Terry withdrew from Ruddy and Xeke’s minds and concentrated on her problem. There was a dim pilot light of activity in Teri’s mind—heartbeat, breathing, sweating. It was like an empty house.

  Teri’s consciousness has to be in here somewhere. I can probably wake her up if I can find it. Maybe she’s in a memory.

  Terry waded into the maze that was their mind.

  Teri’s last memory was one of helpless panic. All the memories that led to and from it were shimmering threads. Most of them were dangling loose where Terry had cut them, like the frayed edges of cut-off jeans.

  Tears welled up in her eyes as she studied her handiwork. It had seemed so easy at first. She just meant to hide the worst of it, the things Teri was better off not remembering.

  But every memory connects to a dozen others—cut out one and you have to cut out everything it leads to.

  Loose memories are dangerous things. She had to put them somewhere. That’s why she built the cage.

  It’s all falling apart, she thought. There were so many revisions even she was having trouble keeping track of them all. Teri’s mind was a house of cards.

  I’m so sorry, Teri. I would fix it if I could … if I didn’t think it would destroy you.

  She picked a thread at random and found herself at the trailer they’d moved into after the car lot closed down.

  Oh, no. Not here. Terry ... you promised yourself, no more cutting—no matter what.

  Teri was nine. She was used to Tip’s drinking but it had gotten worse since Tabitha’s accident. He hadn’t been able to find a job since the bank had foreclosed on his house, and he didn’t even wait until the afternoon to hit the bottle anymore.

  Teri came out of the bathroom dressed in her favorite Wonder Woman pajamas. Her dark hair was wet from the shower. It dripped on the floor as she ran toward her mother on the couch.

  “Teri, hun,” Eva said, “Why don’t you towel off your hair before you get the whole couch wet?”

  Teri giggled and pounced on her mom, shaking water all over the place. She didn’t notice the look of fear on her mother’s face. She giggled again and skipped back toward her bedroom.

  Tip sat in his chair next to the couch, his face red as he stared at the drops of water sliding down his arm. His hands started to shake.

  Teri didn’t notice when he got up and came after her. Halfway down the hall, he slipped in the water and fell against the wall with a thud.

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  Teri turned her head. She froze when she saw the expression on his face.

  “You fucking cunt,” he said “Get back here.”

  Teri took a step back. She’d never heard that tone of voice before.

  “I said get back here, goddammit!” He grabbed her by the hair and dragged her back to the couch. She was rigid.

  “Do you see that fucking mess? Bitch! I spend my money on clothes and books for your school. This is how you fucking repay me?”

  “Mom?” Teri whispered.

  Her mother stared straight ahead at nothing.

  Tip slapped Teri across the face. Her ears rang.

  “You’ll learn to mind, bitch.” He yanked her upright by her hair, then let go and backhanded her. She crashed into the coffee table. The corner of it dug into her ribs. She heard a crack and felt pain worse than anything she remembered.

  Other times when she’d been hurt, her mom would take her in her arms and soothe her. But this time, Mom wouldn’t even meet her eyes. Tip grabbed her hair again and jerked her to her feet.

  “What do you have to say to me, you little cunt?”

  Teri’s mouth opened to answer him, but only a squeak emerged. Heat welled up on her face as it reddened from the blow. Blood dripped from her nose onto her pajamas.

  Tip balled up his fist. “Can’t even fucking apologize … little smart ass thinks she’s too good to apologize to me.” His fist flew forward and Terry jumped out of the memory down another thread.

  The next memory was of better days. Teri and her twin sister Tabitha were on the back deck at their house. They were 6, and they’d gotten their hands on a box of old comic books from the storage room. Their mom had been a comic book geek as a kid. She only had a few Wonder Woman comics but they were Teri and Tabitha’s favorites.

  They laid a blanket across two chairs and made a tent. The girls were side by side on their bellies reading, each wearing tinfoil wristbands to deflect bullets, and cardboard tiaras to protect their minds. They had lengths of rope coiled and hanging from their belt loops. Teri’s was a beaded jump rope, and Tabitha’s was a bit of rope from the garage.

  “What if Wonder Woman had a twin sister?” Teri said. “They could fight together and no one would ever be able to defeat them.”

  "And only their mom could tell them apart!” Tabitha said. They laughed.

  This was a good memory, but Teri wasn’t here, and now Terry was two jumps from where she had started.

  She concentrated, trying to get some feel of Teri’s whereabouts. Nothing. She jumped again, but instead of landing in another memory, she found herself outside the cage.

  Thousands of threads led into it. They pulsed and squirmed like a plasma ball. Something pounded from inside the cage.

  “Bitch! Let me out of here. When I get my hands on you there won’t be a trace of you left.”

  Terry shrank back.

  “It’s a matter of time, Terry. It’s a matter of time. Your little world is falling apart, and I have nothing to do but look for weaknesses. It’s all crashing down. Can you feel it?”

  Terry bolted away down a random thread.

  The Wonder Woman pajamas lay on the bed, torn and bloody. Teri sat next to them, naked. Her knees were drawn to her chest, and she shivered in spite of the blanket she’d wrapped around herself. One of her fingers was at an impossible angle and her eye was swollen shut. The back of her head throbbed from being slammed against the dresser.

  It had started like any other beating, but then it had taken a strange turn. It felt more wrong than anything before. When it was over, Tip had kissed her on her forehead.

  Terry fled the memory. The next one was just as bad. The camping trip ... She doubled back, speeding past the cage and landing back in the memory with the wet hair.

  These were among the most horrific memories in Teri’s mind, and she shouldn’t have been able to get to them. She had put them in the cage a long time ago. They were supposed to be cut off from everything.

  It’s the Wonder Woman pajamas. That’s what connects them.

  Now she had to cut another happy memory out. There was no choice. When she was done, Teri’s memory with Tabitha on the porch was in the cage, too.

  No matter how much I cut, it’s never enough.

  Terry jumped back into the threads, going from one memory to the next, moving faster and faster through every scene.

  Teri's father, Tip, was an alcoholic asshole who took his own failures out on her and her mom. He was jealous of her intelligence. He assaulted her in many ways. She created an alter ego to take the abuse. That alter ego has been trimming away the abuse from Teri's conscious memories in an attempt to help her cope, but every bad memory is connected to good memories... such is the nature of complex ptsd. So Terry has to trim much of the good stuff away because so much of it leads to the bad things.

  In this chapter, Terry is trying to find the part of their mind that is Teri so she can hopefully get her to wake up. In the process of trying to find Teri to wake her up, Terry finds more things that lead to bad places and trims even more of Teri's good memories away. Everything that gets cut gets put in 'the cage.' Something in the cage wants out. It tells Terry,

  “Bitch! Let me out of here. When I get my hands on you there won’t be a trace of you left.”

  Terry shrank back.

  “It’s a matter of time, Terry. It’s a matter of time. Your little world is falling apart, and I have nothing to do but look for weaknesses. It’s all crashing down. Can you feel it?”

  The chapter ends with Terry fleeing from whatever is rattling the cage, scouring Teri's memories faster and faster, trying to find the one Teri is hiding in.