Gertrudes Baddest Ever Day

Gertrude was having a very, very bad day. It was easily the worst since she had found her mother’s dead body lying on the bathroom floor, Mom’s hand still holding Daddy’s razor. The image haunted her even now after nearly three years. Since then every day had been a bad day but this day was the baddest.

The worst thing about the '98 Chevy Monte Carlo's trunk was the smell, that and the darkness. Her kidnapper had secured her wrists behind her back with the zip ties she had sold him; also he had gagged her with the duct tape she had sold him, even letting him off the odd nine cents over the dollar. He had been turning up at the Garden Centre, the family business, every couple of evenings for the past few weeks buying little odds and ends, which she now realised he had been planning to use on her. She was particularly worried about the shovel, an item that indicated this situation was not going to have even a slightly happy ending.

Today he had turned up with his arm bandaged and in a sling so naturally she had gone out to the car park with him to help load the compost bags he'd bought into his car....dumb, dumb and DUMB! As he had thrown her into the trunk and bound her he had been completely silent, possessed of a terrifying strength that exceeded even her own, his hands saying everything she needed to know about his intentions towards her. Now her clothes were torn in places no sixteen-year-old girl wanted her clothes torn and she had been touched in places no sixteen-year-old girl wanted to be touched......by a stranger more than twice her age. He had even taken her phone. But Gertrude was tough and resilient and resourceful and she was going to do everything in her power to get through this. She was going to fight, tooth and claw and most of all brain but first of all she had to get her hands in front of her and that was going to hurt.

The pain from the dislocated shoulder was beyond any words she had to describe to herself and she was grateful for the duct tape that covered her mouth, without it, she would certainly have been screaming. As it was she couldn't spit the blood from her mouth and the taste of it was making her want to puke, that and the pain. She definitely didn't want to puke while still gagged. So slowly, painfully she brought her hands up to her head then peeled off the tape. The worst part was pulling it from her hair. That did make her puke and the environment in the car trunk became even viler.

She had gripped the shaft of the shovel and braced it against the seat-backs and then she had placed her feet against the rear wall of the trunk and pushed and pushed, even pushing after the horrid liquid popping noise had come from her shoulder. That was when she had bitten through her tongue, but she kept on pushing. Then her hands were past her backside, then past her feet and then finally her hands were in front of her.

Her hands were in front of her, still bound together, but now she could use them, she was no longer completely helpless. But, moving her good arm meant moving her dislocated arm so the process of removing her key chain from her pocket had been excruciating. On the key chain where the two items that were going to (hopefully) save her life, the first was a small push button key-light that had been a tree present from last Christmas at Aunt Mildred’s, the second was a small multi-tool from the Garden Centre for which over the years she had found a thousand uses.

Both rear indicator lamp clusters were covered inside the trunk by dark plastic mouldings. They simply clicked into the bodywork and the one nearest to her pulled away easily, with some assistance from the multi-tool’s blade, revealing the lamp cluster. The lamp cluster housed two bulb holders, one of which was lit, each with a wire coming away from its rear. Gertrude pulled the lit holder free, then with the blade of her utility knife she cut the wire about two inches from the bulb, causing the bulb to go out. She bared the ends of the wire then held them together and was rewarded with a glowing bulb.

Now for phase three.

She replaced the bulb in the brake light housing then she began:

Make the circuit........Break the circuit

Make the circuit........Break the circuit.

Make the circuit........Break the circuit.

Then:

Make the circuit.......hold........break the circuit.

Make the circuit.......hold........break the circuit.

Make the circuit.......hold........break the circuit.

Then:

Make the circuit.......Break the circuit.

Make the circuit.......Break the circuit.

Make the circuit.......Break the circuit.

Pause.

Then repeat, again and again, praying all the time that someone behind the car would see the rear-light flashing – and know the Morse code for the international distress signal – SOS!

Gertrude was finding it increasingly difficult to keep focus, the pain from her shoulder and the constant blood loss from her tongue were taking their toll, she was getting weaker. It had been some time since she had heard a car pass in either direction. She could tell from the ride that the car had left the main roads behind and they were driving through the woods to the west of town towards the river -further reducing her chances of rescue. She began to plan for the possibility that rescue would not come but she was now very weak, she was still bound and worryingly her tongue had gone completely numb. It had become a dead weight in her mouth and had caused her to almost choke several times. If rescue did not come soon she had nothing.

At last, Gertrude heard the sound she had prayed for; a police siren. She stopped tapping out her SOS (she was not sure if what she signalling was still recognisable as Morse code anyway) and unaccountably began to cry. Sobbing uncontrollably she was thrown around inside the trunk as her kidnapper sought to evade capture. Each jolt, each jerk, each bump, sent more dizzying agony through her shoulder. Gertrude's terror reached a crescendo as she was pinned against the rear of the car, thrown against the trunk lid, a second of weightlessness, a sound like every clap of thunder she'd ever heard rolled into one and then, all was still. The sounds of the car metal creaking as the vehicle settled and the gurgle of the river water slowly faded and there was silence. Next, her key-light and the car lights flickered then faded and there was darkness. Then even the silence and darkness faded away.

Returning to consciousness had been brutal, snapping from nothingness to full alertness and awareness in an instant, jarring, like a stack of plates being dropped. Her situation was alarming; the car had clearly gone over the embankment, into the river and even worse, was now drifting downstream towards the rapids. An encounter neither the vehicle, nor Gertrude trapped inside, could survive.

The car was floating front down due to the weight of the engine, causing a pocket of air to form at the vehicle's rear, so Gertrude could at least breathe, keeping her alive - for now. Frantically Gertrude started searching for the rear seat-back release so that she could get into the passenger compartment and out of the car. No way she could jimmy the trunk’s lock; the car was sinking fast, the air pocket shrinking by the second and her multi-tool had gone. Gertrude finally, thankfully found the release lever, pulled it and pushed the seat-back forward. Taking a deep breath she dove under the water, through the space and wriggled into the passenger compartment. Her abductor had already gone; leaving the driver’s door open, allowing Gertrude to easily make her escape. Now she had to get to dry land.

The car had drifted to mid-stream, hundreds of feet from either bank. Her feet and hands were still bound, her arm still dislocated, making swimming a challenge, but, for Gertrude at least, not impossible. Taking in another huge breath she dove down to the river bed, groped around for a suitable rock then half crawling, half swimming, using the river bed to fight the current, headed towards the opposite, now easier to reach river bank. With another huge intake of breath, she breached the water’s surface right at the river’s edge and began the painful, slow, process of climbing a tree root up to the bank proper. Once there, gripping the rock between her knees, she used its sharpest edge to sever the zip-ties around her wrists. After that getting rid of the zip-ties around her ankles had been a snap. Finally, she stood up, agonisingly lifted her dislocated arm to the tree’s trunk and pushed into it, hard, almost screaming with the pain of it, until with a loud click her shoulder went back into place and the pain was gone. Mostly.

Gertrude had exceptional night vision, she could see in darkness as well as you or I can see in daylight, just with no colour, like an old black and white movie but much, much sharper. She could see the torch lights of her would-be rescuers, hundreds of yards away upstream as they searched along the opposite bank, scanning the waters for the car, or survivors and finding neither. Nearer to hand she could see the islets and the bushes that grew on them, dotting this section of the river, just before the rapids. Beyond them even, she could see the last few inches of car trunk above the water accelerating towards the rapids and destruction. She felt a pang on seeing this as it seemed to her that another part of her childhood memories, her family, was being ripped from her. She was unlikely to see her keychain or multi-tool ever again. All this she saw by starlight and just a sliver of the new moon.

Carefully and systematically Gertrude scanned each islet, each bush and small tree looking for anything anomalous. Eventually, she saw something, on the third islet downstream from her position, a shadow, a patch of darkness, an area that just looked... wrong. Keeping low and instinctively using cover Gertrude moved downstream for a closer view. As she approached that part of the bank closest to the islet, the amorphous shadow, the anomaly, took on shape and form and the upper torso of a human became clear, the legs still underwater. Her would-be kidnapper was obviously using the islet to conceal himself from her would-be rescuers.

Silently, with an almost feline speed and agility, Gertrude moved down the twelve-foot high or so bank and once more into the river, barely causing a ripple or a sound. Her movements as fluid as the water around her she moved along the river bed, staying upstream of her former nemesis until she reached a point just a few feet from his legs. Then she pounced. Bringing her rock viscously down on the back of his skull, shattering bone and crushing brain tissue, death was instantaneous. Smiling despite the damage to her tongue she dragged his body into the water and rolled it over. Gertrude took a moment to take in her work, enjoying her kidnapper’s expression of never to be completed surprise, the tendrils of blood lacing into the water from the back of his head, the gobbets of brain matter drifting away; a moment to savour.

Gertrude systematically searched her victim’s pockets, hoping to find her phone, but sadly this was not to be and her phone was almost certainly gone forever. However, she did find his phone and she did find his keys. His phone was an extremely expensive high-end model which would have a good chance of surviving its time in the river. Putting her spoils to one side she almost reluctantly let go of the corpse, allowing it to drift towards the rapids that would take care of any evidence of her involvement in his death and he would become just another victim of that treacherous part of the river.

Moving further onto the islet She carefully hid her spoils of war then checking carefully for any other signs of her former prey and finding nothing Gertrude languidly stretched, then ‘artistically’ draped herself over the rocks ready for ‘rescue’. She had intended to feign unconsciousness while waiting for rescue, but in the event she immediately fell into a deep untroubled sleep, dreaming the secret dreams only the apex predator dreams.

Copyright 2021 Clive Bytheway-Platt