"Steven Gould - Jumper 02 - Reflex" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gould Stephen Jay)

done to himтАФnot by himтАФhe felt humiliated and ashamed.

The two men watching him were pale, the blonde, Thug One, tending toward an actual shade of
green. The woman seemed unaffected. She took the mop handle and pushed the bucket into the part
of the room he could reach, letting the mop handle fall to the floor where it bouncedтАФbap, bap,
bapтАФthree times.

Thugs One and Two went out the doorway, eagerly. The woman paused, with the door still
open, and tucked a few stray hairs back into the tight bun on the back of her head. She smiled.

"Now you can mop the floor."



It took two attempts before he could climb to his feet. He was weak as a kitten and, once
vertical, the room spun around him. It took all his concentration to stay on his feet.

Well, the only good thing was that, with his chains lengthened, he could actually go into the
attached bathroom and use the bath. He had wanted to bathe before this incident, but now, dripping
with three different kinds of bodily fluids, his want had been supplanted by overpowering need.

The bathroom looked like a standard residential toilet except a large mirror over the sink had
clearly been removedтАФpaint and the outer layer of some Sheetrock had been ripped out by the glass
adhesiveтАФand a smaller, plain steel mirror had been bolted to the wall instead. Davy took one look in
the mirror, then turned away.

The gown nearly defeated him. It was disposable paper, but the fibers running through it made it
hard to tear and, even though he managed the ties in back, the chains prevented him from just taking it
off. Finally he summoned the strength to rip out the shoulders, allowing him to pull it off the chains. He
wadded it up and stuffed it in the small plastic trash basket.

He didn't know if they had a camera in the room. He pulled the shower curtain closed and, with
the water full in his face, let himself cry. He did his best to keep it quiet and to hide the tears with the
running water, but he didn't stop until it abated several minutes later.

There was a bottle of squeeze soap in the shower and he scrubbed himself again and again, until
his skin hurt. He knew he'd gotten all of it, but he still didn't feel clean.

He got soap on the bottle and it slipped through his fingers, falling to the bottom of the tub. He
groaned as he picked it up, then stared at it. He turned his back on the shower and squirted soap
underneath the manacle padding on his left arm, twisting it to distribute the soap all around his wrist.

He pulled and twisted, trying to relax his hand as the manacle rode up the base of his thumb. The
padding compressed to a degree, but the manacle stopped short right below the accumulated bulge of
knuckles at the base of his fingersтАФbut it had slid a lot farther than he'd expected. He wondered what
would happen if he soaped both wrists, then jumped.

He looked down. The restraints on his ankles weren't going to fit over his foot, no matter how
much soap he used. He sighed and rinsed the soap out from under the manacle padding.