Lincoln thought back, trying to retrace the conversation he’d had with the man who left him here. The stranger. He’d been so calm. That was he weirdest part of it. And firm, too. Like Lincoln was a little kid acting up and the stranger had a job to do, and he wasn’t going to take any sass from him.
Lincoln wasn’t sure if he’d been supposed to come around when he did. He’d looked up, found himself lying on the old wooden floorboards, and made some kind of noise. A gasp, or something. If he’d been more awake, he woul
d have kept himself quiet, but then it was too late before he had a chance to realize. The guy had been working on something up there, on a ladder, and he’d come down to check that Lincoln was still securely tied up.
He'd tried to struggle, of course. But the ropes were holding him so tightly. He couldn’t even crawl effectively. And when the stranger pulled him over towards the ladder and then hauled him up by the ropes, Lincoln hadn’t been able to do anything at all. Once they got up high, he’d stopped struggling out of fear that he would fall to the ground and break both his legs, or his spine, or his face. Without his arms free, there was nothing he could do.
“Why are you doing this?” he’d asked, before he even really understood what ‘this’ was.
And the stranger had stopped and looked at him with that odd kind of strict calm. He’d said, “Because you cheated.”
And Lincoln had no idea what he was going on about.
There had been some kind of desperate rush in his head to try and understand. To connect it to anything he could. To his fourth-grade math test, when, yes, he’d looked at his friend Bobby’s answers because he’d forgotten to study the night before and couldn’t remember how to do a certain sum. And that was the only thing he could think of, and it was totally stupid, but he’d blurted it out anyway. “At school?”
And he could have sworn the guy looked at him like he was an alien. This guy, who had hauled him up a ladder to a section of half-rotted floorboards up on a second level of the building, and then onto a short, homemade platform. The thing he’d been setting up when Lincoln woke.
“No,” he’d said. “You cheated death.”
And Lincoln had realized exactly what he meant, and at that moment something inside of him went very cold. Because he’d known. He’d known that much was true.
“What are you talking about?” he’d asked, anyway, because why not? He had to try and get out of here. Keeping the stranger talking meant at least they were having a conversation, and nothing worse than that was happening to Lincoln. At that moment, he’d still had no idea of the full extent of what was coming.
“You cheated death and got a second chance at life,” the stranger had said, with that weird patience, working on something just outside of Lincoln’s field of view. “That’s not fair. That’s not how it’s supposed to work.”
“It wasn’t really my fault,” Lincoln had said, starting to feel more than a little panicked. “I didn’t ask to get saved, or anything. I mean, I’m grateful I was. But it’s not really cheating. Not if you don’t do it on purpose.”
“Even so,” the stranger said. And then he reached over and hauled Lincoln to his feet, and that was when he put the rope around his neck for the first time.
And by the time Lincoln had thought to try and get away, somehow, anyhow, the noose had hit the back of his neck and the front of it at the same time, and he realized there was no way to get out of it.
Not without his hands.
“You’re gonna hang me?” he’d asked, his voice coming out high and strained and weird to his own ears.
“Yes and no,” the stranger had said. “You’re going to hang. I won’t be here. I suppose you could say that time is going to hang you.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Lincoln had asked, struggling to try and get his arms free. Fruitlessly, of course.
“Well, if you look down, you’ll see a timer,” the stranger had said, with that same eerie calm. Lincoln looked at the clock on his chest. It was set for 0:00. Then the stranger reached out and started to push buttons, changing it. Above the timer was a clock face, and Lincoln realized it was almost exactly twelve noon. “Now, when this timer goes off, this platform that we’re standing on is going to drop. You see that hinge over there?”
Lincoln looked, taking it in. “What?” he’d said, which was about all his terrified mind could manage.
“That’s going to swing downwards, pretty quickly,” the stranger said. “I’ve been making some tweaks, trying to make sure it will drop fast enough. It ought to break your neck. It’s going to be quite quick, don’t worry about that. The point is: your time is almost up.”
“Why give me the time?” Lincoln asked desperately. Not because he wanted to push the guy into hanging him right now. Because he wanted to stop him. To make him think. To maybe, against all odds, make him see that he was doing something crazy.
The stranger didn’t answer. He pushed a final button on the timer, setting it going, and stepped back with a look of satisfaction. “I’m going to have to leave now, Lincoln,” he’d said. Like a teacher telling a child fairly and calmly what was going to happen to them as punishment. There was no anger in it. Just like it was a thing he had to do. Not his own choice, but not something he disagreed with either. “I would recommend that you use this time wisely. I’ve not been through it myself, but I imagine it will give you a chance for some introspection.” And he’d tied the gag around Lincoln’s mouth.
And then he’d gone.
And that had been more than six hours ago.
Lincoln let out a desperate whine behind the gag, wishing at least this bit of cloth was out of the way so that he could breathe properly, so he could call out. That was the point, obviously.
He turned in a small circle, the most amount of shuffling his legs could manage. He’d already tried to walk towards the hinge. The rope wasn’t long enough. He pushed against it again now, feeling it scrape against the skin of his chin and neck. Maybe if he forced it…
Lincoln pushed forward until he was forced to give up, stepping back with a cry that was felt more than heard in his throat. It was too tight. Step that way, and he’d pass out before he got anywhere.