Bootstrap by Georgina Young

Author:Georgina Young
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2022-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

MARNIE

This time I come into consciousness already screaming. It’s alive in my throat before I’m even awake, propelling me forward so that I’m sitting up when I open my eyes.

The scream isn’t anything close to English by the time it makes it out of me, but I know it started off as a ‘Nooooo’ with the jab of a needle in the side of my neck. It feels like a split second later, but it’s clearly been longer than that. I’m in a different room. A cell, it seems, judging by the door without a handle. I’m on a bed, panting. I rub the side of my neck but it’s not really painful. The scream sputters in my throat. Where am I now?

My wrists are no longer handcuffed, so that’s at least a plus. The skin there is still tender, but shiny like they’ve put something on it, and there’s hardly any visible sign of injury. How long have I been out for?

‘Shit,’ I say. ‘Shit shit shit.’ And I scramble off the bed because it doesn’t feel good to be off my feet and vulnerable. I back myself into a corner and glance around. What kind of operation is this? It’s clearly bigger than some dealer’s back room.

The cell is grey like the interrogation room, but smaller. Maybe ten feet across. There’s the bed I was asleep on. It’s raised a foot off the floor and is little more than a plank of steel. There are no corners on anything, just rounded edges. I feel like I’m in an asylum. Honestly, at this point I could believe it.

I don’t want to lie back down, I don’t even want to sit. I am terrified of closing my eyes because I am afraid of what will happen if I do. What will happen next. All of this, everything, is surreal.

‘I’m dreaming,’ I tell myself. ‘Still drunk.’ But my eyes are wide open and I know I’m neither. This is real. Insanely, this is real. This is happening. Even so, I can’t help touching the walls, the bed, the locked chute in the door. Because it’s crazy. Like some joke. And I swear to god if there are people watching this on TV somewhere, or it’s being streamed on the dark web, I’m going to go apeshit.

‘HELP ME!’ I scream. ‘LET ME OUT OF HERE!’

But it’s a half-hearted scream really. Because I know that’s not how this works. How this works is I have to sit here and wait until a man saves me. I can scream myself silly all I want. But really what I have to do is my very best Bonnie Tyler Holding Out For A Hero impression. Well, fuck that.

I feel along the walls between the padded panels for some kind of break, but I don’t find anything. I check under the bed, but there’s nothing. I don’t know what I was expecting. A spoon? A poster of Rita Hayworth?

As I’m on my hands and knees scrabbling around, I wonder what my family is thinking.

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