Chapter 53

Curled in on myself, my emotions running amuck. I ride the storm, letting it run its course.

And gradually, my calm returns. The clenching in my throat eases and the shaking dies away.

Oddly, I feel better. Objectively, nothing has changed. I’m still here, incarcerated in the dark, my life
hanging on the whim of a psychotic.

And yet… yes, I feel better; cleansed almost.

Perhaps I needed that. The catharsis. The release.

My body knows something I don't? At least, at the conscious level…

Something just happened, and I need to pay attention.

Always listen to your body.

How often have I ever wept?

Very rarely. My tears dried up long ago. Or so I thought…

‘Where is she? Where's your mother?’

The little boy drops his head, tears trickling. ‘I don’t like Mommy any more.’

‘What? What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Mommy went to sleep. She won't wake up and talk to me. I want her to tell me a story and she won’t.
And she's gone all black.’

I shake my head. My mother’s death is the last thing I want to dwell on right now.



Nonetheless, suddenly, my mind is clear, astonishingly so. I can think again.

What just happened?

I didn’t expect Juliana’s reaction to my words. True, I was trying to get a reaction from her, but I’d not
expected the scale of her fury.

So why did she respond as she did?

Juliana...

Solana…

I touched a nerve. That much is certain.

So... Intentionally or not, I scraped a sore spot...

A vulnerability...

A weakness.

...

Leverage...

Think…

Uncurling from my foetal position, I sit upright, propping myself against the wall.

Analyse… Be logical…

What do I need to escape?



The key.

It hangs on its nail, dull bronze, blinking green in the light of the camera eye.

No… get it right…

What I need is to have that key on this side of Juliana’s painted white line.

So… I need Juliana to bring it to me.

I regard the line. In the drab intermittent light, it’s barely visible at all now. No longer sharp and bright,
dividing my personal world from everything else.

The thick paint, originally applied directly to the ground, with its crust of mud and muck and nameless
filth, probably never had too good a hold on the concrete in the first place. Now, it’s cracked at the
edges, chipped away in places. Dirt obscures some parts.

Is the barrier separating me from the real world crumbling?

*****

What did she get so upset about?

Suggesting I was her friend?

It's the obvious answer, but it doesn't feel right. Juliana seemed more amused when I suggested it. At
worst, thoughtful.

So what upset her?

I replay the conversation in my head.



I'm not claiming to have changed. Who ever really changes? Have you changed, Juliana?”

My comment that no one changes. It's all a facade...

That's what triggered it.

But mainly, I was talking about myself... Not her.

But is that what she heard?

*****

No one changes?

That's what enraged her?

Or the suggestion that she hasn't changed.

So...

... Follow the logic...

What was Juliana that she believes... or wants... to have changed from?

She's a psycho...

…

Does she know that?

…

Yes. And she doesn't care. She almost revels in it. How many she's murdered…



?

?

Is that aspirational?

She wants to to be a murderess?

Or… she wants to be wicked?

There’s a kind of glamour to wickedness

She wouldn't be the first. Famously, it's usually men who have such ambitions, who become the serial
killers for the fame and the notoriety, for the corrupted romance of it all.

But there's no reason it couldn't be a woman.

Femme Fatale.

Fatale...

Exotic.

Alluring.

...

And in a blinding, Paulian moment, I see it.

Scrambling for Juliana’s one and only book, the plant poisons text, I find the page I want. Even
squinting through the dim green light, It takes me less than ten seconds to spot what I’m looking for.
And flicking over the page confirms it.



I’ve got it.

Juliana’s weakness.

Her Achilles heel…

…

…

Now how to use that?

How to turn knowledge into leverage?

…

One chance only…

She’ll not fall for it twice…

In the original story, Achilles gained his vulnerable heel by, as a baby, being dipped in the River Styx by
his mother. But so as not to lose her baby, she held him by his heel and the water couldn't cover him.

I glance at the feculent liquid sucking at the concrete sides of the channel. The last thing I want is to be
dipped in there. For all that my body and clothes suck and stink, there are still worse options. That
water is one of them.

One chance.

Think.

*****




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