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She went down on her chin. Her teeth banged together, and a blackness leaped up from every object in the room—the lamp in the corner, the cot, the sink—as if each piece of furniture had a secret shadow self that could be jolted awake, startled into flight like a flock of sparrows.

For a moment that flock of shadows threatened to descend upon her. She chased it back with a cry. The room smelled like old pipes, concrete, unwashed linens, and rape.

Vic wanted to get up, but it was hard enough remaining conscious. She could feel that trembling, living darkness, ready to come uncoiled and spring up all around her. If she passed out now, she would at least not feel him raping her. She would not feel him killing her either.

The door rattled and banged shut with a silvery clash that reverberated in the air. The Gasmask Man gripped her shoulder, pushed her onto her back. Her head rolled loosely on her neck, and her skull rapped the pitted concrete. He knelt over her with a clear plastic mask in one hand, contoured to fit over her mouth and nose. The Gasmask Man took her by the hair and pulled her head up to snap the mask over her face. Then he put his hand on it and held it there. Clear plastic tubing ran back to the tank.

She swatted at the hand clamping the mask to her face, tried to scratch his wrist, but he now wore a pair of heavy canvas gardening gloves. She couldn’t get at any vulnerable meat.

“Breathe deep,” he said. “You’ll feel better. Just relax. Day is done, gone the sun. God burned to death, and I shot him with my gun.”

He kept the one hand over the mask. With the other he reached back and twisted a valve on the tank. She heard a hiss and felt something cool blowing against her mouth, then gasped at a saccharine blast of something that smelled like gingerbread.

She grabbed at the tubing and wound it around one hand and yanked. It came out of the valve with a tinny pop. The tank hissed a visible stream of white vapor. The Gasmask Man glanced back at the green metal tank but did not seem perturbed.

“About half of them does that,” he said. “I don’t like it because it wastes the tank, but if you want to do things hard, we can do them hard.”

He ripped the plastic mask off her face, tossed it into the corner. She started to push her way up onto her elbows, and he drove his fist into her stomach. She doubled over, wrapping her arms around the hurt, holding it tightly, like a loved one. She took a big whooping breath, and the room was filled with the woozy-making fragrance of gingerbread-scented gas.

The Gasmask Man was short—half a foot shorter than Vic—and dumpy, but despite that he moved with the agility of a street performer, a guy who could play the banjo while strolling around on stilts. He picked up the tank in both hands and walked it toward her, pointing the open valve at her. The gas was a white spray as it came from the end of the valve but soon dispersed, became invisible. She gulped another mouthful of air that tasted like dessert. Vic crab-walked backward, pushing herself across the floor on hands and feet, sliding on her butt. She wanted to hold her breath but couldn’t do it. Her trembling muscles were starved for oxygen.

“Where are you going?” he asked through his gasmask. He walked after her with the tank. “It’s airtight in here. Anywhere you go, you still gotta breathe. I got three hundred liters in this tank. I could knock out a tent fulla elephants with three hundred liters, honey.”

He kicked one of her feet, knocking her legs askew, then pushed the toe of his left sneaker into her crotch. She choked on a cry of revulsion. Vic had a fleeting but intense sensation of violation. For one moment she wished the gas had already put her out, didn’t want to feel his foot there, didn’t want to know what was going to happen next.

“Bitch, bitch, go to sleep,” the Gasmask Man said, “Take a nap while I f*ck you deep.” He tittered again.

Vic pushed herself back into a corner, thumped her head on the plastered wall. He was still walking at her, holding the tank, fogging the room. The sevoflurane was a white mist that made every object soft and diffuse at the edges. There had been one cot on the other side of the room, but now there were three, tightly overlapping one another, and they were half hidden behind the smoke. In the gathering haze, the Gasmask Man himself split in two, then came back together.

The floor was slowly tipping beneath her, turning into a slide, and at any moment she’d go whisking down it, away from reality and into unconsciousness. She kicked her heels, fighting to hold on, to hold fast in the corner of the room. Vic held her breath, but her lungs were filled not with air but with pain, and her heart was slamming like the engine of the Triumph.

“You’re here, and it’s all better!” the Gasmask Man shrieked, his voice delirious with excitement. “You’re my second chance! You’re here, and now Mr. Manx will come back and I’ll get to go to Christmasland! You’re here, and I’m finally going to get what’s coming to me!”

Images flickered rapidly through her mind, like playing cards shuffled by a magician. She was in the backyard again, Daltry thumbing his lighter, getting no flame, so she took it from him, and blue fire leaped from the starter on her first try. She had paused to look at the picture on the side of the lighter, Popeye throwing a roundhouse, and a sound effect, she couldn’t remember what. Then she visualized the warning on the side of the tank of sevoflurane: FLAMMABLE. This was followed by a simple thought, not an image but a decision. Take him with me. Kill this little turd.

The lighter—she thought—was in her right-hand pocket. She went to dig it out, but it was like reaching into Maggie’s bottomless Scrabble bag; it went on forever and forever and forever.