The Great Below

The Robbery: Part 2

This was an opportunity, if ever there was one, but it wasn't going well.

Octavia had been handcuffed to the center piece of wood between the kitchen sink cabinet doors, a thick pillar of MDF. There was so much going in her favor – Victor would be gone for probably two hours, he'd handcuffed her in a new location that left margin for error, she now knew the way to the train station – but tonight it wasn't enough. Her bag of icy slush had turned to room temperature water, and the only way she could quiet the fire in her hands was to stand awkwardly hunched while one hand cooled under the cold tap, then pressing it to the restrained hand. The most pathetic assembly line she'd ever seen. If she kicked up at the freezer door, she could just barely reach it. Then the door swung and she could see the ice inside, but had no means to pull it out. Victor had emptied the sink cabinet before he'd cuffed her to it, so there was nothing to throw. On her sides, the still-warm stove and the empty dishwasher. She didn't dare try to break the racks inside – there would be a punishment for that. He had outsmarted her.

"Help!"

He wasn't coming back anytime soon. Octavia yelled until a neighbor above them stomped on his floor in frustration. She begged for help, shouted instructions, but all she ever got back was more stomping. The ceiling was too thick with concrete to carry her words, only gummed-up shrieking.

She examined the cuffs, hoping to recreate the pull that had gotten her into the kitchen earlier, but her wrist still ached and Victor had learned from that error. The steel of the cuff pressed at both sides of her bony wrist, unforgiving. No room at all. She might have kicked or pulled at the MDF, hoping it would give, but she was still barefoot. There was enough pain already. Octavia felt the lure of giving up, of laying on the floor and letting the burning sensation consume her while waiting for Victor to come back. How easy that would be.

The front door lock clicked.

Her first thought was, the landlord? Had her yelling succeeded? But a man stopped just halfway through the door, holding a device that looked like a staple gun, and his mouth fell open when he saw her.

 "Help," she barked, her voice growing tired. Octavia got up on both knees and leaned closer to look at him.

A second man appeared behind him, taller. He looked less surprised. "Uh...what's your name, sweetheart?"

"Octavia."

The first man gave him a tense look and they both came inside, locking the door behind them.

"Are you part of a Greek tragedy?" The tall one laughed, despite the fact that nothing about this scenario was particularly funny. "I'm Nick and this is Alex."

"Why does she need to know our names?" Alex asked.

"When you meet a lady, you introduce yourself," Nick replied. "It's what normal people do."

"Does this look normal to you? A woman handcuffed in the kitchen?"

"Look, we just need to do a quick search and get back. We can deal with her before we go. Try not to get distracted." Nick disappeared down the hallway toward the bedroom.

Alex didn't seem capable of following directions; he came straight toward her with cautious steps.

"You have to help me," she told him.

He stopped just outside of her kicking radius, examining her, concern on his face. "What's wrong with your hands?" he asked.

Octavia showed him. "It was an accident." She was suddenly aware of the fake, padded way she spoke involuntarily – It was an accident, rather than he burned me – and how she didn't have to talk this way to two men breaking into the apartment. "Could you make me some ice water?"

"Jesus," he said to himself. "Yeah, of course."

Octavia nodded at a wall cabinet and Alex had to step gingerly behind her to take down a bowl. He then had to place his feet on either side of her to lean over and fill the bowl with water, which was visibly the equivalent of a trust fall. That close, she noticed that his rumpled brown hair was long enough to catch at his shoulder as he glanced down. It should have made him look like Victor, but she decided that it didn't. When he could see that she wasn't in a rush to maim him, he retrieved a tray of ice from the freezer and crouched next to her, preparing the icy slush on the linoleum.

She couldn't stop watching him. He was a rare outsider – looking at her in a way that wasn't entirely disapproving while standing in the rubble of her failed relationship with Victor. She had the strange impulse to study him; his behavior was foreign and had to be discovered, for safety. He'd missed a day or two of shaving and he smelled of sweet tobacco. He was near her age, early twenties. She was only comfortable staring at him because he was busy inspecting her hands again.

"Those cuffs are too tight. Are they hurting you?"

"I don't have the key," she said.

"That's not what I asked." Alex got up and began rummaging through kitchen drawers until he found the junk one under the disabled landline phone. He returned with a paperclip, which he was unbending into a straight line. His tone wasn't irritated or demanding. "I thought Victor lived alone. He isn't married." He inserted one end of the paperclip into the keyhole on her handcuffs, turning it first one way and then the other, and then they were off. A smooth magic trick that she would try desperately to remember.

"No," Octavia replied. "He isn't." So these men knew Victor. They might even be running an errand for him. The pressure was off the bones of her wrists and she rubbed at them with what undamaged skin she had left. She sank her hands into the bowl of water and the initial sting caused her to wince. It was soon replaced with a soothing cold that promised to numb her worries away.

"So why are you here?"

She had waited so long for someone to ask.

"Alex," Nick called from the far end of the hallway. "Do you have anything yet? I think the bedroom's a bust."

"Not yet," Alex called back. As he was turned away, his dress jacket tilted open and a gun in a shoulder holster came into view. Then the sting in Octavia's hands was rivaled by a new panic in her chest – it didn't matter that she couldn't see all of it, or that it wasn't pointed at her – a gun was a gun and she had to assume it was loaded.

"Are you robbing us?" she asked him.

"I'm honestly not sure," Alex said. "But we're not here to hurt you. Can you wait quietly, right here?"

She nodded and Alex was gone, back to the living room in search of something. He was not great at robbing people. Too polite. But she couldn't underestimate Nick and she certainly couldn't underestimate the weapon she'd seen. It was the first time she'd ever wished Victor was home. She imagined him in the ring, possibly finished by now because no one stood up to him for long. At the end of the fight the referee brought both fighters together to shake hands, a time when Victor was exuberant, flinging his arms out and hugging his beaten opponent to his sweat-covered chest and pretending to be his respectable peer. She'd never gotten a hug like that. But then, she'd never congratulated him on beating her, which probably took all the satisfaction out of it.

This was no laughing matter and yet here she was, deflecting, making light of the obviously dark situation in which – as Nick had said– they would have to 'deal with her' just for having seen them. It was, perhaps, the only thing that could have made her situation worse. Octavia scanned the apartment, feeling overwhelmed. It was different. Was it simply because Victor wasn't in it and instead, these two men were? If Victor came home right now, he might kill all three of them.