Turn The Screw Novels & Stories

The memory presses against me with surprising force: her laughter, his concern, the domestic ease of it. My gaze lowers to the screws beneath the bottom step. The screwdriver remains in my hand. For several seconds, I don’t move, my gaze fixed on the stool. No. Not tonight. One thing is enough. One lesson. One small correction to a world that has tilted too far in her favour. And yet I find myself crouching down next to the stool anyway. The wood is dry beneath my fingers, solid and dependable. The sort of ordinary object no one questions until it fails. I touch the first screw, feel its resistance, imagine the sudden giving way, the shock of balance lost, the cry, Thomas's face when he come

"Nerve damage." "It's fine. Just hold it steady with both hands. I'll guide the tip." Cale looked at Elion. "Go ahead," Elion said. "Build something." Cale walked back to the stairs. He took the driver. He gripped it with both hands. Dave set the screw. "Okay. Push and pull the trigger. Slow." Cale squeezed. Whirrrrrr. The screw sank into the wood. Flush. Perfect. "Nice," Dave said. "Again."

“I really don’t know anything.” Turning around, he pulls at the chain another time, chuckling sadly, “Maybe it’s a bit loose.” “Oh, my God,” I groan. Reaching into my hair, I pull out a flat hairclip which was hidden by my ponytail and threw it at him. “Try to loosen the screws. Mine are too rusty and stuck,” I urge him and he collects the hairclip with shaky fingers. He starts tampering with the piece of metal screwed against the wall as I hear a movement outside again.

She screamed when the movement made the silver chains burn further into her skin, leaving a hefty smell of burned skin. "Hold her hand," I instructed my friend, who at that time was in warrior mode. He did so, as I fit her thumb between the spaced horizontal bars. Slowly, with a smirk grazing my lips, I started turning the screw down the threads, my mouth watering as Nancy began feeling the pain. She whimpered, her reaction not quite enough. I tightened the screw further, making the loosely fixed horizontal bar press tighter on her thumb.

Holds the doorknob and opens it with a single swoop. "Aaaaa!!!"

“Not yet. We need a distraction. Or a route they won’t expect.” Her gaze snagged on the vent again. Mesh, screwed into the wall with six small-headed bolts. She dug her fingers into the cot’s underside, found a thumb-length screw holding a support plate, and worked it until it came free into her palm. She jammed the screw into one hollow end of the chair bar, made a makeshift driver, and went at the vent. One screw. Two. A third stripped and refused her. She hissed, adjusted angle and pressure, coaxed. Metal squealed and then surrendered. The mesh came away in her hand, revealing a duct barely wide enough for a forearm.

he said in all seriousness. He turned back to the door and jammed the screwdriver back in between the frame and the knob. Then began pounding it with the hammer to bury it deeper in between the two. He wrenched on it repeatedly. Each time he had pull the screwdriver out and stick it into a new part of the knob and repeat the process. "Wouldn't it be easier to just unscrew the handle?" I asked him, wincing at how hard he was having to wrench on the doorknob.

I shook my head once, barely noticeable. Not yet. I pressed the shard into the head of one screw and twisted gently. It moved. Not much but enough. Hope rose sharply, dangerous and bright. I forced it down. Slow. I worked on the same screw every time the truck hit a bump, letting the vibration mask the faint sound, my wrists burned from the awkward angle, sweat trickled down my back despite the cold. Minutes passed. Or longer. The screw loosened further. I shifted to the next one, repeating the process carefully and methodically.

I couldn't believe he would fake a video to ruin me and clear the way for Sarah. "It's fake. He's framing me," I shouted. Linda sneered, "You shameless liar! Still denying it?"

Winnie was anxious. “What’s going on? Quick, open it up and have a look.” When they opened the latch, smoke rose from the machine. The machine was completely destroyed. Not only that, but the screw that they tightened earlier had broken into two. The broken half had fallen to the bottom of the machine. If they wanted to retrieve that screw, they would have to take the entire machine apart! Upon seeing that, both of them were dumbfounded. The maintenance worker stared at Brandon. “I told you not to tighten the screw, and you didn’t believe me.