The Tempest by A.J. Scudiere (story read aloud .txt) 📗

“No.” Now she felt bad. “It's a Wizard of Oz reference. Just like Toto.”

He nodded slowly but didn’t comment on her choice for him. “Well, that makes you Dorothy, and you're wearing the wrong shoes.”

She almost laughed. At least he got part of it. And he was being kinder to her than she deserved. If only she had the power to get back home, all along, she thought.

Turning to the task at hand, she scrambled up onto the box and peered into the hole. She’d already touched one of the bricks of cocaine, leaving her fingerprints all over it. She was stuck down here with no method of erasing the evidence, aside from maybe wasting her drink to wash them off.

She reached in and began shoving bricks aside, her brain still following the track of washing the plastic packages of cocaine in her sports drink. Would it turn the cocaine pink?

When she’d created a wide enough space, she waved her hand back toward Jerry, asking once more for the phone. This time, she put the flashlight on.

“Hey!” he quickly protested.

But she shook her head. “Just for a second. I’ve got to see what’s under here.”

She aimed the more powerful beam into the space under the house. Two or three rats scurried away from the light, though there were probably far more. But rats didn't bother her. As long as they weren't completely rabid, they would run away from people.

What she didn't see was any light from the outside. Even if there were gaps in the skirt on the house, they might not show up at night. But it wasn’t a good sign. There was no obvious door to the crawlspace or any obvious weak area to break out of.

For a moment, she considered trying the cellar doors again, but she dismissed the thought. They had done everything they could, and the doors wouldn’t open. Unless someone had come home—someone they hadn't heard, who also had maybe gone into the house and hadn't heard them—no one had moved whatever was blocking the doors. They wouldn’t be getting out that way.

“Boost me in,” she said and watched as Jerry laced his fingers together.

While that normally would have been a good lift, his hands weren’t too much higher than where she already stood.

“Wait, sorry.” She turned around, stepped down, grabbed Toto one more time and stuffed him in her pocket. He wiggled around a little bit, but he didn't try to squirm his way out. She wasn’t going to leave him behind but she had to get into the crawlspace.

So she put her foot backward into Jerry's hands, feeling bad about putting her butt in his face, and boosted herself up and through the hole. Her fingers bit into the dirt, but not far enough for purchase. “Sorry! Push me?”

Joule straightened her leg, making it stiff so Jerry could do just that. She was shoved ungracefully into the gap.

Well, she almost coughed, the dirt down here was dry. Whatever water systems they’d installed at the farm worked. They funneled the water away from under the house. Reaching up to wipe at her face, she stopped herself just in time. She’d only make it worse.

Joule had just enough space to crawl on her hands and knees, if she kept her head low. So she did exactly that.

She reached out the hole, for the phone. “I need the light. I won’t put the flashlight on, though!”

She added the last part to reassure him about her energy usage. As she slowly turned like a mastodon and crawled away, she whispered wryly, “If only we had solar…”

She crawled through the space for another interminable eon. According to the light from the phone it took her a good forty-five minutes, but it felt like forever to check the entire boundary of the foundation.

The place wasn't large, but the foundation was shallower in some places, deeper in others as it followed the dips and curves of the earth. In each spot, Joule stopped and pushed against the wall. She couldn’t remember from when they’d plowed their way up to the house, but she was beginning to think the entire skirt was bricked in.

There would be no getting out from the inside. Though there were vents in place, they were too small for her and definitely too small for Jerry to climb through. In another circumstance, she might have tried to push her way through, find someone to help, and come back for Jerry. But she wasn’t going to leave him at the mercy of the Larkins.

When she'd circled the whole perimeter, pushing on everything and deciding that it wasn't much hope, she headed back. The phone lit up Jerry's face as he stood in the exact spot she'd left him in. Maybe he’d been standing there the whole time.

“I don't see anything,” she reported. “I think the entire base is bricked in. There aren’t any gaps, no access doors, and no weak spots that I can find. The only way out would be brute force. I think we have to go up.”

“Okay,” he readily agreed.

“That means you hand me the tools and we go in together. We’ll use the flashlight to find a spot and bust our way up through the sub flooring.”

“Okay,” he said again. “Which tools?”

She realized then that Jerry was doing something extraordinary given what she’d expected of him: He was letting her be in charge.

“Let's bring them all up.”

“Won't that be evidence that we were here?’

“Yes.” She was more content now, but still. “We’ll also leave a hole in the floor of their house that they’ll probably notice.”

“Good point.” He didn't seem to catch on any more than that, and she let it go.

Once they’d gone through the laborious task of getting all the tools handed up, Joule had braced herself and offered a hand out to Jerry. She’d been careful not to be in a position where she could roll over and squish Toto, who was still sleeping comfortably in her pocket.

Together, she and