Chapter 10: Cleavage Confinement
The knock didn’t start as a sound. It was a vibration. A deep, resonant thud-thud-thud that travelled through the massive structure of Kimbella’s body, up through the soft plateau of her stomach, and into the bones of my feet.
I felt it before I heard it.
Her idle, greasy finger, which had been tracing a smothering circle around me, froze. The entire living room, previously filled with the wet sounds of chewing and their low conversation, plunged into a thick, electric silence.
Tara’s eyes, wide white moons across the coffee table, found Kimbella’s. “Kim.”
“Shut up,” Kimbella hissed, the words a compressed gust of garlic and panic.
The knocking came again. Harder. Authoritative. BAM. BAM. BAM.
“Police! Open the door!”
The two words sliced through the perfumed air like gunshots. Police. A concept from my old world. Order. Intervention. Safety. For a dizzying second, a wild, desperate hope flared in my chest. They were here. A neighbor heard something. Saw something. They were here for me.
Kimbella’s body stiffened beneath me. The soft, breathing landscape of her stomach became a tense, rigid hill. Her head swiveled toward the foyer, then back to Tara. The lazy, possessive amusement was gone, replaced by a raw, animal urgency.
“The box,” she whispered, her voice frayed. “Quick.”
Tara lunged from the sofa, but she was too slow, too clumsy. Her knee slammed into the coffee table. The pizza box tumbled, an empty cardboard glacier sliding to the floor with a rustling crash.
“Dammit, Tara!”
BAM. BAM. BAM! “Ms. Tinykins! We need to speak with you. Open up!”
No time for the box. Kimbella’s eyes darted around the room, landing on the shelf, the distant kitchen, nowhere safe. Her gaze snapped down to me, a tiny, tuxedoed problem on her midsection. The hope in my chest curdled into a new, more intimate terror. I saw the calculation in her eyes. Hide the evidence.
Her free hand, the one not bracing herself on the chair, flew to her chest. Her fingers, thick and powerful, plunged into the deep, shadowy valley between her enormous breasts. She grabbed the neckline of her pink sweatshirt and pulled it away from her body, creating a dark, fabric-lined chasm.
“No—” I managed, scrambling backward on her stomach.
It was useless. Her other hand, the one that had been pinning me, now swept toward me. Not a finger, but her whole palm. A pink, fleshy bulldozer. It covered me completely, blotting out the light, the room, everything. The world became pressure, heat, and the overwhelming scent of peach body spray and nervous sweat.
I was scooped up, my body bent and compressed in her clenched fist. Then, she moved me. The world lurched. I was plunged into darkness and overwhelming, suffocating heat.
Not the box. Something worse.
She shoved me into the space between her breasts.
The world ceased to be visual. It became a universe of tactile and auditory horror. The darkness was absolute, a hot, velvety blackness that pressed on my eyes. The heat was immense, a damp, biological furnace radiating from the soft, massive mounds of flesh on either side of me. I was standing, but barely. The space was a tight, vertical crevice. Her sweatshirt material formed a rough ceiling just above my head, and the awesome, heavy weight of her breasts pressed in from left and right, squeezing the air from my lungs.
I tried to raise my arms to push back. It was like trying to shift two warm, living walls of cement. They gave slightly, a terrifying jiggle that only pressed me tighter a moment later. The pressure was constant, smothering. I was embedded.
Then, movement. A colossal, seismic shift as she heaved herself up from the chair. The groaning of the furniture was a distant quake. The world around me—her—lurched and swayed violently. I was thrown forward, my face pressed into the soft, slick skin of her sternum. The rhythmic, thunderous thump-thump-THUMP of her heart exploded in my ears, a frantic, deep bass drum of pure panic. It vibrated through the very flesh encasing me, a primal soundtrack to my entombment.
I could hear her voice, muffled and distorted by layers of flesh and fabric, but booming through her body directly into my skull.
“I’m coming! Hold on, for god’s sake! Tara, the plates!”
Her footsteps were tectonic. Each one sent a shockwave up through her legs, into her torso, a jolting upheaval that crushed me between the soft, relentless walls. I fought for breath. The air was thick, stale, tasting of salt and perfume and a coppery hint of fear.
The footsteps halted. A new sound: the heavy, metallic scrape and clunk of a deadbolt. A sliver of cool, distant light sliced into my world from above, where her sweatshirt neckline gaped. Then, her voice again, pitched high with forced normality.
“Officers? What’s all this?”
A new voice, male, firm, filtered down from the outside world. “Ms. Kimbella Tinykins? We’re following up on a neighbor’s call. Reports of… distressed shouting earlier this evening. Possible disturbance.”
“Disturbance?” Kimbella’s laugh was a brittle, shaking tremor that ran through her chest. “That’s silly. My friend and I were just watching a movie. Got a little loud, I guess. Action film.”
“We need to confirm the welfare of all occupants,” a second officer, a woman, said. Her voice was closer, clearer. She was in the doorway.
“Welfare? We’re fine. See?” Another jolt. She must have gestured to Tara. The movement squeezed me so tight I saw speckles of light in the darkness. I tried to suck in a breath, but my ribs couldn’t expand.
“Mind if we come in and take a quick look?” the male officer asked. It wasn’t really a question.
“Is that necessary? It’s a mess. We just ordered pizza…” Her voice trailed off, the plea transparent.
“Standard procedure, ma’am. Won’t take a minute.”
A long, tense pause. Her heartbeat against my ear accelerated, a frantic gallop. ThumpathumpathumpaTHUMP. Then, a resigned, sugary tone. “Sure. Of course. Come on in.”
The world swayed again as she stepped back. The cooler air of the foyer washed over the top of my prison. The footsteps of heavy boots entered, echoing on the hardwood. Two sets. They spread out.
“Just the two of you here tonight?” the female officer asked. Her voice moved, circling the living room.
“Yes, Officer. Just me and my friend Tara. We’re having a girls’ night.” Kimbella’s body was rigid. I could feel the tension in the muscles of her chest, a steel cable tightening around me.
“You own the property?”
“Yes. My cousin helped me buy it. She’s in… pharmaceuticals.”
A beat of silence. I could picture them scanning the room. The single pizza box on the floor. The two large cups. The oversized chair, still dented from her weight.
“You haven’t seen or heard anything unusual? Any strangers in the area?” the male officer asked. He was near the bookcase. I could hear the faint squeak of his boots on the polished floor.
“No, sir. Nothing. Quiet neighborhood.” Her voice was sweeter than the soda on her breath. “Probably just the TV. We’ll keep it down.”
Another pause. The female officer’s voice came from near the kitchen archway. “Everything okay back there, partner?”
“Looks clear,” the male voice responded, moving back toward the foyer. “Just a lot of… perfume.”
My mind raced, scraping for a plan. A sound. I had to make a sound. I tried to twist, to push my arm up toward that sliver of light. The movement was pathetic, a tiny stirring in the dense flesh. I opened my mouth to shout, but my lungs were too compressed. All that came out was a strained, muffled squeak, lost immediately in the relentless whoosh-rush of her blood and the thunder of her heart.
“Well, we’ll let you get back to your evening,” the female officer said. Her tone was polite, but held a thread of unresolved suspicion. “Keep the volume reasonable. And if you see anything, give us a call.”
“We will, Officers. Thank you for checking.” Kimbella’s relief was a physical thing; the steel cable in her chest loosened a fraction. The bodies around me seemed to soften, to sag.
The bootsteps receded. The door closed. The deadbolt slid home with a solid, final CLUNK.
Silence.
For three long heartbeats, there was nothing but the pounding in my ears and the stifling, hot darkness.
Then, the dam broke.
“OH MY GOD!” Kimbella shrieked, her voice exploding through her frame, a sonic boom that deafened me. The world erupted into violent motion. She was storming back into the living room, her strides shaking me like a rag in a tornado. “TARA! I TOLD YOU! I TOLD YOU YOU SCREAMED TOO LOUD WHEN YOU SAW HIS THING!”
“I couldn’t help it!” Tara wailed. “It was funny! How was I supposed to know Mrs. Beasley next door has hearing aids that pick up dog whistles or some shit?”
The pressure vanished from my left side. Light, blinding and awful, flooded in. Her hand had plunged into the crevice, her fingers closing around me like pincers. I was yanked out into the cool, perfumed air of the living room, dangling from her grip.
She held me up to her face, her eyes wide with residual terror and boiling anger. Her breath hit me in hot, angry waves. “You! Not a peep. You understand me? Not one goddamn peep!”
She shook me, once, violently. My world became a blur of chrome and velvet and her furious features.
Then, she carried me to the glass coffee table and dropped me. I hit the cool, hard surface and rolled, my body aching, my lungs screaming for clean air. I lay on my back, gasping, the distant ceiling lights spinning overhead.
Kimbella loomed above, one hand on her hip, the other pointing a trembling, accusatory finger the size of my leg at me. “Because of you, the cops were at my door! My door!” She whirled on Tara. “Clean this up. Now. And get the real box. The secure one. From my closet.”
Tara scurried off. Kimbella turned her fury back on me. She leaned down, her face a monstrous sculpture of rage. “Forget keeping you as a pet. You’re a liability. A noisy, complicated liability.” She grabbed the remote from her pocket, her thumb finding the button.
She pressed it.
The collar buzzed to life, but not the short, sharp warning from before. She held the button down. The vibration was continuous, a brutal, unending onslaught that rattled my teeth, blurred
She held the button down. The vibration was continuous, a brutal, unending onslaught that rattled my teeth, blurred my vision into a gray static, and turned my bones to liquid. Thought became impossible. There was only the buzz, a mechanical scream etched directly into my nervous system. My body convulsed on the cool glass, a puppet with its strings cut by sheer, neurological overload.
I don’t know how long it lasted. Seconds bled into a subjective eternity where the only reality was that singular, agonizing frequency.
It stopped.
The sudden silence was a vacuum, sucking all sound and sense from the world. I lay paralyzed. My muscles were useless twitching things. Spit pooled on the glass under my cheek. The distant, clean scent of the perfume ads on the walls was a cruel joke.
“Get up,” Kimbella commanded. Her voice seemed to reach me from the end of a long tunnel.
I couldn’t. My limbs refused the order. I managed a shallow, wheezing breath.
Tara thumped back into the room, clutching a different container. It wasn’t the decorative trinket box. This was a heavy, molded plastic case, charcoal gray, with sturdy latches. It looked like something for transporting delicate surveillance equipment. Or a specimen.
“This one’s soundproof,” Tara announced, setting it on the sofa with a weighty thump. “Roquita uses ‘em for the really fresh catches. Has little air holes and everything.”
“Good.” Kimbella’s shadow fell over me again. She nudged me with her greasy fingertip, rolling me onto my back. “You hear that, pretty boy? Field trip. We’re going to see my cousin after all. Guess you’re not worth the heat.”
The words should have been a relief. Deliverance from this perfumed prison. But all I felt was a colder dread. Roquita Tinykins wasn’t a savior. She was the source. The architect. I was being transferred from a careless jailer to the chief scientist of my nightmare.
“Get him ready,” Kimbella said, stepping away. “I need to change. Can’t show up to her lab smelling like pizza and panic.”
Tara’s hand enveloped me, her grip more clumsy than cruel. She lifted me, carried me to the plastic case, and flipped the latches with her other thumb. The lid opened with a hushed sigh, revealing a plush, form-fitted gray foam interior with a Herc-shaped indentation.
It was a custom transport coffin.
“In you go,” she mumbled, lowering me into the mold. The foam was cold and uncompromising, cradling every contour of my broken tuxedo and battered body. It held me fast. She didn’t bother with the velvet ties I saw anchored to the sides.
From across the room, Kimbella’s voice called out, laced with a new, performative sweetness. “Make sure he’s presentable, Tara! Can’t have Auntie thinking I didn’t take good care of her special package.”
Tara grunted, her face a puffy moon above me. She licked her thumb, a wet sound like a boot pulling from mud, and smeared it across my forehead, attempting to slick back my hair. The spit was cold. The gesture was so profoundly degrading it bypassed anger and settled into a numb hollow in my chest.
“There,” she said, as if she’d just polished a trophy.
Kimbella waddled back in, a force of nature in a fresh, oversized purple tracksuit. She glanced at me in the foam, a dismissive flick of her eyes. “Lid.”
Tara closed it. The world went dark again, but this was a different dark. Silent, cool, and engineered. The faint, regular scent of plastic replaced sweat and perfume. I could hear the muffled click-click of the latches being secured, a final, definitive sound.
Then, movement. A lurch as Tara picked up the case. The foam held me immobile as we were carried, swinging slightly with her gait. I heard the jingle of keys, the creak of a door, the distant hum of an elevator.
Kimbella’s voice, close to the case, was a low, vibrating murmur. “You tell her he was calm. Cooperative. That we had no trouble at all. You hear me? Not a word about the cops. Or the… the other thing.”
“What other thing?” Tara whispered back.
“His little… tower situation. She doesn’t need to know we saw that. It’s weird.”
“Oh. Right.”
The elevator dinged. A distant garage door groaned open. A car door chunked shut. The case was placed on a soft surface, maybe a backseat. An engine rumbled to life, a deep bass that thrummed through the plastic.
We were moving. Leaving the fortress of chrome and velvet. The thought of Roquita’s lab—a place designed not for possession, but for disassembly—should have terrified me. But as the car pulled into the night, all I could cling to was a single, fractured concept. The environment was changing. Where there is change, there is friction. Where there is friction, there is a chance, however slight, to slip through.