You can imagine what I thought.You can imagine what I thought. Oh, he doesn't need a meat cleaver, he's got a blow torch. I'm such an idiot. I can say that now.... Then I was hanging by a thread from the fact that he cared whether I trusted him even though I was totally helpless and he didn't need to pretend to care. Somehow, that meant he wouldn't betray my trust. He propped the torch up in his tool box and put a couple of blocks of wood between the chain and my abdomen, lifting the chain away from me over the towel. He brushed some gooey stuff on the open link. Up to this point, I was watching every detail with a great deal of interest. Believe me, I was paying attention. But when he bent over me with the torch, I couldn't make myself look, I was so afraid I would get burned. I just sucked in my stomach and prayed. I was also relieved that it was the chain and not me. It must have taken less than a minute for him to finish. Suddenly the noise from the torch stopped. For a moment the only noise was my own rapid breathing hissing noisily in and out through my nostrils. But I couldn't even feel any warmth, not to mention heat. I looked down; J was fanning away an acrid smoke with a magazine. He took a corner of the wet towel and dabbed at the link. Pssssst. More swipes with the towel and the hissing stopped. Soon he was able to gingerly touch, and then hold the link. I was getting tired holding my head up to watch, but I couldn't control my horrified fascination. I tried to follow him with my eyes as he put away the blowtorch and came back into view with some enormous plier- like things. He clipped away the spare links of the chain as easily as if he were pruning a plant. I had a seamless belt with no buckle. |