The Great Below

The Escape: Part 1

Octavia smoothed her hand over the October issue of Better Homes and Gardens. There was a couple on the cover having a picnic, complete with plaid woolen blankets and a thermos of steaming cider, their cheeks pink from the cold. If she closed her eyes, Octavia could taste freshly-baked pumpkin muffins, or feel the man's tweed jacket, scratchy under her fingertips. She could smell burning leaves and hear the picnic basket's creaky wooden lid.

She never took covers, though. They were made of thick glossy stock that made the pages of her album go lumpy. She shifted slightly on the floor, to move her ankle out from underneath her before it went numb. That was when the handcuff unlatched.

Her hand opened palm up, as if to ask what happened, and the cuff fell in a yawning circle on the carpet. The other half was still attached to the foot of Victor's pull-out sofa. She glanced around and over her shoulder at nothing, sure that this was some test of will. Victor knew how much she wanted freedom. He'd done enough over the last six months to try and crush it out of her. And maybe that was why, when she leaned to glance down the hallway and into the kitchen, Octavia tilted her arm obediently toward the sofa, just in case.

You should run.

She glanced down at the couple on their picnic, as if they'd whispered to her through space and time, right through the cover of Better Homes and Gardens. They were a little older – in their early thirties, perhaps – and if they had been in the room, she would have told them she couldn't do that. They didn't know Victor like she did. Still, she imagined them brushing some freshly-pressed s'mores crumbs from their matching sweaters and scolding her.

You might never get another chance.

Of course it wasn't that easy. Victor wouldn't just return from the gym and accept that she'd left him. It was unfair to expect reason from a man who regularly handcuffed his girlfriend to a couch. And even if she could leave him with no repercussions, Octavia didn't have the resources to pick up her life where she'd left off. There would be a home to find, and bills, and food to buy. Deep down, there was a grasping feeling in her stomach that told her she had no talent for being alone.

You're wasting time—

Octavia tore the cover away, despite what it would do to her carefully curated album. There was an art to preparing a clipping without scissors. She folded and refolded the edges, then flattened it against a sticky page, silencing it with the cellophane cover. There was a calm, after. She could look at the previous pages and remember other moments she'd imagined with her eyes closed: baking an apple galette with crusty edges, playing with grinning toddlers in the rain, tending a summer garden. She knew the first one without having to turn to it, because it came from the first magazine he'd given her the month he'd locked her in. It was an Easter tablescape, complete with a pineapple-glazed ham and dip-dyed eggs.

It was a long time to belong to someone she hated.

The next page under the October issue's cover was an advertisement – a handsome male model selling sunglasses. Victor didn't like it when she saved images of men. As if a magazine model could threaten his command over her. But this one looked gentle, with soft hair nearly to his shoulders and cheeks too young and fresh to have much stubble. He looked like he might be nice in real life.

At least go look outside, he told her, without even moving his perfect lips.

The lamp on the table beside her cast a comforting ring of light, and the idea of climbing out of it made her ill. Nothing bad would happen if she only looked, right? It was a silly, snowball thought. Did an alcoholic order only one drink? Did a gambler place only one bet? Octavia got up anyway, moving quickly with her shoulders hunched until she reached the front door of Victor's apartment.

She gripped the doorknob for a few awkward moments, terrified that it would turn in her hands because he was on the other side, waiting for her to screw up. The grasping in her stomach intensified, but it wouldn't be cured with medicine. It didn't matter where the pain felt like it was coming from – her stomach, her chest, her tingling fingertips – it was always her brain. She quickly flipped the deadbolt and yanked the door open before anxiety could force her to back out.

There was a clean smell of rain. At one end of the hallway was a window that had been left open and outside, rain clanged tiny music into the gutters. If she got on her toes and looked down, she could see all the way to the parking lot. It was a freshly scrubbed night and at the edge of the lot, street lamps glowed. Despite her discomfort, Octavia smiled.

Would there ever be another opportunity?

Octavia peered out the door with only her upper body and a vice-like grip on the frame, like it was the edge of a cliff.