Now:
Katy has been asleep for three hours. She wakes slowly, her head throbbing. She doesn’t open her eyes anymore, there’s no point. Sleeping and waking are so indistinct, it is more like a consciousness that gradually manifests itself behind her eyes.
She wakes rapidly this time, because something is different. Really different.
Katy reaches down to her shackle. Still there, her foot now numb with the pain. After so long, her flesh has been grated to shallow mush, her foot is a sock of dried blood.
But the chain.
The chain has gone.
With the chain gone, she can travel as far as she likes.
This is a scary possibility. Up until now she’s had long periods of time to explore tiny increases. She lies for minutes on the mattress, the consciousness behind her eyes considering. She’s safe on the mattress, safe with the books. What if this is a trap?
It’s all a trap, Katy. Besides, what if the chain not being here is a mistake? She suspects she hasn’t slept for all that long, maybe the chain has yet to be replaced.
This gets her moving. Not the idea that she doesn’t want to be chained up again, but the idea that she might be awake when whoever doing the chaining returns and touches her bare skin with icy hands, ghoulish fingers.

Without the chain dragging behind her, she can reach the bookshelf quickly. Should she try and climb? No, she chooses to travel to the extent of her most recently permitted distance, to travel beyond. The books are familiar, reassuring, she hugs them as she moves farther than her boundary, then farther again. In the pitch blackness with no limits it feels like walking in space. So unusual to think that anything could happen at any time, with no warning; the only confirmation is when you feel it, when all is too late. This must be a newborn’s experience, with a newborn’s intelligence; but with a hard-wired knowledge of the awful possibility of the universe.
The bookshelf ends. She’s three times farther away from her mattress than ever before.
The books weren’t against the wall. The shelf was free-standing. To travel beyond is to walk a precipice without a handrail. Should she go around the back of the bookcase? Should she . . .
Is that a noise behind her?
Katy staggers forward as if pushed. Hands out in front like a sleepwalker, she gains speed until she is running through the void, running away, running in any direction until...

crash
A wall. Katy was almost ready for it, so her arms and wrists take the brunt, she holds her footing. Her hands are all over it immediately, scrabbling, searching. Her feet aren’t her own, they sidestep along, arms frantic, feeling for a door, a doorknob, a . . .
light switch
A light switch.
Her fingers grasp the familiar corners of the plastic square first. She hasn’t knocked it on, so now there is a choice. If she pushes it, her attempt at escape might be exposed.
But there will be light.
Again, the noise. Laughing?
There’s no debate. Whoever brings her food, whoever is in here now can obviously see in the dark, so she might as well equalize the odds. Even so, something stops her, something not right . . .
Small greasy fingers massage the switch. It takes quite a lot of effort to depress.
Click, strobe, hum.
Strip lights flicker in a high ceiling. Across a huge, windowless room, whiteness rolls out as blinding as the black. Katy closes her eyes but it is still too bright, she can see the veins in her eyelids. She pushes her fists into her sockets, watches red flares, stars.
But she did manage a glimpse in that first moment, enough time to see there is nothing in the room with her. She has to risk another look, to disregard the pain in her eyes.
Nothing. But something is
Directly behind her
But something is
the monster.
The monster right behind her, inches away, smiling.