Troy has been made psychotic by fear and pain, and he weakly flaps a hand around. Groping the air for the small silver key dangling from a long copper wire. Groping for the knife, and Mister Pickle dances slowly in the air. He looks exactly as I remember him, the same way he did in the first video I watched this morning. The memory of it is awful, and I’m frantic for a way to stop what’s happening.

“You need to stay still,” Benton says to Troy. “You need to be still so we can get you out of here, son.”

But Troy has been deconstructed and the person who may have existed before is gone. He can’t comprehend what we’re saying or doing, and he continues to flap his hands at the key, at the bottle of water, at the candy bar, at a silly toy bear I rescued from a junk shop in Richmond decades ago.

The demonic mobile is alive around his head as he continues to shock himself and shriek, and my attention fixes on the bucket, and I bend over and pick it up. It’s full of water, and I step in front of Benton, my feet barely an inch from the wet area of stone flooring.

“What are you doing?” he exclaims.

I’ll be damned if either of us is going to die. I’m sorry if Troy might, and I dash the water on him, on the wires dangling over him, and they spark and pop as they short out. Silence and darkness, and the recorded slamming sounds have stopped. I smell singed hair and flesh as I grab the silver key dangling over Troy’s head. I unlock his shackles. I lower his limp body to the floor and begin CPR.

One Week Later

ONE WEEK LATER

SIGHTS AND SOUNDS ARE TRIGGERS.

Water splashing into the sink. The clicking of an induction burner turning on. The screen door banging. Glasses and silverware clinking. Bottles clanking. Backfires on the street. Mundane events are evocative of what’s been uncommon and abnormal.

“What are you having?” I ask Benton as I obsess over tomorrow’s front page of the Boston Globe.

I don’t want to get into a disagreement. I don’t want to care and I’m trying not to spend my energy on anger. Benton has told me all about that story and other ones, and he should know since it was his Boston division that planted them. Waving the flag. Taking the credit.

FBI TRAPS MASS MURDERER IN SECRET TUNNEL