Three-Day Town

Chapter


26


People when “cabined, cribbed, confined,” cannot be very happy or comfortable.



—The New New York, 1909



I came to slowly, disoriented and hot. I was lying on my side in total darkness. Cautiously I wriggled my fingers and felt rough cloth. There was something familiar about it, but I couldn’t make myself concentrate. More cloth touched my face and weighed on my body, which was probably why I was so warm. To my surprise, I could breathe. Not as deeply as my oxygen-deprived lungs wanted, but enough to keep me alive. My mouth and one nostril were completely covered with the duct tape, but as long as I lay quietly and took slow even breaths, I wouldn’t suffocate.

Where the hell was I, though? Taped and swaddled, I had no clues. I could hear voices, muffled and far away. Should I try to draw attention to myself, or would that make Sidney come back and finish me off for good? Stupid, stupid, stupid not to have realized that he was the figure I saw disappear around the corner last night after setting the bag with Corey’s body out by the curb.

He must have come back to make sure it got on the garbage truck without one of the sanitation workers noticing. Probably threw it in himself. Is that where he is now? Will he come back with a garbage bag for me?

I moved my head forward almost imperceptibly and felt a solid wall. Oh, God! Was I in a coffin? About to be buried alive? I gingerly tried to flex my legs backward. They were hampered by the weight of the cloth, but there seemed to be nothing solid behind me. Wherever I was, it wasn’t a coffin.

Yet.

The muffled voices came closer. Two men?

I felt the surface where I lay give as something heavy pushed it down. Then light hit my eyes.

And I was not the one who screamed.