Chapter 64. Razors
Island of Boyuca. Bay of Honduras
The Razor House
Charlie Winston was not very happy with his choice of straws. He had no idea what to expect in the Razor House. He was given a lit candle by the natives, but after he entered through the door on the eastern side of the hut, he realized that he did not really need the candle now due to the hole in the roof, in the middle of the chamber, which allowed daylight into the room. The hole in the roof was about six feet long and three feet wide, with wooden cross beams in a tic-tac-toe pattern across the hole to prevent escape. Winston decided that he might need the candle more at night time, so he extinguished the flame and put the candle in his pocket. Winston took a look around the room. There was nothing in the hut at all. Upon further inspection, however, he noticed grooved lines cut into the stone floor, each about an inch wide, on the far western side of the chamber. The cut gooves ran from the northern wall to the southern wall of the hut, about two feet apart. He wasn’t sure what to make of it, but he was getting a very bad feeling. He looked at his red digital watch. It was 1:59 p.m. Winston bent over to inspect the grooved lines more closely. At 2:00 p.m. exactly, there was a shrill high-pitched noise. Near the far end of the hut, out of an opening in the roof, a huge metal guillotine blade as wide as the hut itself came crashing down to the floor groove below it and locked into place, missing Winston by less than six inches.
“Holy shit!” yelled Winston, diving back. He had narrowly missed becoming an amputee. At the same time, on the other end of the hut, twelve circular timber-mill buzz saws, each about four feet in diameter, came out of slits in the northern and southern walls and locked into place, parallel with the floor. As soon as he saw the buzz saws, Charlie Winston dove for the floor. A second later, the buzz saws turned on with a whine and spun at frightening speed.
“Shit shit shit!” yelled Winston, with his hands laced over the back of his head, ducking for cover. His eyes darted back and forth wildly, looking for more blades. The circular saws spun for another minute and then stopped. Each saw protruded from the wall on a metal post which was attached to a circular nub in the middle of the blade. Moments later, the metal posts retracted back into the wall, bringing the circular saws back into the wall cavity.
Winston waited for a full two minutes and then slowly got up, not sure if the ordeal with the blades was over. He inspected the giant guillotine blade first. It went from wall to wall near the far western end of the hut. Winston tried to move the blade upward with his hands and shoulder, but it did not budge. It was locked into place in the floor. Winston walked over to the side walls of the hut to inspect the openings in the northern and southern walls where the circular saws had emerged. The six slits on each wall resembled a pyramid and looked like this:
The last slit for the saw blades ended near the middle of the hut. Winston immediately recognized his problem. If he stayed on the eastern side of the hut, he could be sliced in half by the timber-mill circular saws. If he stayed on the western side of the hut, he could be chopped in half by the guillotine blades from the ceiling. Where would he be safe?
He found it interesting that the guillotine blades had begun falling and spinning at exactly 2:00 p.m. That could not be a coincidence. He went over to the guillotine blade again and inspected the grooved lines in the floor. Each of the grooved lines was parallel to the guillotine blade. There were seventeen grooved lines in all, running north to south. Why seventeen? Winston thought about that. His task was to remain in this hut until sunrise. What time was sunrise? Maybe 6 a.m.? If a new blade fell every hour, then the seventeenth guillotine blade would fall at 6 a.m. Assuming that the guillotine blades fell in order from west to east, instead of randomly, he could stay alive by staying to the east of the falling guillotine blades and to the west of the buzz saws, until he got to 6 a.m., at which point he would be out of space and out of luck. That was a big assumption, of course, but it was all he had to go on now.
Nothing happened for the next hour, and Winston became more and more nervous as he waited for three o’clock. Winston tested his theory by remaining on the west side of the hut, making sure to stay away from the next guillotine blade line. Sure enough, at exactly 3:00 p.m., the blades went into action again. The next guillotine blade to fall was the one just east of the last guillotine blade. Winston now was certain his theory was right. Even though the situation was perilous, Winston at least felt some comfort in knowing the pattern of the blades. That just might keep him alive. After the buzz saws from three o’clock retracted back into the wall, Winston re-focused on the problem that would await him at 6 a.m.
Could he get under the timber mill saw blades? He went over to the east side of the hut, and laid down on the ground on his stomach, with his head directed toward the southern wall. He measured his body against the wall. The slit for the saw was too low. He would not be able to crouch under the last blade for the final encounter.
Winston checked the walls. Perhaps there was a ledge near the top of a wall where he could lodge himself while the blades were spinning. Upon inspection, however, Winston found that all the walls seemed very smooth and contained no ledges near the tops. He was running out of ideas. Winston thought about his son Teddy and his wife Muriel. He did not want to die in here. Muriel would have an impossible time raising a paraplegic boy all by herself, especially with her demanding job. Winston thought about his own funeral, with his sad son crying from his wheelchair. Winston thought of the eulogies that would be given by his friends and relatives. What would people say about him? He had to put those thoughts out of his mind. He was not going to die in here, he told himself.
He sat down and rested for a moment, sitting on the eastern wall near the door. He was bone tired. He thought about the road that had taken him here, and all the dangers they had narrowly survived. It was amazing that they had made it this far. He wondered if the others would make it in their houses. The Dark House did not seem so bad, but the Jaguar House, that was not going to be easy. He thought of the yellow eyes of the jaguar, piercing in the darkness. Within a few moments, Winston dozed off to sleep.
A high-pitched sound occurred, and a tiny synapse in Winston’s brain began ringing fire alarm bells of warning in Winston’s ear. Wake up! Winston bulged open his eyes and cleared his head. “What?” He suddenly realized it must be four o’clock, because the buzz saws were coming out and he was on the wrong side of the hut! He had only moments to react. There wasn’t time to get across the room. Winston stood up as one circular saw came toward him from the left and another came toward him from the right. There was nowhere to go but up. Winston jumped up high and landed on one foot on the center nub of one of the circular saws. He balanced himself precariously, raising his other leg like the Karate Kid preparing for the final Crane Kick, as the ferocious buzz saw beneath his foot began whirring at dizzying speed. One slip of his foot and Winston would be dead, his femoral artery severed like straw. He prayed for the saw to stop. The minute it took for the blade to stop seemed like an hour, as Winston’s thigh began aching from the strain. When the blade stopped and began to retract, Winston dove for the ground and collapsed in relief. That had been a close call. He was definitely not going to sleep again.
Winston went back over to the middle of the room and stared back up at the hole in the middle of the roof. A thought dawned on Winston. If he could find a way to secure himself to the boards criss-crossing the hole in the roof—maybe with his belt or the rope?—then he would be out of the way of the guillotine blades and the buzz saws. That would be perfect. But how could he get up there? He had a rope but no way to get it up to the hole. He needed a heavy hook of some kind. He looked through his pack. The only thing close was his Swiss Army knife. That might work. He took out every one of the attachments, including the corkscrew, and then fastened the rope around the middle of the knife. Then he went under the hole and threw up the knife attached to the rope. After about ten unsuccessful attempts, the knife finally went through one of the openings between the wooden boards over the roof hole. Winston tried to pull back on the rope gently, hoping that the knife would fall back through a different opening and come back to him. That did not happen. Instead, a few moments later, he felt tugging on the other end. What in the world?
Winston pulled harder, and something on the other end pulled back. There was some laughing up above on the roof. Suddenly, Winston saw the young faces of five native children staring back at him through the hole in the roof. They were smiling and pointing at him.
“Hey! Kids! Hi! Hey, can you throw me the knife back down?” Winston cursed himself, as he immediately realized the native children would not speak English. As he looked closer, he could see that the children were undoing the knife from the rope.
“No, no, no! Don’t do that!” But it was too late. The children threw the rope back down, taking the valuable and interesting Swiss Army knife with them.
“Hey! Hey!” Winston called out again, but the children had gone.
Now he had no way of getting the rope back up to the hole. He searched the hut for large rocks but could find none. As he crouched near the ground, looking for rocks, his head was near the slit in the wall containing the buzz saw which had almost cut him in half an hour ago. He looked at the pattern of the slits in the wall, almost like a staircase, with three different levels. A staircase….. That gave him an idea. It was a crazy idea, an idea that, if he proposed it to a group of people, nine out of ten would tell him it was stupid and to forget it. But at this point, he was getting desperate. Stupid ideas were better than nothing. In a few hours, he would be in darkness, and he had to find a way to make sure he would not be sliced in half in the final hour in this hut.
He waited on the eastern side of the hut, near the door, until it was almost five o’clock. He had taken off his backpack, placing it near the door. He had also taken out a length of rope and looped it around his waist, tying it tightly. The remainder of the rope was looped around his neck. At exactly five o’clock, the buzz saws came out from the wall. Winston was counting on the fact that a few seconds transpired between the time the saws came out, locked in place, and began spinning. Before the first buzz saw, which was lowest to the ground, could lock in place, Winston jumped onto the center nub. Using his basketball skills, Winston quickly leaped in the air toward the next highest saw, landing again with one foot on the center nub and another foot on the top of the blade. Fortunately, the second saw had not quite started spinning. With one final push off, Winston leaped toward the third saw, landing solidly on one foot, using his hands to balance himself. Then he put one hand on the wall to steady himself. He had made it. The third circular saw began violently spinning, only inches below Winston’s foot. Winston waited the full minute until the third saw stopped. Then, before it could retract into the wall. Winston put both feet on the top of the saw and lunged in an arc toward the wooden boards covering the hole in the roof. There was a slight creak as Winston’s left hand grabbed onto one of the boards, and he quickly swung his other hand over to grab another board. Hanging from the ceiling boards, he swung his entire body forward and then backward, building momentum, until he was able to swing one leg through the boards. Using one hand, he took the rope looping around his neck and fished it up through the opening and then back through another opening. With one hand, he tied a knot in the board. Switching hands, he then held on with one hand as he looped the belt of his pants through the openings in the boards and back down again, fashioning a harness for the back of his head to rest. He continued this procedure, securing various parts of his body to the wooden boards, until his entire body was suspended mid-air from the rafters by ropes. Tentatively, he let go with both hands and found that his entire body was suspended successfully. He pulled on the rope at various places, making sure that the boards were secure. He rested in the new rope harness, finally secure that he was free from the razor-sharp blades of the saws and the guillotines. After another hour, he fell asleep.
Just before five o’clock in the morning, the boards covering the roof cracked, sending Winston falling ten to twelve feet to the hard stone floor below. He tried to land as best he could, but he fractured his right tibia and fibula in the fall. Winston winced from the pain. He looked down at his leg. There was a huge knot over the shin area. As he did so, he noticed in the very dim light that his injured leg was draped across both of the two remaining grooves cut into the floor. There was a high-pitched noise that he had heard before. The guillotine was coming. He desperately tried to move his leg but it would not obey his mental command. He used his hands and desperately moved the leg over just a little, but his left hand fell back to the ground, just as a huge metal slicing blade came falling from the ceiling, slicing off the top inch of all four of the fingers on Winston’s left hand. Blood spurted from the wound as Winston shrieked out in pain. He fell back to the ground in the darkness, with the sound of whirring buzz saws just a foot or two away. He took off his shirt and wrapped the hand with the amputated fingers, trying desperately to stop the blood. Just then he heard a strange metal crunching sound. In the darkness, he saw sparks all over the hut as something metal slammed into the stone walls again and again. In a few seconds, he heard a metal clanging, followed a minute later by the sound of the saws slowing and retracting back into the wall. Winston grabbed the candle and a dry match from his pocket and lit the candle. As the tiny candle lit up the room, he saw what was making the sparks and the clanging noise. The highest buzz saw had come off its bracket, probably because Winston had broken it when he jumped from the saw to the ceiling. The metal circular saw and its deformed and damaged metal post bracket were lying on the floor of the hut. Winston did not want to look at his hand, but he knew it was badly damaged. The pain from his fingers and his shin were excruciating. He looked at his watch. He only had one more hour to go. His body wanted to give up and pass out so as to avoid dealing with the pain, but he knew that would be suicide. He willed himself to stay awake. There was nowhere to go now. His injured body was laying over the one remaining guillotine groove in the floor. He would either be killed by the guillotine or the buzz saws. This is how it would end. Winston began to silently cry. He wanted to see his son again. He was too weak to jump on the buzz saws again. There was nowhere to go.
Then, with his candle, he looked over at the damaged buzz saw blade lying on the floor. He left the candle on the floor and then used his elbows, snaking his body across the floor toward the damaged blade. It was slow going, because he was losing a lot of blood. When he got to the blade, he slid it with him back towards the middle of the hut. Taking the four-foot, circular blade in his non-damaged hand, he turned it upright and inserted it into the groove for the guillotine. The blade lodged into the groove, sticking upright into the air. Winston tried to get out of the way further, but his pant leg caught on one of the sharp cut pieces of the circular saw. He was stuck. Everything started to get bleary and out of focus. Winston passed out again, his damaged leg draped across the guillotine groove. At six o’clock, Winston woke up to the high-pitched sound again. He panicked. This was it. Just then, the heavy wall-to-wall guillotine blade came crashing down from the ceiling. There was a clink of metal hitting metal, and the buzz saw blade which was wedged into the floor groove stopped the path of the guillotine blade. Winston opened his closed eyes. The guillotine blade was inches from his nose. Winston started laughing. He could not believe that had worked. Ten minutes later, the door of the hut opened, and the interior was flooded with light. In the darkness, Winston felt people pulling him along the floor out of the hut.