Reality Bites by Nicola Rhodes

gun?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Oh well, never mind.’
    ‘I wouldn’t shoot an animal anyway.’
    In the distance, getting closer, they heard howling.  Kitty smirked.  ‘Are you sure about that?’
     

~ Chapter Ten ~
     
    L eft alone in the cell, Denny became frantic; there had to be some way to escape.  There was a small, barred window, if only there was some way to saw through the bars.  He knew he would not have the strength to pull the bars out; he needed Tamar for that kind of stunt. A nd he was so hungry he could have eaten his own foot.
    Not for the first time, he wished that he had wished for some kind of super powers when he had had the chance.  Why had he been so stubborn?  How many Djinn had he freed in the last year?  How bad could the consequences have been, really?  If they had been worse than being locked in a dank cell by a mad man awaiting certain death, he would eat his own underpants.  He could not even reach the window to try it; he had broken the only chair. And no chance of dinner either – probably.
      Well, he had wondered how this day could get any worse.
    So think! Where was he?  Not in the real world he hoped, things tended to be exactly what they seemed to be in the real world; i.e. a solid wall was indeed a solid wall, ditto a locked door or a barred window.  In the real world, things worked.  But in other less tangible places matter could be manipulated – as Denny knew from experience.  So he tried it; he “drew” a door on the wall with a piece of chalk that he always carried in his pocket these days – just in case.  It did not work, what did Tamar always say?  ‘It’s never that easy’.  Think!  Unfortunately, he was now out of ideas. That was it – just the one.  ‘I am so useless,’ he berated himself, and sank down on the floor with his head in his hands.
     
    After an indeterminate length of time, he stopped feeling sorry for himself. Well, okay, he didn’t but he stopped indulging himself in his self-pity.  If this was a real cell, he decided, then the only way out was through the door or the window.
    ‘Let’s face it,’ he thought, ‘I just don’t have the time to dig myself out a la “The Count of Monte Cristo”. And he had learned long ago that there are no easy solutions in the real world.  ‘Christ, what I wouldn’t give right now for a bottle of Djinn. –   Hmm, maybe that’s it, get all the guards drunk and steal the keys.’
    The only problem with this idea was that where there should have been a couple of bored and stupid guards sitting at a small folding table playing poker and ripe for some bamboozling, there was, in fact, a whole lot of nothing.
     He did not have any booze anyway, and the guards in this place were quite likely to be vampires; they probably did not get drunk.
    That only left the window.  He decided to try and fix up the bed as a ladder and try to climb up to it.
    He was not too hopeful about this plan; the bars were still iron set in concrete, just as they had been before.  But it was something to do.
    He unfolded the bed, which predictably snapped shut on his fingers convincing him once and for all that he was indeed in the real world.  He cursed – naturally – and unfolded the bed gingerly, then tugged off the mangled mattress.  Something clinked; mattresses do not usually clink * so Denny, naturally, investigated. 
    * [ Except of course in drug dens, doss houses and the occasional B&B ]
    He reached inside the mattress and sliced a finger open. ‘What the hell?’  He ignored the bleeding; there had been so much of it lately that he did not wonder that the vampires were not interested in him.  There was probably hardly enough left  in him to make an appetiser; he reached inside again with his other hand far more tentatively this time and pulled out a long knife with an intricately engraved handle.  It was made of pure silver and had a twisted blade that was so sharp it could have, quite literally, cut