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wasn’t sure what to make of this discovery. Did the plumbers leave this when they were working down here a few months ago? If they were that forgetful, perhaps they had left some tools behind too - a wrench, hopefully a crowbar?
    No, a crowbar was too unlikely, a fantasy - but a wrench? That was possible. Didn’t all plumbers carry giant monkey wrenches around with them? If he could get his hands on one of those, maybe he could bust his way through the foundation and create a hole big enough to escape through.
    He surveyed the immediate vicinity around the bottled water for stray tools. Then he saw something, something odd-looking in the corner. He shoved the cases of bottled water excitedly out of his way and crawled towards it as fast as he could manage. It looked like a duffel bag – what if it was full of tools?
    Something thin and shiny stuck out from one end of the sack. It reflected the beam of the flashlight back towards him from the sea of near-total darkness; some sort of tool, perhaps? Maybe a screwdriver?
    He covered the ground that lay between him and the object in a few seconds, and grabbed for it as soon as it was within his grasp.
    It felt different in his hand than his mind had expected it to, and he knew instantly that it wasn’t something the plumbers had left behind. He trained the flashlight on it.
    It was the pointed stiletto heel of a woman’s shoe; black and dressy, with a tasteful silk bow on top, a sharp four-inch heel underneath.
    The heaviness of the shoe startled him as he lifted it. It took several seconds for his mind to process the fact that the shoe was heavy because someone was wearing it.
    “Fuck!” Tom shouted. He recoiled reflexively, dropping the shoe along with the foot it contained, and again struck his head against a sharp corner of an overhead beam. A streak of pain burned through him, creating a lightning-like flash in his eyes.
    Temporary blindness and harsh pain halted his retreat. Every instinct in his entire being commanded him to flee, to get out, to get away from this situation, but there wasnowhere he could go.
    Tom cradled his throbbing head in his hands; his panicked eyes darted here and there in the dim light, like the beady eyes of the rats he had envisioned not long since, desperately searching for an escape route and finding none, stuck to die in this sinking ship of a crawlspace.
    He looked back at the human being that lay like a crumpled sack in the corner, only a few feet away.
    I’m not alone after all , he thought, but the idea brought him no comfort.
    “Hello?” he called optimistically to where the person lay silent and motionless in the corner, shrouded in shadows. His voice was not much more than a crackling whisper, so hollow and soft it sounded like an answering machine recording from long ago.
    “Are you OK?” he asked, but as soon as the words left his lips he realized that an answer would probably frighten him more than anything else ever could.
    He took a deep breath and cautiously crept to where the person lay. The flashlight’s ever-weakening beam caressed a distinctively female shape; it traversed along a feminine, slender calf with porcelain skin, over a muddy knee on its journey towards a bright blue dress hiked up over a shapely thigh. The person was lying motionless, in what would have undoubtedly been a very sexy pose, under almost any other circumstances.
    The woman was on her side, facing away from him towards the stone foundation, her bottom leg sticking straight out, the other leg pulled up slightly; ankle resting daintily on calf.
    He placed his hand on her shoulder and pulled her gently towards him. Her head flopped back and her empty gaze met his.
    “No, no, no, no!” Tom whimpered in a low sobbing tone as he recognized who it was.
    It was Miranda. The new light of his life – no, fuck that – the only light his life had ever known. The light had been extinguished.
    He had been anticipating her arrival all morning, all week