The Cake Therapist by Judith Fertig

numb, pinned under her at an awkward angle.
    He put his hand over her nose and mouth, and she couldn’t breathe. She heard the water trickle past, a car shift gears as it rolled over the bridge, several sirens in the distance.
    She tossed her head back and forth, moving the big hand a little, and gulped in air. She tried to scream again, but still nothing came out.
    She blacked out for a while, but came to with the pain.
    It hurt so bad, she thought she was on fire and she wondered if she was. She could hear a fire truck’s siren getting closer, then fading away.
I’m going to die.
    It seemed to go on forever. She blacked out, woke up to the searing pain, and drifted off again to nothingness. When she surfaced again, she kept her eyes closed. The pain was still there, but not as bad. He grunted, then rolled off Edie and onto his back, spread-eagled. He didn’t move.
    Edie turned her head slightly and saw that his mouth had fallen open, but she was still too scared to move. Everything was black again for a while.
    And then Edie opened her eyes. She heard something, but it stopped. The cold, muddy creek water had seeped into her clothes. Her body hurt all over. She shivered. If she just let go, she could drift down, down, down to another place.
    Her eyelids flickered shut for a few moments, but the sound woke her again. A sound like the whirring of wings.
    She felt the lap of small waves from the direction of the oxbow bend, where the wild geese still flocked in cold weather. The vibration hummed just above the water and echoed back under the bridge.
    “Get up, Edie.”
    Wings beating on water.
    Somewhere inside that sound, she heard her mother’s voice carrying down the creek.
    “Get up, Edie. Get up. Go on home.”
    But that can’t be,
Edie thought dully. Mama was dead.
    Edie closed her eyes again. She must be dreaming. But her mother’s voice grew louder.
    “Get up, Edie. Go home.”
    A fearful thought slashed through Edie’s cloudy brain. What if the man heard and woke up?
    Her eyes flew open. She felt the small, choppy waves lapping at her feet. The factory whistle shrieked. There was a humming in her ears. “Hoooooooommmmmmme.”
    She eased up so she could feel her arm again, and the pain made her wince as she moved it from under her body to her side. The effort made her lightheaded.
    But still the hum like the steady drone of bees carried the word she clung to: “Hoooooooommmmmmme.”
    She knew that once she moved, she would have to keep going or the man could wake up and hurt her again. She rolled over on her hands and knees and got her bearings for a few seconds.
    He was still passed out.
    She felt the gravel in the creek bed bite into her palms. She had lost a shoe somewhere. But she moved.
    Lurching forward, she slipped in the mud, then twisted to stiffly pull off the torn panties down at her ankles and the other shoe. She shoved them both in her coat pocket. Edie crawled on hands and knees up the steep and slippery bank, grabbing at the scrub trees and clumps of tall weeds. She made it to the pole of the streetlight on the other side of the bridge and dragged herself upright. She stood under its dim circle and caught her breath.
    “Better go home and sleep it off, doll,” a man muttered as he walked past, clutching his metal lunch box under his arm. He didn’t tip his cap. “Hate to see a woman drunk,” he said, shaking his head as he walked by and then was lost in the smoky haze.
    Mr. Schramm,
she thought. She called out to her friend’s father, but her voice still didn’t work.
How could Mr. Schramm not know me? How can he not see I need help?
    She heard more men, talking quietly, walking home from the three-to-eleven shift.
    She had to get home.
    Edie steadied herself, then hobbled from the support of the streetlamp and turned the corner.
    Home. Home. Home.
    She lurched toward anything to hold on to—wrought-iron gateposts, a parked car, the broad girth of trees—until she reached the little