama half walked, half ran toward the lift at the end of the hall. Each door he passed felt like a trap ready to be sprung. His captor could be hiding behind any one of them, watching, waiting.
Rama got to the lift and punched the button again and again.
Down. Down. Down.
The doors slid open. No one inside. The lift’s light flickered off and on. Rama didn’t care. He stepped in and hit close.
Close. Close. Close.
A scraping out in the hall. Footsteps coming. Rama lifted his knife, ready for the worst.
The door shut, cutting off the sound. The lift began to move downward. The dread in Rama’s gut lifted. He dared to hope. Allowed himself to breathe.
The light above strobed.
Darkness. Light. Darkness. Light.
The lift stopped mid-floor.
‘No!’ Rama gasped.
He pushed the ground-floor button again. All went black.
That scraping again. Metal on the door outside. Impossible between floors. Terrifying.
Scrrrrrratch. Scrrrrrratch. Scrrrrrratch.
The light flicked on.
A blade poked through the gap in the doors. Sharp. Deadly.
Rama pushed his body against the back of the lift. The knife stabbed in and out, trying to catch him. It slid up to the top. Down again.
The light went off.
Darkness.
Then on—light glinting against the metal of the blade.
‘Help!’ Rama banged on the side of the lift. He pushed the emergency alarm. Grabbed the phone. No dial tone. Dead. He let it drop, tears welling.
The blade scraped and stabbed at the empty air in front of Rama.
Darkness.
Rama pushed into a corner.
Another noise. Breathing. Not Rama’s. He felt hot air on his face. Smelled rotten meat.
He tried to move away but a hand grabbed his throat. The light came on. No one there.
The invisible hand squeezed Rama’s windpipe. Lifted him off the ground.
Rama choked, knowing this wasn’t real. Not a nightmare either. Something in between.
He gasped for air. His feet kicked.
A pixelated face digitized in front of Rama. Horrid. Half man, half spider. Its pincers dripped venom, moving as the thing spoke.
‘Where is it?’
Rama clutched at the hands around his throat, trying to tell himself this wasn’t real, that he could breathe if he tried hard enough.
‘You’re… working, for her,’ Rama managed to say.
‘Maybe I am her,’ the spider replied.
‘I don’t have it!’
‘Time will tell,’ the spider said. ‘Tick, tock.’
The spider rammed a blade into Rama’s gut. Again and again and again.
Rama screamed in pain.
The spider smiled in delight, then bit down on Rama’s face. Blood sprayed.
The light flicked off again.
Darkness.
- Writer
