The waiting was the hardest part.
I lay back down on the stained mattress, my body frozen in a posture of defeat while my mind raced at a million miles an hour. Minutes bled into what felt like hours in the windowless, oppressive dark. Jason had said he was leaving, but without a watch or a sliver of sunlight, I had absolutely no concept of time. Had it been two hours? Six? The silence in the room was a heavy, suffocating blanket, broken only by the rhythmic, distant hum of the building around me.
My muscles ached from the tension. Instead of keeping the rusted metal pole behind my back where it might slip, I had carefully slid it under the mattress right at the very edge. It was completely out of sight, buried beneath the stained fabric, but close enough that I could reach down and wrap
