“Not that way, sweetie,” says Rose.
“I want some water,” Simon mumbles, not slowing.
She tries to get in front of him, but the wheelchair gets caught on the card table. He makes it to the kitchen door, fumbles it open.
The Witch is sitting inside, drinking a cup of tea. Simon stops.
“I wanted a glass of water,” Simon tells her, feeling his courage drain away. The Witch doesn’t answer, just sips her tea. Simon takes a tentative step into the room. The floor creaks. He takes another. There is a cupboard next to the sink, where a glass might live. Simon rattles the handle. Locked.
“I need a glass,” he says.
The Witch sips her tea. Rose appears in the doorway.
“I’m sorry, missus. I bathe the boy.”
Simon rattles the handle. “I want a glass of water,” he demands.
Behind him, he can feel Rose’s hesitation. She needs a command from her mistress, but the Witch says nothing. Rose is forced to decide for herself.
“Go stand there,” she tells Simon, nodding to the stove. He does, putting his body in the gap between the range and the barred window. Rose takes out her keys, shielding them from Simon’s eyes. She looks through them, finds the cupboard key.
Without moving his head, Simon shifts his eyes to the Witch. Her teacup is up at her lips. She is staring at him. Simon looks away, his heart pounding. He feels frozen, rooted in place. She is an iceberg, a white lie, her darkest power hidden below the surface. He shivers.
Then Rose drops her keys. The sound is explosive in the small room. The Witch turns her head. At that moment, Simon does what he came here to do. He lifts his right foot and kicks backward. His heel connects with the rubber coupling, where the gas pipe from the wall connects to the stove. This is what Simon saw without seeing when he sat in his wheelchair, the exposed joint, wrapped in duct tape.
Rose drops her keys. The Witch turns her head. Simon lifts his foot and kicks the coupling, feels it give, then slowly lowers his foot. As far as he knows the kick was silent, but when he turns to look at the Witch, she is staring at him again. Did she see? He meets her eye, keeping his face calm. The drugs they’re giving him help. Much of his mind is a thousand miles away. The Witch smiles, and in that smile is the squat of a naked sorceress conjuring all evil spirits. Then Rose has the cupboard open. She takes a plastic cup, fills it at the sink.
“Come on you,” she says, coming over, taking his arm. Simon lets her lead him to the wheelchair. He sits, takes the cup, drinks.
“Happy now?” asks the Witch.
Simon lets his eyes pass over the coupling as he turns his head to meet her gaze.
“Yes, thank you.”
He smiles.
*
The next shot knocks him out. He wakes in blackness. He has soiled himself through the diaper. Behind him he hears a scratching sound, slow, rhythmic. A clawing. Simon turns his head. The Witch is sitting in the wicker chair. She runs her fingernails along the wood.
scrrrtttchh
scrrrtttchh
A pack of cigarettes rests on the arm in front of her right hand. A cheap plastic lighter lies on top.
A year from now that lighter will combine with hot sediment off the coast of Hawaii to form a new kind of rock. A plastiglomerate. This is how your recycling enters the geological record.
The air in the room is so cold Simon can see his breath. He feels death all around him. The Witch scratches her fingernails against the wicker.
“Don’t be afraid,” she says.
Simon licks his chapped lips and sniffs the air. From science class he knows that methyl mercaptan is added to natural gas to give it a noticeable odor. Otherwise, how would you know if you had a gas leak? So Simon sniffs, digging down beneath the bile of soup, searching for that rotten-egg stink. Evidence that the pipe has busted and the house has filled with gas.
scrrrtttchh
scrrrtttchh
Simon crawls his hands across the bare mattress, reaching out in both directions, looking for the mattress’s end. The Witch picks up her lighter, shakes loose a cigarette.
“Don’t be afraid,” she says again, putting the cigarette to her lips and lifting the lighter.
Simon’s hands find the edges of the mattress. He grabs on tight.
“I’m not,” he says.
As the Witch’s thumb turns the metal wheel of the lighter, Simon throws his body to the left, rolling into the corner and pulling the mattress on top of him. The explosion is like a fist punching him and squeezing him at the same time. He is shoved hard into the wall, the mattress conforming to his body like a blanket. The heat wallops him, smothers his lungs. The sound is beyond sound, a physical roar without pitch. In that endless instant there are no thoughts, other than that the human body isn’t designed to absorb all the sensations that are hitting him. Is this death?