The Value of a Life

Susan woke up a few hours later on a bed. Her vision blurred heavily as she tried to open her eyes and see. She tried to sit up and found that she couldn’t. The entire room spun and her body dropped back to the bed. She groaned with nausea. She then saw someone enter the room. As the person drew closer, she saw it was Mark, even through her labored sight.
“M, Mark,” she groaned, reaching for him. Her deep, drug-induced sleep had made her believe her discovery was a nightmare. She then noticed that her hands were bond together at the wrists with coarse rope.
He ran a hand over her cheek. Mark had never seen his wife look so panicked and sick at the same time, so helpless. Not even after Isabella…
“M-mark, wh-what’s happening?” she forced out in heavy, drunken slurs.
“Shhh, it’s ok Susan,” he pulled her arm straight and she vaguely felt a needle enter her arm in almost the same spot as before, then withdraw it after a moment of letting whatever was in it find it’s way into her. He leaned down and kissed her on the mouth. “I love you, Susan,” he whispered. And she faded back into the darkness.

Mark returned to the room where he and John and his wife, Jill, were discussing what to do about Susan.
“What are we going to do? She knows, we can’t just let it go because you love her,” Jill argued. “I don’t know why she was allowed to go without knowing anyway, it was incredibly dangerous.”
“Calm down, we’re going to give her a chance,” John said simply. Both Mark and Jill looked at him. “Everyone deserves a chance, your wife is no exception.”
“What do you mean ‘we’re going to give her a chance’?” Marked asked, suddenly envisioning her pinned into one of John’s traps, forced to choose what limb or body part she would trade for her life.
“See what she values more, her life, both with you and her own, or truth and her definition of justice,” John explained. Mark wondered what was going to happen. At the end of this, he hoped he would still have his wife.
A few hours later, Mark came into tend to her again. She was lying in the same position, but she appeared wide awake.
“Susan?” he called softly. “Are you awake?”
“Yes,” she answered. She looked over and saw the syringe and bottle in his hands. “No, please, no more. It makes me sick,” she whispered. He looked down at the things in his hands, then back at her.
“I wish I didn’t have to, Susan. But under the circumstances, there’s nothing I can do.” He said. She bit her lip, letting her eyes close. He saw in the faint light the tears trickling down her cheeks that she forced out when she shut the lids. He came to the bed and sat down next to her, taking her arm into his gloved hands. Tears continued to flow out of her eyes, biting her lip, trying not to sob. He drew the liquid into the syringe, pushing a little out, then inserting it carefully into her arm. He pushed the morphine into her vein, then withdrew the needle just as carefully as he had inserted it.
“Why?” she cried. He looked down at her, watching as her thin shoulders trembled. He felt terrible, but he couldn’t be weak. He chose this and now, more than ever, he had to stick by it. Running away would only delay the inevitable. He would find them. He would kill them for their cowardice. “Tell me why.” She groaned. He shook his head.
“I don’t have answers for you. I wish I did,” he said.
“There has to be a reason, Mark. You don’t just get involved with someone like him accidentally.” She said. That was when she noticed someone else enter the room.
“Come on Mark,” John said. Mark looked down at her, regretting more than anything that he had done this to her.
“Fuck you,” Susan spat at him.
“Calm down, Susan, you’ll make yourself sick,” John said.
“You make me sick,” she muttered.
“Come on, Mark, let her sleep,” he said. Susan then forced her entire body to rise up. She sat halfway up before she had to come back down. Her body felt like it was much heavier than it actually was. And her head began spinning.
“No, no, Susan. Stay down, please sweetheart,” Mark pleaded, knowing that if she didn’t stop, she might say something or do something to hurt herself or make John mad enough to harm her.
“You’re a fucking coward,” she sneered, this time at her husband. “We had a nice life, a good life. What the hell were you thinking?” she slurred. Her speech was starting to wane with the effectiveness of the drug taking over. She tried to flail, but her body was prisoner to the morphine. She began to whimper softly, tears rolling down her cheeks even more.
Mark Hoffman may have been in over his head, but seeing her this way made him feel like the lowest shit on the earth. He was causing exactly what he had tried to fix so many months ago.

Mark could remember getting in the elevator, could remember the older man in it with him who had stuck the needle in his neck, full of a subduing drug that made his whole body shut down. The next thing he knew, he had woken up inside a room in a place he’d never seen before. The first vivid thing he remembered was looking down and seeing the double-barrel shotgun strapped to him, pointing right under his chin. He was bond to the chair and unable to move. He then came face to face with the man he himself had been chasing for the past three years. The Jigsaw Killer, John Kramer. He was shocked and frightened. And all he could think of was someone having to wake Susan up and tell her that he was dead. What would she do without him? They were bound by love and marriage and everything else a man and woman could be bound by. The whole time he had been strapped in that chair, facing down the front of the gun that was completely at the mercy of a known killer’s hands and judgment, all her could think of was her beautiful face and the way she had perked back up when she found out that their daughter’s killer had been murdered, like a flower, wilted and dry, that was revived by the spring rains and warm sun. All the guilt of knowing that another man’s blood was on his hands was worth knowing that she would be alright after all. Faced with never seeing her again frightened him more than killing, more than any crime scene, more than anything he had seen and been through. So when John had given him the choice, he had decided to take on this life in order to keep her, in hopes that she would never find out.

A few hours later, she woke again, hearing the three of them talking in another room. She looked around, letting her vision focus. She then attempted moving her arms. She was shocked to see that she could. They still felt off, but not as nauseatingly heavy and thick as before. She sat up carefully, moving slowly. She felt around, noticing that they had only bound her hands, not her legs or feet. She stood slowly, waiting for her balance. She had no clue how long she had been asleep or how long she had been away. She felt around, stepping lightly. She knew that if she was going to be getting out alive, she would need to be very careful.
She found Mark’s sport blazer and felt around it. Somehow, he had been stupid enough to leave his gun inside. Though small, and she hardly knew how to work a gun, she knew that she could if she had to. She picked it up and held its weight in her hands. It felt beautiful, like some grand relief that she had be desperate for in her few waking minutes since Mark had brought her here, wherever here was. She looked around, trying to get some bearing on where exactly she was and how long she had been there. It was dark, but her eyes had adjusted so that she could dimly see around the small room around her. There weren’t any windows, and it was cool, damp even a little. She assumed she was in the basement, but where, she had no idea. The bed she had been drugged asleep on for the duration of her stay. How long has it been, Susan?, she asked herself. She’d had the wine on Tuesday night, a work night for Mark. That was when she got a little too brave and a little too curious for her own good. Her insides hurt with hunger and emptiness and fright.
Her hands clung to the gun, wondering now if it was loaded. She had seen Mark check it a few times, and knew the basics of what you did to check. She did what she could, struggling a bit in the lack of light. But the chamber gave way and she saw that it was not only loaded, it was full. She closed the gun, making sure the safety was still on, then hugged the gun to her chest, knowing that it was her only lifeline. She hoped that she wouldn’t have to use it, but wondered what other way their was out of this situation.
She crept back into bed and lay as she had been, facing the door, hiding the gun in her arms, gathering her legs up into her stomach. She then lay there, staring at the door, her eyes wide open. The morphine was long gone now and she was awake and fully aware and alert of what was going on. She stared at the door and waited for Mark to bring her next dose of the drug that kept her from harming herself and them, wondering just what she would do when he came and discovered that she had his gun.